The Professional Women’s Hockey League will kick off its third season on Nov. 21, as the league officially grows from six teams to eight.
The two expansion teams, PWHL Vancouver and PWHL Seattle, will play for the first time that night at 10 p.m. ET inside Vancouver’s Pacific Coliseum, the first venue to have a PWHL team as its anchor tenant.
Earlier that night, at 7 p.m. ET, the reigning-champion Minnesota Frost will begin its quest for a third consecutive Walter Cup. The Frost will host the Toronto Sceptres, the team the Frost beat in the playoffs over the last two seasons.
They’re two of 120 games scheduled for the PWHL’s third season, up from 90 games last season and 72 before that. Each team will play 30 games, and all teams will battle head-to-head at least four times.
“Season three will be truly special with the highly anticipated debut of our first expansion teams in Seattle and Vancouver and the growth of the PWHL community to the west coast,” Jayna Hefford, the PWHL’s executive vice-president of hockey operations, said in a statement. “We can’t wait for puck drop to see the impact our new and returning players will make, and to deliver a competitive season with even more games for fans to enjoy.”
The league’s first weekend will feature all eight teams in action.
The Ottawa Charge will host the New York Sirens (7 p.m. ET) on Saturday, while the Montreal Victoire will open the season on the road against the Boston Fleet on Sunday (1 p.m. ET). The league hasn’t released details on its broadcast plans yet.
Also to come are more details on games hosted outside teams’ home venues. Last season, the league visited nine cities as part of its Takeover Tour, and it will continue that tour again this season.
That first Friday of the season will be the first look at the Vancouver and Seattle teams built from scratch through an expansion process this past spring.
Vancouver, meanwhile, boasts what looks to be the best blue line group in the league. They’re led by three defenders who won the Walter Cup last season with Minnesota: Sophie Jaques, Claire Thompson and Mellissa Channell-Watkins.
With some stars gone to Vancouver or Seattle, several existing teams across the league will look a bit different this season. Both Toronto and Montreal, for example, lost their top-three draft picks from 2024 during the expansion process.
But no team will look more different than the New York Sirens through a combination of expansion and two major draft-night trades. Gone are four of the team’s top-five scorers from last season, along with starting goaltender, Corinne Schroeder.
Now, the Sirens will be built around rookie of the year, Sarah Fillier, and top 2025 draft picks, Kristýna Kaltounková and Casey O’Brien, as the team looks to secure a playoff berth for the first time.
Earlier this summer, Daoust described the expansion draft process as “an opportunity to look at ourselves in the mirror and try to be honest.”
This will be the first PWHL season with an Olympic break in the middle, and with only a handful of Team Canada games on the schedule this year, the PWHL will be a major factor in who makes the Canadian Olympic team.
PWHL action will be paused from Dec. 8 to 15 for international training and competition, including two Canada-U.S. Rivalry Series games in Edmonton. It will pause again from Jan. 29 to Feb. 25 for the Olympics.
Women’s hockey at the Olympics will begin with preliminary-round play on Feb. 5. The gold medal game is set for Feb. 19.
