San José Is Getting a Professional Women’s Hockey Team. Here’s What We Know

Season ticket deposits opened Tuesday and were already well above the league’s first-day expectations, according to Becher, who declined to share the specific number.

Scheduling around the Sharks and the arena’s more than 100 annual events will take some coordination, Becher acknowledged. He said the organization has navigated similar logistics before, when the Barracuda shared the building.

Becher said that major construction of the building is still underway, and that the biggest concern has revolved around “how to make room for them, and for the Sharks, and for all the events because it’s one of the busiest buildings.”

The PWHL, which is centrally owned and operated, chose blue and orange as the team’s colors — a dual nod to San José’s identity while avoiding replication of the Sharks’ teal.

Mayor Matt Mahan took the opportunity to lobby for the San José Hammerheads as a potential team name, in honor of former Mayor Susan Hammer and to keep with the arena’s ocean theme. Becher confirmed that Hammerheads is on the shortlist.

The team’s first home game date has not yet been confirmed, pending the release of the NHL schedule.

Tuesday’s event drew Olympic gold medalists Brandi Chastain and Kristi Yamaguchi, both Bay Area natives, who framed the announcement as the latest chapter in a longer story about the trajectory of women’s sports.

“I’ve been screaming about women’s sports for 50 or more years,” Chastain said. “The fact that we have this now — we have WNBA, we have soccer, we have hockey — it is incredible.”

Yamaguchi pointed to the league’s 60-plus Olympians and the recent surge in women’s sports viewership as signs of what’s to come.

“In the past, we kind of looked to the Olympics once every four years to watch elite women’s hockey,” Yamaguchi said. “Now we’ll be able to see it every single week.”

Amy Scheer, PWHL executive vice president of business operations, noted that women’s hockey in California actually dates back more than a century. She referenced a 1916 game played by a Bay Area team called the Oakland Minervas, which drew 1,200 fans and sparked a brief boom in the sport before it eventually faded. But, Scheer said, this time, the PWHL intends to stay.

“We are going nowhere,” Scheer said. “We are here for the long term and will continue to build women’s hockey and keep growing, growing and growing.”

Chastain, a co-founder of Bay FC, said she hopes the arrival of the PWHL signals not just more teams, but more women in leadership — as coaches, executives and decision-makers across sports franchises.

“I look forward to breaking other barriers,” she said. “A female head coach in Major League Soccer, in hockey, in baseball, in the NBA.”

And, Chastain added, “I want it to be done here in the Bay Area first.”