Ottawa Charge to move to Canadian Tire Centre next season

Ottawa Charge to move to Canadian Tire Centre next season

PWHL team played first 3 seasons at Lansdowne Park's TD Place Arena

The Ottawa Charge have announced they will move to the Canadian Tire Centre (CTC) next season.

Ottawa's Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) team played several post-season games at the home of the Ottawa Senators earlier this year.

Thursday's news, delivered at the CTC, comes after the team confirmed it won't play at the new arena being built at Lansdowne Park because that venue will have less seating than the current TD Place Arena, where the Charge have spent their first three seasons.

Charge General Manager Mike Hirshfeld said the Charge and Senators have signed a multi-year agreement for playing and practising at the arena.

He was joined by Ottawa Senators President and CEO Cyril Leeder and Charge forward Rebecca Leslie, who is from Ottawa, for the announcement.

"We really feel that the PWHL and the Ottawa Charge are an important part of our hockey ecosystem here," Leeder said.

Ottawa Charge announce move from TD Place to Canadian Tire Centre

The Charge are one of the PWHL's original six franchises and spent their first three seasons at TD Place Arena, also home to the Ontario Hockey League's Ottawa 67's. That team now appears poised to become the new Lansdowne arena's main sports tenant.

Leslie said her family had season tickets for the 67's when she was growing up and that she has fond memories of watching games at TD Place Arena.

"So both arenas hold special places in my heart and are both great facilities and we're really excited to be playing at the CTC," she said.

Hirshfeld said that as part of the Charge's moving in, the team will get its own "self-contained exclusive locker room space."

"We'll have a lounge for our players. We'll have medical space for our players, equipment space for our equipment people, coaches' offices. So for us that's a big step forward. I think we'll have probably the top facilities in the PWHL," he said.

The Charge have already signalled they won't play at the new Lansdowne arena because it will have only 5,850 seats, with added standing room boosting capacity to more than 6,600. That's compared to TD Place Arena's current capacity of about 9,500 seats.

Last season, the Charge's average turnout at TD Place was 7,382 in 12 outings, with 10 games surpassing 6,600.

The Charge averaged 13,416 fans per playoff game at the CTC this past season, and drew a crowd of 17,114 for one regular-season game at the same arena where the capacity is 18,655.

"Our fans showed up in great numbers during the playoffs," Leslie said.

Asked if the team is concerned about its ability to draw people out to Kanata on a Wednesday night "in the dead of winter" during the regular season, Hirshfeld said they're "very confident" they can attract fans "whether it's on a Wednesday night or on a Saturday afternoon."

The Charge reached the best-of-five Walter Cup Finals in each of the past two seasons, losing both times.

The Senators, meanwhile, could move to a new downtown arena at Lebreton Flats, though construction on that project has yet to begin.

In a memo to city councillors, city manager Wendy Stephanson congratulated the Charge on their move. She did not mention Lansdowne Park.

With files from The Associated Press