Professional Women's Hockey League

The Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL; , LPHF) is a women's professional ice hockey league in North America. The league comprises eight teams, four each from the United States and Canada. The teams play a regular season to earn one of four places in a postseason tournament that determines the winner of the Walter Cup. The PWHL is wholly owned and operated by the Mark Walter Group.

Differences between the PWHL and other North American professional hockey leagues include a 3-2-1-0 points system, terminations of penalties following a short-handed goal, best-of-five shootouts, and greater restrictions on body checking. The league's matches are broadcast nationally in Canada by the CBC and TSN, their French-language affiliates Radio-Canada and RDS, and in both languages on Amazon Prime Video. In the United States, it is broadcast by regional sports networks based in each U.S. city with a team. It is streamed on YouTube internationally, excluding Canada, as well as on Nova Sport in Czechia and Slovakia.

The collapse of the Canadian Women's Hockey League in 2019 led to the establishment of the Professional Women's Hockey Players Association (PWHPA), a non-profit organization that advocated for greater professionalism in women's ice hockey. PWHPA members boycotted existing leagues, including the Premier Hockey Federation (PHF), with the goal of establishing a stable, unified professional league, and worked to build a collective bargaining agreement with Mark Walter and Billie Jean King Enterprises. The Mark Walter Group acquired the assets of the PHF following its 2022–23 season. Subsequently, the PWHPA worked with the Mark Walter Group to establish a unified league with new ownership and management. The league's first draft took place in September 2023, and its first season began in January 2024.

History

Antecedents and the PWHPA

Top-level and professional women's hockey in North America has developed in starts and stops since the late twentieth century. The National Women's Hockey League (NWHL) launched in 1999, featuring teams mainly in Ontario and Quebec. Some teams from Western Canada competed intermittently, but a Western Women's Hockey League was formed in 2004. The Canadian Women's Hockey League (CWHL) effectively replaced the NWHL and ran for twelve seasons, from 2007 to 2019, with teams competing for the Clarkson Cup. The CWHL, which operated on a non-profit basis, did not pay player salaries, but it did at times offer stipends and bonuses as it aspired to become a professional league. However, the league lacked financial stability and it abruptly folded in 2019. A new National Women's Hockey League—later renamed the Premier Hockey Federation—which did offer player salaries, was established in the United States in 2015, before expanding into Canada in 2020. However, after the dissolution of the CWHL, hundreds of prominent women's players, including Canadian and American Olympians, founded the Professional Women's Hockey Players' Association (PWHPA) and opted to boycott existing leagues in pursuit of a unified, financially stable professional league. In the meantime, the PWHPA attracted partnerships with corporate sponsors and National Hockey League teams, organizing exhibition tournaments to generate support for their goal.

In 2022, the PWHPA entered a partnership with the Mark Walter Group and BJK Enterprises—led by Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter and Billie Jean King, respectively—with the intent to launch a new professional league. In 2023, the two business partners purchased the assets of the Premier Hockey Federation, and the PHF ceased operations. The PWHPA negotiated a collective bargaining agreement ahead of the launch of the new professional league the union had been working towards.

Founding and inaugural season

The establishment of the Professional Women's Hockey League was announced by Mark Walter Group in August 2023, along with the location of its six charter teams: Boston, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Montreal, New York City, Ottawa, and Toronto. Teams began constructing their rosters that summer, with an initial ten-day free agency period to sign three players. Emily Clark, Brianne Jenner, and Emerance Maschmeyer became the league's first players when they signed with Ottawa. The inaugural draft took place in September at the Canadian Broadcasting Centre in Toronto, where Minnesota chose Taylor Heise as the first pick in a fifteen-round, ninety-player draft from a pool of 286 eligible players. The league announced that, due to time constraints, the teams would not be given nicknames until after the inaugural season, and would wear jerseys featuring the name of the teams' locales in a diagonal wordmark.

Prior to the start of the inaugural season, all six teams congregated at the Utica University Nexus Center in early December for a five-day evaluation camp, including scrimmages used to experiment with new rules. The first game took place on January 1, 2024, when Toronto hosted New York at the Mattamy Athletic Centre. New York's Ella Shelton scored the league's first goal en route to a 4–0 win. The game's Canadian television audience of 2.9 million viewers was the largest for a sports or entertainment broadcast that day, beating the 2024 NHL Winter Classic. The attendance record for a professional women's ice hockey match would be set multiple times during the ensuing season: 8,318 at Ottawa's first home game at TD Place Arena on January 2; 13,316 at Minnesota's first home game at the Xcel Energy Center on January 6; 19,285 at the inaugural "Battle on Bay Street" match at Scotiabank Arena on February 16; and 21,105 at the "Duel at the Top" match at the Bell Centre on April 20. The latter two drew the largest ever crowds for women's ice hockey, surpassing the 18,013 that watched Canada play Finland at the 2013 Women's World Championship.

Toronto finished atop the standings at the end of the inaugural season—they chose to play fourth place Minnesota in the first round of the playoffs, leaving Montréal and Boston to play the other series. Minnesota defeated Toronto in a five-game series, while Boston defeated Montréal in three straight games, with every decision coming in overtime. In the final, Minnesota defeated Boston in a five-game series to capture the first Walter Cup championship. Natalie Spooner was the league's first scoring champion and the inaugural winner of the league's Bill Jean King Most Valuable Player award, while Taylor Heise led the playoffs in scoring and was given postseason MVP honours.

Organization

The PWHL and all six of its teams are owned by the Mark Walter Group. The Advisory Board of the PWHL is formed by Billie Jean King, Ilana Kloss, Stan Kasten, and Royce Cohen. Jayna Hefford is the Senior Vice President of Hockey Operations and Amy Scheer is the Senior Vice President of Business Operations. Former hockey player and broadcaster Cassie Campbell-Pascall is an advisor to the Board. The league hired over 100 staff members to support league operations, distinguishing it from past women's hockey leagues that have lacked such operational support.

The PWHPA organized a formal players' union in early 2023—the PWHL Players Association (PWHLPA)—that became the players' union representing all PWHL players. Unique to professional women's hockey, the PWHL established an eight-year collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with the players' union. The CBA establishes that each team must sign at least six players to a minimum salary of $80,000, and no more than nine players to a league minimum salary of $35,000, with teams instructed to achieve an average salary of $55,000. The base and average salaries are slated to increase 3% per season through the end of the agreement in 2031. The CBA further outlines performance and team bonuses, including a $63,250 bonus for the championship-winning team, and other financial incentives, including housing stipends. Brian Burke acts as the executive director of the players' union.

Format and rules

The inaugural PWHL season consisted of a 24-game schedule lasting from January to May. From the 2024–25 season, the schedule comprises 30 games played from November to May, with each team facing their opponents six times. The schedule includes a mid-season break during the annual IIHF World Women's Championship in April. A 3-2-1-0 points system is used for classification, whereby a team is awarded 3 points for a regulation win, 2 for an overtime or shootout win, and 1 for an overtime or shootout loss. At the end of the regular season, the best four teams qualify for a postseason tournament that determines the champion, comprising two semi-finals and a final played as best-of-five series. The teams compete for the Walter Cup, a trophy named after the league's financial backers, the Walter family.

PWHL rules closely follow National Hockey League and International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) standards, with some notable innovations. A "jailbreak" rule allows a team to terminate a minor penalty against by scoring a short-handed goal. During best-of-five shootouts, any player is eligible to shoot at any time, including taking multiple attempts. Like the Swedish Women's Hockey League, the PWHL breaks women's ice hockey and IIHF conventions and allows body checking, with the rule-book outlining that checking is permissible "when there is a clear intention of playing the puck or attempting to 'gain possession' of the puck", allowed principally along the boards. League executive Jayna Hefford has stated that body checking was included at the behest of the players. There are two main factors which determine the legality of a body check. The first is being able to determine whether or not gaining possession of the puck is the sole purpose of the player initiating the body check—a blatant example of an illegal body check would be if a player is across the ice from the puck, and they initiate a body check against another player. The second factor is the movement of players. Under rule 52.1, "a player who is stationary is entitled to that area of the ice. It is up to the opponent to avoid body contact with such a player." If a player were to initiate a body check on a player who is stationary and without the puck, there would be grounds for a referee to assess a penalty.

Prior to the 2024–25 season, the league announced the introduction of the "No Escape Rule", whereby when a team takes a penalty, all of the penalized team's players must remain on the ice until after the ensuing faceoff; this rule is similar to the existing rule which keeps players on the ice after their team ices the puck.

Teams

Current teams

As of the 2024–25 season, six teams compete in the league: the Montreal Victoire, Ottawa Charge, and Toronto Sceptres from Canada, and the Boston Fleet, Minnesota Frost, and New York Sirens from the United States. The six clubs have been described as the league's own "Original Six" and by the PWHL as its "Inaugural Six". The teams' locations were chosen for being markets of National Hockey League franchises with "track records of supporting hockey and, specifically, the women's game." The teams are located in five of the seven Premier Hockey Federation markets—the Buffalo Beauts and Connecticut Whale were not given PWHL replacements, while Ottawa gained a team. Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., and London, Ontario, were also considered for inaugural teams.

Potential team nicknames were registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office in October 2023: Boston Wicked, Minnesota Superior, Montreal Echo, New York Sound, Ottawa Alert, and Toronto Torch. However, the league ultimately opted to forgo unique club identities for the inaugural season, emphasizing league branding instead. This meant that teams lacked nicknames, crests, and stylized jerseys, and were identified by their city. On September 9, 2024, ahead of the league's second season, team names and logos were announced, with none of them matching the trademarked names from 2023: the Boston Fleet, Minnesota Frost, Montreal Victoire, New York Sirens, Ottawa Charge, and Toronto Sceptres.

Some teams experimented with multiple venues during the inaugural season, and the league also organized a number of neutral-site games. As of the 2024–25 season, Minnesota plays its home games at the Xcel Energy Center, the largest-capacity venue in the league at 17,954. New York plays in the second largest venue at Newark's Prudential Center. Boston plays at the Tsongas Center at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Montreal hosts games at Place Bell in Laval. Ottawa plays at TD Place Arena in Lansdowne Park. Finally, Toronto plays at Coca-Cola Coliseum. The league has presented one-off matches at other large venues, including the Bell Centre in Montreal and Scotiabank Arena in Toronto in games dubbed the "Duel at the Top" and "Battle on Bay Street" rivalry matches between Montreal and Toronto. Other one-off match venues have included Little Caesars Arena in Detroit; PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh; and the Prudential Center in Newark. In November 2024, the league announced a "Takeover Tour" for the 2024–25 season that would see teams play nine neutral site matches in Seattle, Denver, Buffalo, Raleigh, Detroit, St. Louis, Quebec City, Vancouver, and Edmonton. The league also suggested that it would consider games in Europe in future seasons.

Expansion teams

Prior to the start of the 2024–25 season, the league announced that it was exploring expansion, opening up a process for proposals and stating that it would ultimately look to add two new teams when possible; by November 2024, the league had received more than two dozen expansion proposals. On April 18, 2025, reports suggested that the first new expansion team would be in Vancouver, with Seattle reportedly a top choice for the second. On April 23, 2025, the league announced that Vancouver would receive the first expansion team in league history, with the team playing home games at the Pacific Coliseum beginning in the 2025–26 season. One week later, on April 30, the league announced that Seattle would receive the second expansion team for the 2025–26 season, with the team playing home games at Climate Pledge Arena, home of the NHL's Seattle Kraken, who will have a supporting role with the team after supporting its expansion bid. On May 21, the PWHL named Meghan Turner as general manager for the Seattle team.

All-Stars

For its inaugural season, the PWHL announced that it would collaborate with the National Hockey League on its All-Star festivities, intending to host its own All-Star game in future seasons. PWHL All-Stars participated in the "PWHL 3-on-3 Showcase" on February 1 during the 2024 NHL All-Star weekend in Toronto; it featured 24 PWHL players divided between Team King and Team Kloss—named after Billie Jean King and Ilana Kloss, respectively—coached by Cassie Campbell-Pascall and Meghan Duggan.

Season overviews

Broadcasting

Production of all PWHL game telecasts are being handled in-house by the league, with Dome Productions (jointly owned by Bell Media and Rogers Sports & Media) handling host production for Canadian home games, and Raycom Sports handling production for U.S. home games.

In Canada, the league reached agreements for the inaugural season with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (via CBC Television and CBC Gem in English, and Ici Radio-Canada Télé and Ici TOU.TV in French), Sportsnet, TSN, and RDS (French) to carry packages of games throughout the season, with all other games available via YouTube. For the 2024–25 season, Sportsnet was replaced by Amazon Prime Video, which exclusively carries Tuesday night games, and holds rights to one semi-final series. The CBC primarily broadcasts Saturday afternoon games, while French-language coverage of Montreal Victoire games are split among the three broadcasters.

Distribution of games in the United States would initially rely on partnerships with regional sports networks, with the PWHL partnering with NESN, Bally Sports North (now FanDuel Sports Network North), and MSG Network for Boston, Minnesota, and New York games respectively. In February 2024, the league announced a partnership with the free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) platform Women's Sports Network as its first national media partner in the United States.

References

External links

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PWHL Handbook

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Professional ice hockey leagues in Canada
Professional ice hockey leagues in the United States
Multi-national ice hockey leagues in North America
Women's ice hockey leagues in Canada
Women's ice hockey leagues in the United States