With the need to add 100 players to the PWHL's league roster, a pause to future expansion set to begin, and the fact a gutted 2027 PWHL Draft could be looming, the 2026 PWHL Draft will be crucial not only for the league, but for the future success of all 12 teams.
The 2026 PWHL Draft will be crucial for the league. It will also be crucial for the individual teams in the PWHL now, and into the future.
With the league requiring roughly 100 new players this season to satisfy four new teams and attrition through retirement, the draft, which will bring 72 players into the mix, will be paramount.
For the league's existing eight teams, the Draft will be their primary opportunity to recoup expansion losses. Seattle and New York, two of the bottom three teams in the league last season, have suffered heavy losses already. Most teams have.
While the opening round and a half of the PWHL Draft will offer immediate impact replacements, the rest of the draft will be like any other with a mix of depth, possible upside, and the hunt for hidden gems.
But the 2026 PWHL Draft is more important than just refilling the league's cup. The importance is elevated due to the diffusion of talent from eight to 12 teams. The opening round of the PWHL Draft features a plethora of talent including defenders like Carolina Harvey, Nelli Laitinen, Emma Peschel, Sophie Morrow, and the versatile Laila Edwards who can play any position. Up front there's Edwards, Abbey Murphy, Tessa Janecke, Kirsten Simms, Lacey Eden, Issy Wunder, Petra Nieminen, Viivi Vainikka, and Elisa Holopainen, among others.
There is an influx of talent coming, but it's enough for two teams at the calibre the league saw on-ice last season, not four.
It makes the importance of teams scouting well, drafting well, and developing well all the more vital.
That importance is magnified again when you consider the PWHL has vowed the league will pause expansion for multiple seasons. Whether that's two, three, or longer, is unknown. But it means the players selected this year, for for the first time since the inaugural 2023 PWHL Draft, will have the opportunity to spend more than one season with a team.
Five of six first round picks from 2024 moved in last year's expansion process, with Sarah Fillier the lone exception as a protected player in New York. Three first round picks from 2025 have already moved again this year. The 2026 draftees, however, will at least have the opportunity to play out their two years of restricted free agency with a single team. They'll have the opportunity to learn the league and develop, without also having to manage moving across North America, learning new systems and teammates, and managing the stress of the unknown each offseason.
But it also means that if a team botches this draft, they could be setting a course for failure for the longer term. Last season, draft classes in markets like Seattle and Toronto did not turn out for those teams, while perennially well scouted and drafted teams like Ottawa and New York found immediate impact.
But the importance of the 2026 Draft doesn't stop there.
Due to the NCAA's decision to extend a fifth year of collegiate eligibility to players, the status of the 2027 PWHL Draft is unknown. Originally, 2027 was set to welcome players like Joy Dunne, Eve Gascon, Ava McNaughton, Jocelyn Amos, Emma Pais, Cassie Hall, Laney Potter, Kahlen Lamarche, Ava Murphy, and Kelly Gorbatenko, among others to the mix, but now there's no guarantee any of those players declare for the 2027 PWHL Draft. They could all choose to exhaust their NCAA eligibility, stripping the 2027 Draft to the bones. There will be some who declare, and there will be another group of Europeans who come to the league, but the 2027 Draft will be unpredictable, and almost certainly shallow.
That fact again turns the focus to the 2026 Draft, and just how crucial it is for teams to get it right.
It's a fact not helped by the PWHL's own shortcomings in failing to provide teams with adequate information only days ahead of the draft, nor time to prepare. As of six days prior to the draft, teams had no idea what the order of selection, nor format of the draft would be.
Only the inaugural 2023 PWHL Draft had equal importance to 2026. And after two rounds of expansion, only one player from the first round in 2023, first overall pick Taylor Heise, remains on the same team that selected her. The same can be said for round two where only New York Sirens defender Jaime Bourbonnais remains with her original team.
The 2026 PWHL Draft is the league's mechanism for a rapid four-team expansion, the main avenue for teams to rebuild what they've lost for a second straight season, and it's the best chance teams will have to guarantee they lock in young talent given the uncertainty around the 2027 class.
When the Vancouver Goldeneyes, the only team in the draft who knows where they'll pick, step to the podium for the first overall pick, it will be a paramount moment for the league, and each of the PWHL's now 12 teams, now, and for the future.