Before PWHL Las Vegas has a name, a logo or a single game played, it has a standard. General manager Dominique DiDia, head coach Kim Weiss and defender Erin Ambrose laid it out on Sept. 23 at T-Mobile Arena: win fast, and make the team impossible to miss in the community.
Ambrose grew up in Keswick, Ontario, where hockey is everywhere. When Her Ice asked her what it will mean for girls in Las Vegas to grow up with a team in their own city, she started with a basketball team.
“[Look] at the way that the Aces have been embraced and what they've done to have that female presence here in the city,” Ambrose said. “I think [that] is very important, and for us to add a hockey team here.”
Ambrose has watched the women's game change since she started college in the United States in 2012. “This game has skyrocketed for female athletes, for young females,” she said. She believes the next step belongs to the players. “It's up to us now that we're here, that we make our presence known, not just on the ice and the product that we bring there, but in the community.”
“It's up to us now that we're here, that we make our presence known, not just on the ice and the product that we bring there, but in the community.”
Erin Ambrose, PWHL Las Vegas Defender
She described a standard that reaches well past the rink. “Yes, we're great athletes, but also we're phenomenal people,” she said. She wants the team to make an impact everywhere its players go, at the rink in Henderson or at the grocery store.
A GM who played alone
General manager Dominique DiDia knows what it looks like when girls have no team to follow. She grew up playing in Los Angeles. “I was the only girl in my high school, let alone person, to play hockey,” she said. She came to the job from CAA Sports, where she co-led the agency's women's hockey department. Watching girls' clubs grow across the region, she said, makes it meaningful to be a professional team in the Southwest.
She has already seen the crossover. At the Aces game the night before, fans who had never watched hockey asked Ambrose for autographs because they love women's sports. That audience, she said, is one the club intends to keep.
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Built to win fast
DiDia also looked to the Aces and Golden Knights on the competitive side. “This is a city where teams win. They win fast,” she said. The Aces' banners and the Knights' immediate success shaped the culture she and Weiss wrote down in May. “Our goal is not to [make] the playoffs. Our goal is to win a Walter Cup every season.”
“Our goal is not to [make] the playoffs. Our goal is to win a Walter Cup every season.”
Dominique DiDia, General Manager
The timeline left little room. DiDia was hired in May, and the expansion draft came 10 days later. She targeted players who had already won, including Walter Cup champions and NCAA title winners. That instinct traces to her nine years with the Los Angeles Kings, where she rose to director of marketing and content publicity and was on staff for the 2012 Stanley Cup, and to her years as Anže Kopitar's agent. Players who win once, she said, return with a different level of drive.
Ambrose is proof of that. “After being able to hoist the Walter Cup in May, there's nothing else I want to do [than] do that again,” she said. “So the sooner the better.”
A coach with a Vegas file
Head coach Kim Weiss was clear about the product she wants. “Well, we're in Vegas, right? So we have to be exciting,” she said. “I like to think of myself as an offensive coach, so we're going to be fast, we're going to be physical.”
She already knew the market. Weiss came from Colorado's American Hockey League team, which faced the Henderson Silver Knights often, including in a playoff series last spring. Golden Knights assistant Mark Letestu is a close family friend, and Ryan Craig called her when she got the job.
Her partnership with DiDia goes back to Trinity College, where DiDia arrived as a freshman and found Weiss already captain as a sophomore. “Her leadership has been a part of my life since I was 18 years old,” DiDia said. Weiss later coached at Trinity as an assistant with the men's program in 2023-24, the first woman to hold an assistant coaching role in NCAA Division III men's hockey. She said her history with DiDia made the decision easy. “I know who she is when things go well, but I know who she is when things don't go well, which sometimes happens in pro sports.”
For now, her staff is learning the roster. “We're like kids with Legos,” Weiss said. “If you have players, you just start to build lines.” She has asked her assistants to get to know the players as people first. “In any sport, but particularly women's sports, you're humans first and your athletes second.”
“In any sport, but particularly women's sports, you're humans first and your athletes second.”
Kim Weiss, Head Coach
Making T-Mobile Arena loud
Her Ice also asked what it will take for the team to make T-Mobile Arena as loud and as hard to play in as the Golden Knights have. DiDia said the expectation is already set. “We expect our fans and we want our fans and want the community to be just as loud and just as excited,” she said. “We think it's a part of being in Vegas.”
She had seen the standard the night before, in an arena packed for the Aces. She is counting on game-night entertainment to match what the Knights have built, and on the team's name and branding to give fans something to rally behind once they're revealed. The building itself does some of the work. “We just walked out and it takes your breath away,” she said.
Weiss stepped in to credit the roster. “I'll just piggyback on that, because she's going to be humble,” she said. “Dominique's built a great roster when it comes to being hard to play against.” She named Katie Knoll and Natalie Snodgrass as the kind of players the staff targeted. “We wanted competitive people that love winning.”
What comes next
Players are already arriving in town, and the team's group chat has been busier than Ambrose expected in the middle of summer. She is looking forward to playing alongside Knoll and Snodgrass instead of battling them in the corners.
The club's first public event is Skate to Eliminate Cancer on Oct. 10, with girls' hockey clinics to follow. Even DiDia doesn't yet know the team's name. “I wish I knew,” she said, though she made clear she loves the green.
“If you walk in and watch a female hockey game, you will want to watch another game.”
Erin Ambrose, PWHL Las Vegas Defender
Training camp opens Nov. 18, and PWHL Las Vegas hosts PWHL Detroit at T-Mobile Arena on Sunday, Dec. 6, at 5 p.m. PT. Ambrose has a simple pitch for anyone undecided, one DiDia repeated when asked about the arena. “If you walk in and watch a female hockey game, you will want to watch another game.”
