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The Blues’ announcement of a women’s professional hockey game to be played at Enterprise Center next spring is more than just a one-off event.

It marks the continuation of the team’s commitment to growing women’s hockey in St. Louis.

The Ottawa Charge will face the Boston Fleet on March 29 at Enterprise Center in a regular-season Professional Women’s Hockey League game, the last of a nine-game barnstorming tour the league has planned for early 2025.

Tickets for the event go on sale to the public on Friday at .

The work to land this event began when Blues President and CEO Chris Zimmerman watched a PWHL showcase game at the 2024 NHL All-Star Game in Toronto and expressed the organization’s interest in hosting a game to league executives.

It’s a league he thinks highly of.

The PWHL “put the best players in the world onto those six teams,� Zimmerman said. “And I think their first year of play last season certainly met or exceeded most people’s expectations in terms of fan engagement, interest, crowds — pick your metric.�

One of the players who will take part in the game grew up in the St. Louis area. Ottawa Charge defender Jincy Roese (formerly Jincy Dunne) is an O’Fallon, Missouri, native who played for the St. Louis Lady Blues as a teen. She won silver at the 2022 Winter Olympics. Plus, Boston forward Taylor Girard played at Lindenwood before transferring to Quinnipiac.

The larger push to grow women’s hockey in St. Louis began in 2015, when the Blues announced their “Hockey STL 2020� campaign, which was highlighted by the creation of two girls hockey clubs, the youth program and the girls program.

When the Blues hosted the All-Star Game in 2020, that provided another catalyst to grow the women’s game. The Blues prioritized women’s hockey development as the legacy project for the event and began their which provides low-cost opportunities for girls of all ages to begin their youth hockey playing careers.

Participation has more than doubled in four years. The developmental programs don’t stop with players. They also foster female referees and include all-female coaching clinics.

The Blues organization is also finalizing plans to launch and host an all-girls ages 12-and-under tournament beginning next year.

“We’ve been working on a consistent objective of continuing to build girls and women’s hockey in St Louis,� Zimmerman said. “Whether it was having USA play Canada (in 2021) or some of the other professional women’s games we’ve had, they’ve been well received.�

“Fundamentally, one of our primary objectives is to grow the game,� Zimmerman said. “The opportunity to get more girls and women playing has been really clear to us for some time, and so we are.�

The PWHL is entering its second season after a and is owned by Los Angeles Dodgers chairman and native Midwesterner Mark Walter. The league runs all of the six teams: Boston Fleet, Minnesota Frost, Montreal Victoire, New York Sirens, Ottawa Charge and Toronto Sceptres.

The professional women’s game at Enterprise Center is just one of many major hockey events in St. Louis in recent years, including the 2025 NCAA Frozen Four, which will take place two weekends after the PWHL showcase.

“I think we’ve established ourselves as one of the best hockey towns in America in terms of our fan base,� Zimmerman said. “We are interested in being able to really host every major event and continue to show people what a great hockey town St. Louis is, and I think the fact that we continue to win these types of events is a testament to what we’re accomplishing.�

Could it eventually lead to even more women’s professional hockey games here? The PWHL is set to as early as the 2025-26 season, and at least has mentioned St. Louis as a candidate.

League executive Amy Scheer referenced the locations of neutral-site games as “an exciting moment for our players and an important move for our business as we consider expansion,� according to a news release.

Zimmerman remained largely quiet on the subject, saying there had been no discussions on the expansion topic.

Regardless of what the PWHL’s expansion future holds, St. Louis is continuing to build itself into a hotbed of women’s hockey.

“The Blues and, quite honestly, all the people connected to our local hockey market to continue to develop the girls and women’s game, and this is another nice step in that direction,� Zimmerman said.