As The PWHL Prepares For Its One-Millionth Fan, Elle Hartje Heads Home To Detroit

This Sunday’s eighth PWHL Takeover Tour stop carries special significance for Motor City native and New York Sirens forward Elle Hartje.

One year ago, as a senior and the captain of the Yale women’s hockey team, she sprang into action when she realized that the PWHL would be mounting a neutral-site game at Little Caesars Arena while she was home for spring break.

Hartje hit up fellow Michiganer Taylor Girard, then a PWHL Boston forward, for her friends-and family tickets.

“My sister and I went to the game together,” Hartje recalled. “Another girl, Grace Markey, who played at Quinnipiac with Taylor, was also at the game, but she wanted to sit on the glass, so we weren’t sitting together. And then afterwards, we met up with all of them and were able to go grab a drink and hang out.”

At that time, Hartje was playing in front of crowds that topped out in the hundreds at Yale. She was stunned by the experience of being part of a group of 13,736 fans that set a new U.S. attendance record for a women’s pro hockey game at the time, as Boston beat PWHL Ottawa 2-1 in a shootout.

“It was a great atmosphere,” Hartje said. “It was the game where Taylor Swift was being sung, and that went super viral. I got to wear a cool Red Wings jacket — dress up a little bit — and I was in the family section, so I felt special for that, too.”

This Sunday, one year to the day after being part of the record-breaking crowd, Hartje will be on the ice for the PWHL’s second visit to Hockeytown when the Sirens face the Minnesota Frost (7:30 p.m. ET). After she completing her political science degree, the 23-year-old was selected in the fifth round of the 2024 PWHL draft last June.

To bring things even more full-circle: Girard was traded from Boston to New York in January.

“The first thing I said was, ‘Oh my gosh, we get to go back and play in Detroit again,’” Hartje smiled. “My phone was actually blowing up the day it was announced because for my Midwest friends, there’s not anywhere super-accessible for them to come watch me play.”

Less than 20 games into her pro career, Hartje has quickly become acclimated to NHL arenas. This year, the Sirens are playing out of the New Jersey Devils’ home rink, the Prudential Center in Newark. Another Takeover Tour stop took place at KeyBank Center in Buffalo last month. And road games have included a pair of stops at Xcel Energy Center in Minnesota and a January clash with the Toronto Sceptres at the Toronto Maple Leafs’ home, Scotiabank Arena, in front of the PWHL’s Season 2 high of 19,102 fans.

Averaging more than 20 minutes of ice time over New York’s last five games and having picked up her fifth assist of the year in the Sirens’ 3-2 win over the league-leading Montreal Victoire on Wednesday, Hartje believes that her previous experiences will help her keep her emotions under control on Sunday.

“I think having the opportunity to have played in Toronto will definitely prepare me well to just stay in the moment, have my feet under me and play the same way I’ve been playing over these past few games,” she said.

“I think it’s great that I had that opportunity to have done that now, getting used to playing in this new league. Yes, the pace is higher. Yes, the hockey is better. But also all of the external factors around the game are heightened so much. There’s reporters. There’s appearances. There’s fans. There’s just so much more going on surrounding the games than last year. That was another thing that definitely took some getting used to.”

Detroit’s fans will have a chance to reclaim the U.S. attendance record on Sunday, after 14,108 spectators set a new mark at Stop No. 3 of the Takeover Tour at Ball Arena in Denver on Jan. 12. They’ll also get a crack at marking an important milestone in league history.

After drawing 10,782 fans to Lenovo Center in Raleigh on Mar. 7, the Takeover Tour has now exceeded 100,000 fans through its first seven stops. On Sunday, Detroit could welcome the PWHL’s one-millionth fan. After drawing 392,259 fans through 72 regular-season games and another 91,271 in 13 playoff games in Season 1, total attendance for Season 2 is now up to 495,734 through Wednesday, for a grand total of 979,264.

If Ottawa matches its season average of 6,388 at TD Place when hosting the Boston Fleet on Saturday, Detroit would need to draw 14,348 on Sunday in order to reach the one-million mark.

When discussing the viability of potential expansion options in February, senior vice president of business operations Amy Scheer made it clear that the top two requirements on the PWHL’s wish list are proper infrastructure and training facilities to support a top-tier women’s hockey team.

Hartje believes that Detroit can check those boxes easily.

“There’s rinks everywhere in Michigan,” she said, singling out the 3,504-seat USA Hockey Arena that’s home to the men’s National Team Development Program as an ideal potential home for a PWHL team.

“They play out of Plymouth, which is actually where I train in the summer,” she said. “The set-up for them is great. They have their training room in the same building as the rink and they have a perfect-size bowl, in my opinion, for an expansion team there. You always want to start out like the Canadian teams started — a bit smaller — and then they were able to expand when they realized sort of the demand that they had.”

On March 29, the Takeover Tour will wrap up in St. Louis, just ahead of a three-week break in the schedule for the 2025 IIHF women’s world championship in Czechia. An announcement on the PWHL’s expansion plans could come before that international break.