Vancouver is officially home to a PWHL team. On Wednesday, April 23, the PWHL announced that they will be expanding their league to eight teams, one of which will reside in BC. This unnamed team will join the Montréal Victoire, Toronto Sceptres, Minnesota Frost, Ottawa Charge, New York Sirens, and Boston Fleet as a member of the PWHL. Amy Scheer, the PWHL’s Senior Vice President of Business Operations, confirmed that the team will be playing their games out of the Pacific Coliseum.
“I think it was a pretty easy decision,” Scheer said of Vancouver becoming the PWHL’s first expansion team. “We talked all about the last couple months how we had certain criteria that the markets had to meet, and Vancouver really met all of them, whether it was infrastructure, size of the market, fan engagement, they just checked off every box. And so it seemed an easy and perfect fit for us to come here.”
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While talk of a Vancouver PWHL team has been popular among fans, last Thursday, it skyrocketed. It was announced that the City of Vancouver and other representatives would be holding a “major” press conference the following Wednesday, which Patrick Johnston of The Province later confirmed was related to PWHL expansion. Since then, fans have eagerly awaited the news of Vancouver’s next professional sports team.
“This is an exciting moment. It marks the start of something bigger than just hockey,” women’s hockey icon Tessa Bonhomme said on Wednesday. “It’s still creating a new chapter in professional women’s sports, not just hockey specific. It’s inspiring the next generation to continue playing, to drive for something, building a team in this city that reflects the heart, the resilience and the pride. I think that’s going to be the most important and fun part here for all of you and for all of these young ladies as well.”
The last time the city of Vancouver witnessed PWHL hockey first hand was on January 8, 2025, when the Takeover Tour made a stop at Rogers Arena. 19,038 fans packed the stands to watch the Victoire take on the Sceptres, with Montréal winning 4–2. Despite neither team technically being the “home team,” clearly, the atmosphere was powerful enough for players to feel like they had the advantage.
“It’s really special,” Victoire forward Jennifer Gardiner said that night. Gardiner, who spent five seasons with Ohio State University’s women’s team before joining Montréal, is from Surrey.
“The future of women’s sports is so bright,” she added. “It’s so cool to see how many females are supporting the entire league overall. Just the entirety of North America has been so supportive. To get to do it in Vancouver goes to show how many fans are out on the west coast, and hopefully one day the league can expand out here as well.”
“I think we set a great impression and hopefully gave [fans] something to look forward to in the future,” Sceptres defender Rylind MacKinnon said. Like Gardiner, MacKinnon is from BC, though the Sceptres player spent six seasons with her home province’s UBC Thunderbirds.
Now that Vancouver has been confirmed to have a PWHL club, the next steps for the organization are to build said team. Searches for a General Manager, team name, and players will now begin. The team will take shape through an expansion draft as well as the 2025 PWHL Draft class, which showcases Canadian names such as Nicole Gosling, Anne Cherkowski, and Kendall Cooper. PWHL Senior Vice President of Hockey Operations, Jayna Hefford, noted that more details regarding the expansion draft will be available “in the coming weeks.”
To accommodate travel for the predominantly Eastern league, the 2025–26 PWHL season will feature more Takeover Tour stops — though the dates, locations, and number of stops have yet to be determined. “We felt that we could make the travel more palatable by the number of the Takeover Tour games that we have, and also with Minnesota,” Scheer said. “Not that every road trip for a team going east or west will stop somewhere in between, but we think we can have a series of trips that a Takeover Tour game will be a stopover, either coming out or going back. And so we feel that we can make the travel palatable for the players.”
With Vancouver’s expansion now official, fans’ attention turns to the second expansion team. Many have speculated that Seattle will be the next city unveiled, as an error with the PWHL’s merchandise website showed an option for the aforementioned city. The second PWHL expansion announcement currently has no set date.
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