There was no big Defector-style Professional Women’s Hockey League season preview last year, because I was (shameless plug) a little busy reporting this feature on the league’s formation. But it’s also tough to preview an inaugural season. Ideally the preview writer is offering special wisdom, honed over many years, manifested in cute and knowing references. How could I do that with a brand-new league? It would have been the blind previewing for the blind—an insult, frankly, to your intelligence. Only now, after one whole year of PWHL fandom, do I feel comfortable sharing a preview with you, valued reader. Let’s see what the league’s second season might have in store. The games start Saturday.
The six teams are listed below in draft order, each entry highlighting a cool veteran and a rookie. If you’re new to watching the PWHL, welcome! At the very end of this preview, there’s an FAQ section with some extra notes, tips, and reminders of the rules. As noted in that FAQ section, the PWHL point system distinguishes between wins in regulation and overtime or shootout wins, so each team’s record is formatted in the following order: regulation win-overtime win-overtime loss-regulation loss.
New York Sirens
Record last season: 5-4-3-12
Defender Ella Shelton scored the first PWHL goal at the league’s inaugural game on New Year’s Day, but once the warm glow of history wore off, there wasn’t much else for the Sirens to celebrate. Bouncing between venues, the Sirens finished with just five regulation wins, the league’s worst record, and the league’s lowest attendance. Depending on how you see it, the losing either owed to or led to some locker room dysfunction.
“The finger-pointing, the blaming, what we are doing right now is just the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and over again,” forward Madison Packer told the New York Times after a loss to Ottawa in March. The Sirens were consistently outshot, a mess in their own end. Only strong goaltending from Corinne Schroeder kept them in some one-goal games. After the season ended, head coach Howie Draper was fired.
The on-paper talent seemed incongruous with the on-ice results, and there were moments when an optimist could see the outlines of a good team here. New York’s power play converted at a 24.4 percent clip, just second to Ottawa’s, and the Sirens penalty kill was second-best, too. That might help explain the real issue: their overreliance on just a few players, a problem less apparent on special teams, where talent outweighs depth. Forward Alex Carpenter and her powerful shot carried a lot of the offense. I don’t think it’s wrong to say Ella Shelton played like the best defender in the PWHL last season, even if she wasn’t likely to win Defender of the Year as the face of a generally poor defensive team. It takes a rare talent to drive offense from the blue line, and she finished fifth in the league in points, with 21 in 24 games, the only defender in the top 10. These weren’t the fraudy points 1Ds can rack up, either: Just three of Shelton’s 14 assists were secondary. Her inaugural goal didn’t require much creativity—she just flung the puck at the net off a face-off—but Shelton’s comfortable joining the rush and making plays from the half-wall.
One perk of falling from playoff contention before anyone else is that the Sirens received the first pick in the draft, and took Sarah Fillier out of Princeton. Fillier broke out at the Beijing Olympics, where she scored eight goals, and she’ll fit right in with Carpenter as a wing who can both think and skate at startling speed. She doesn’t even have to cross state lines: The Sirens will share an arena with the New Jersey Devils in Newark this year.
Ottawa Charge
Record last season: 8-1-6-9
Though the Charge just missed the playoffs, they had turned into a rather lovable team by the end of their first season. As sports stories go, it was a familiar one: The ragtag bunch struggles in the early going, but is slowly brought together by the power of love and friendship. Ottawa’s top line of captain Brianne Jenner, Katerina Mrázová, and Daryl Watts hadn’t played together before, but they clicked and powered the team to a hot streak in April. The scrappy second line of Hayley Scamurra, Gabbie Hughes, and Emily Clark developed some real juice, too.
Unfortunately for Ottawa, Watts was only signed to a one-year deal, and she’ll be on the other side of the Battle of Ontario this season, having joined the Toronto Sceptres. The Charge's identity heading into this season might be as great a mystery as it was before last season. They’ll have to find some new answers on offense, and they’ll need to tighten up on defense. They were incredibly skilled at producing the most random and brain-dead defensive breakdowns I’ve ever seen, and it probably didn't help their fans' sanity that the Charge had six overtime losses in 24 total games. Maybe that was just part of their charm. Mrázová also played on a one-year deal, but Ottawa was able to re-sign her in free agency. No matter who’s on her wing, she’s bound to create tons of scoring chances for them with her vision and talent for handling the puck.
Rookie Danielle Serdachny, drafted second overall out of Colgate, will slot in down the middle and make this an even deeper forward group. Don’t expect a very long adjustment period for her: She always pops in international competition despite her relative youth. As the “whose name does the play-by-play announcer seem to be saying a lot” measure attests, she somehow manages to be everywhere on every play. Serdachny absolutely won't tolerate any overtime loss nonsense either: At Worlds this April, in a typically bonkers U.S.-Canada final, she scored Canada’s golden goal in OT.
Minnesota Frost
Record last season: 8-4-3-9
The Frost are an interesting example of a team amassing a ton of goodwill and then possibly squandering all of it in a very short window of time. They made whiplash their signature thing. When the PWHL took an international break for Worlds in late March, Minnesota was just a point behind first-place Toronto. But the Frost ended up backing into the playoffs when the season restarted, finishing their regular season on a six-game losing streak. Down two games to start the best-of-five series against Toronto, Minnesota seemed happy to let the late-season spiral take its natural course. But then Toronto’s leading scorer suffered a season-ending injury, and Minnesota had new life. The Frost won three straight games to get to the Walter Cup Final against Boston. In that series, they took a 2-1 lead, survived a double OT Game 4 heartbreaker, and won Game 5 for the first title in league history. Just make it, I guess.
But not a week after they won the Cup, the league—which owns all the teams—fired general manager Natalie Darwitz, a Minnesota hockey legend. The Athletic reported that Darwitz's ouster was “the result of a rift with [head coach Ken] Klee, with a handful of veteran players like Kendall Coyne Schofield in Klee’s camp and others in Darwitz’s.” Team staffers and at least a few players seemed blindsided by the move. The Frost were built around homegrown talent, so the loss of a local favorite especially stung.
There are several great Minnesotans on this team: Forwards Taylor Heise and Grace Zumwinkle gave the Frost an electric young core last year, and the 24-year-old Heise won playoff MVP. But I’m partial to Frost alternate captain, Lee Stecklein, who’s won just about everything there is to win in hockey. In those nervy moments when it seems like the other team’s about to make something happen, Stecklein and her long stick will appear from nowhere to calmly poke a puck out of harm’s way. Scoring chances just kind of fizzle out when she’s defending the entry. It can be therapeutic to watch.
Joining Stecklein on the blue line this season is Claire Thompson, a slightly unorthodox first-round pick. For one thing, she's Canadian, but she's also several years removed from college. Thompson took a break from hockey to attend med school at NYU, and now she’s taking a break from that to perform emergency surgery on what was by far the league's worst penalty kill in the regular season. True to the roller coaster that is Frost hockey, the 67 percent PK was somehow a perfect 19-for-19 in the playoffs.
Boston Fleet
Record last season: 8-4-3-9
Boston looked like it might run away with the inaugural PWHL season when the dust settled on free agency and the draft, where the Fleet were able to steal Alina Müller with the third overall pick. But the offense never really lived up to those expectations. Despite reliably outshooting opponents, they scored the fewest goals of any PWHL team, and the power play was the league’s worst. The Fleet made for a good reminder that hockey is weird and random, and life is meaningless.
But the randomness of hockey looked favorably upon Boston in the postseason, which the Fleet began with the world’s closest series sweep of Montreal, all three of those games won in OT. Goaltender Aerin Frankel played out of her mind, keeping the Fleet alive through all those Montreal overtime periods—141 saves total!—and again in the elimination Game 4 of the Walter Cup Final, where she stopped 33 Minnesota shots to force a Game 5. Her teammates should frankly buy her a car or house. Head coach Courtney Kessel dubbed her “the Green Monster.” Very cute.
Naturally, the Fleet opted to take a forward in the first round of the draft: Hannah Bilka out of Ohio State. Bilka hails from Texas, not something you see often in women’s hockey. She’s a smooth, creative skater who should be able to draw some more offense out of her Fleet teammates, perhaps even captain Hilary Knight, who took a while to get going on offense last season. If their league-worst shooting percentage ticks up a bit, the Fleet have everything else they need to make another run to the final. I’d recommend they win now, before their big minute-eating defender Megan Keller returns home to join the Detroit PWHL expansion team in a few years.
Montreal Victoire
Record last season: 10-3-5-6
While Montreal's rivals in Toronto were suffering the indignity of a first-round reverse sweep, the Victoire were suffering an indignity of their own: an all-overtime regular sweep at the hands of Boston. It was maybe the first time in captain Marie-Philip Poulin’s life that she had not been responsible for the clutch bounce. In a single series, she paid a career’s worth of debt to the hockey gods. Poulin’s penchant for heroics certainly explains Victoire head coach Kori Cheverie’s faith in her, but the top-heavy roster seemed to strain under the ice-time demands of the playoffs, where Poulin averaged more than 35 minutes a game. Unlike Boston’s, the Victoire's bottom six didn’t do much scoring in the series, so it really was all up to the stars.
No, she may not be the best hockey player in her own marriage, but Laura Stacey (who’s gay, Marcus) put together an impressive season in Montreal. She’s the type of player who draws your eye in either zone: determined on the forecheck, hard to muscle off a puck, always ready to shoot. She scored 10 goals in 23 games, but even the shots that didn’t go in always seemed to effect scrambles and chaos. It wasn't ideal that the Victoire had so many injuries and so little depth, but Stacey never seemed to mind.
Unfortunately, Montreal’s second season is shaping up the same way. GM Daniele Sauvageau added some more depth in the draft and free agency, but at training camp, she confirmed that a few forwards will miss the start of the season with injuries. First-rounder Cayla Barnes, a defender drafted from Ohio State, also collided with her future teammate Poulin in a Canada-U.S. Rivalry Series game earlier this month. Poulin seems fine, but Barnes missed the preseason with a lower-body injury. When she’s healthy, Barnes can take some work off PWHL Defender of the Year Erin Ambrose's plate. Her Team USA coaches trust her with serious minutes in big international games, and she’s a complete enough defender that she can complement any partner.
Toronto Sceptres
Record last season: 13-4-0-7
The Toronto Sceptres scored more goals than any other team in the 2024 regular season, and 34-year-old league MVP Natalie Spooner accounted for more than a quarter of them. (She led the league with 20 goals in 24 games; the next-best scorers were tied at 11.) Spooner made her name streaking down the wing, though “speed demon” almost undersells her game now. You’ll still see her drive to the net a lot, but just as often as she’s in pure maniac mode, Spooner is cleaning up rebounds and redirecting pucks in front of the net. She made a shining example of mom strength, stacking the MVP season atop an already prolific Team Canada season in the first year after she gave birth to her son. So it really sucked when she tore her ACL in the first round of the playoffs against Minnesota in May. The Sceptres led the best-of-five series 2-0 before Spooner went down. No surprise: Without their superstar driving play, the offense stalled out and the Sceptres scored one total goal in the next three games, all Ls. Finally, they were a true Toronto hockey team.
General manager Gina Kingsbury didn’t have a timeline for Spooner’s return when training camp started earlier this month, only saying that the MVP wouldn’t be ready for the start of the season. There’s no replacing the league’s best player, but while they wait for Spooner, what the Sceptres might be able to do is—say it with me—recreate her, recreate her in the aggregate. They began that project by signing skilled free-agent forward Daryl Watts, who led Ottawa with 10 goals last season. And the young, still-developing talent already on the roster makes this a deep forward group with a high ceiling: Emma Maltais is small but pesky; Jesse Compher offered some rare bursts of energy in that last grim playoff game against Minnesota. The Sceptres also used their first-round pick to draft a mini Spooner—a little spoon! A dessert spoon, if you will. Rookie Julia Gosling, technically an inch taller than Spooner, is very much a player in the same mold, a fast-skating 5-foot-11 wing keen to shoot.
FAQ
What are the rules?
For the most part, they’re rules you know if you follow hockey at the college, international, or NHL level: Score a “goal” by putting a “puck” into the “net.” But the PWHL rulebook departs from the NCAA, IIHF, and NHL rulebooks in some significant ways.
The big one is the jailbreak. In other competition, if a player takes a minor penalty, she can only leave the box when the penalty expires or when the other team scores on the power play. PWHL penalty killers have a third option: They can break their penalized teammate out, and end a power play early, by scoring short-handed. This led to some sweet teammate moments last season. Suddenly, every penalty kill has personal stakes:
To boost offense this year, the PWHL is introducing what it’s called the "No Escape Rule." When the league circulated the updated rulebook, it likened this new rule to the rules around icing, which I thought was helpful, so I’ll use that comparison too. Standard hockey rules say that players on a team that iced the puck all have to stay on the ice for the next faceoff. The No Escape Rule takes that approach to penalties, also, so the players who were on the ice when their team took a penalty have to stay on the ice for the power play faceoff. Ideally, your team wins the faceoff and you can make a quick change to get your PK unit on, but there is also a hell scenario, where you have to defend a long delayed penalty and then have to stay on the ice for the faceoff and then your team loses that and then you are trying to kill a penalty with three forwards and one defender and you have no legs anymore and are dead.
Let's see ... what else? In a shootout, a team can send the same player to take any or all attempts. An illegal check to the head is five-and-a-game by default. (Those penalties will automatically be reviewed and can then be confirmed, reduced, or rescinded.) As for the standings: The point system is 3-2-1, so three points for a regulation win, two points for a shootout or OT win, one point for a shootout or OT loss, and none for a loss in regulation. The top-seeded team in the four-team PWHL playoffs is allowed to choose which opponent it would like to play in the best-of-five semifinals.
What’s the deal with the schedule?
PWHL teams play a 30-game schedule this year from Nov. 30 to May 3.
How does the PWHL Draft work?
The Gold Plan has been talked about in NHL reformer circles as an anti-tanking measure for a while. As Adam Gold put it in his 2012 Sloan paper, “the injustice of incentives for losing must be eradicated,” and the PWHL agreed. Basically, once a team is eliminated from playoff contention, any subsequent points they earn become “gold points,” and whichever team has the most gold points gets to draft first overall. I don’t really know how necessary it is in a league where four of six teams make the playoffs—and on principle, I don’t love making current players “win” their replacements—but at least it's a way to keep every team playing for something.
Where can I watch PWHL games, and which games should I watch?
That depends. Do you live in the U.S. or in Canada?
I don't live anywhere! I'm a disembodied voice you made up to explain stuff.
Fair enough. Last year, the league streamed every game on YouTube, which was super convenient. I usually used my smart TV’s YouTube app, but I've heard the YouTube live chat was civil and pretty lively. Fans in the U.S. or other non-Canada countries can still watch any game on YouTube this season. Fleet games will also air on NESN, and Sirens games on MSG. (No word yet on a local broadcast partner for Frost games.) This year, Canadian viewers won’t have the YouTube option, and games not nationally broadcast on CBC or TSN will be streaming on Prime Video.
Of the regular PWHL play-by-play broadcasters, Cheryl Pounder is reliably the best, but I also enjoyed Daniella Ponticelli on the call last year. If you’re a new fan looking for a good “League Pass team,” try Montreal. The talent-loaded Victoire draw fun home crowds, and their roster probably still has another offensive gear in them.
What about watching the games in person?
Sure, you can also do that. If you don’t live near a PWHL team, take a look at the slate of neutral-site games; there are nine this year in a bunch of places. Some friends accompanied me to a game in Detroit last season. We paid something like $25 each and had a nice time. Plus, they gave out rally towels.
Is there some kind of colorful 7,000-word post about the PWHL’s collective bargaining agreement, and the pressures women athletes face when they try to remake their workplaces, for which you spoke with dozens of players and union leaders and even traveled to Utica?
No.
Darn.
