The PWHL will add a ninth team in Detroit that will begin play next season, the league announced on Wednesday.
It’s the third expansion team the league has added since it began play in 2024, as the PWHL targets growth in the U.S. and a coveted major American broadcast rights deal.
Detroit has hosted four PWHL games over three seasons, drawing a high of 15,938 at a game between the Montréal Victoire and New York Sirens in March.
Jayna Hefford, the league’s executive vice president of hockey operations, pointed to the long history of hockey in the state of Michigan, which has produced PWHL stars like Megan Keller and Abby Roque, as one reason the league selected Detroit.
“We have now played four games here,” Hefford said in an interview with CBC Sports. “The excitement, the energy, the passion — fans have continued to show up. In the first year, there were signs that said they want a team. In the second and third year, there were signs that said they deserved a team. I think they’re absolutely right.”
The bid to expand to Detroit was led by Ilitch Sports + Entertainment, the company that owns the NHL’s Detroit Red Wings and MLB’s Detroit Tigers, and operates Little Caesars Arena. Detroit will play its home games at Little Caesars Arena and will practice at BELFOR Training Center in the same complex.
Even though the Ilitch family led the bid, the Detroit team will be owned by The Walter Group, which owns and operates all nine PWHL teams under a single-entity structure.
“Bringing a PWHL team to Little Caesars Arena is an exciting next step for our city and for the continued momentum of women’s hockey,” Chris Ilitch, president and CEO of the Ilitch Companies, said in a statement. “This moment also reflects our broader vision of using sports as a catalyst for Detroit’s continued revitalization — strengthening community engagement, supporting economic growth, and contributing to the city’s long-term development.”
Amy Scheer, the PWHL’s executive vice president of business operations, has said facilities are the number-one factor the league considers when deciding which markets receive expansion teams. In Detroit, the team will have its own dedicated space for players and staff on game days and during practices.
Location was also a factor. The expansion to Detroit adds another PWHL team in the midwestern United States, which could make travel easier for the league’s teams, which fly commercially.
Little Caesars Arena is home to the Red Wings, the NBA’s Detroit Pistons, a WNBA team expected to begin play in 2029, plus concerts, but Scheer is confident there’s space for the PWHL.
“[Ilitch Sports has] been nothing but passionate and positive about the PWHL and what we’re doing, and ensuring that we’ve got game dates that will help us be successful is part of that,” Scheer said in an interview. “We’re confident when we move into next season, whether they’re standalone dates, whether they’re dates that we share with the Red Wings, that we’ll be given priority when they look at dates to provide us with help with our schedule.”
Detroit will be the fourth PWHL team to play the majority of its home games at an NHL arena, joining Seattle, New York and Minnesota.
The team’s colours will be black, silver and white with a red accent, a nod to the Red Wings’ long history in the city. The colours are “intended to evoke Detroit’s innovative and industrial spirit, matched with the resilient identity of Metro Detroiters.” A team name and logo will be announced later.
Detroit will also host the PWHL Awards on June 16 and the PWHL Draft on June 17, the league announced on Wednesday. The Vancouver Goldeneyes will pick first overall after winning the league’s Gold Plan race.
Detroit is one of as many as four markets expected to be added to the PWHL ahead of next season.
Each expansion team costs more money, but it’s part of a long-term growth strategy for The Walter Group.
“For the market, for sponsors, for media, an eight-team league isn’t that exciting, that enticing,” PWHL advisory board member Stan Kasten told CBC Sports in April. “We need to have a bigger footprint to get the kind of deals we need to make this pay off for our players. And so if we know where we’re going, let’s not waste time getting there.”
The league added teams in Vancouver and Seattle this past season. Neither team made the playoffs in the first season, but both were successful off the ice.
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Vancouver averaged 11,232 fans over 13 games at Pacific Coliseum, while Seattle averaged 12,561 fans at Climate Pledge Arena.
Scheer said the plan is still to add between two and four expansion teams, though the clock is ticking for the other announcements.
“We’re still working through multiple cities,” she said.
The league hasn’t yet announced how PWHL Detroit will build its roster or where the team will pick in the upcoming six-round entry draft.
As of now, the league isn’t planning on holding an expansion draft this season, like it did last year when Vancouver and Seattle were added to the league.
A document the PWHL Players Association sent to players a few days ago describes a complex multi-phase process beginning with existing teams protecting a total of three players in the first phase. That includes players on existing contracts or players on expiring contracts who are re-signed.
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The document, which was obtained by CBC Sports and first reported on by The Hockey News and The Athletic, assumes four expansion teams, and is subject to change as the league finalizes its expansion plans.
It’s the result of months of negotiations between the players association and the league to come up with a solution on how to build out new teams, with a significant portion of existing players on expiring contracts.
Any player not protected or signed as part of phase one could be signed by an expansion team in phase two, with expansion teams able to sign five players in phase two, the document says.
“There’s a lot of assumptions built into that…we are not certain yet what this looks like,” Hefford said.
“But what I can say is that it’s been a long process working alongside the [players association]. This is a really complex thing to try to figure out how to disperse players in a way that achieves our two key priorities. One is competitive balance across the league, and the second one is ensuring the player experience and that they have a say in the process of how that works.”
