The Seattle Torrent’s inaugural season came to a close and left the team at the bottom of the standings also just missing out on the first overall draft pick. With a lot of in-depth reflection to come over the summer, head coach Steve O’Rourke and General Manager Meghan Turner attended the media scrum for the 2025-26 season for initial reactions to the season.

“The players love it here. I’ve said it probably a million times at this point, so I sound like a broken record. They love being out in the community. They love all the community events that the staff has coordinated. We’ve had so much engagement from different organizations here and people throughout Seattle and the state and, honestly, the entire west coast,” said Turner. “It’s been a pretty cool experience for them. That’s certainly a selling point for me for players who want to come here. You can be a star here in Seattle, and that’s proven true. It’s not just clout or anything like that, but the stars in the community and provide the impact that they want to provide wherever that might be.”

With the team finishing as they did, there were clearly aspects of the systems that just weren’t working as intended. The head coach and the general manager have to look at those areas and make changes.

“The shortcomings. It's very clear our defending is somewhere that we have to get much better on. That’s going to be the biggest for me to deep dive,” said O’Rourke. “The offensive side, I like how we kept generating and improving as year and on, but on that defending side just checks against, shots against. Everything in defense is where it starts, and then you can layer in the offense layer and power play in those moments, but defending it's where it has to start, and that's what we're going to dig into mostly.”

“There's a million different things you can point to. I don't think that's super productive to look back and look at seeing things you can’t control. We have to find ways to make it happen, regardless of our situation. We could have done a better job with that this year,” Turner said. “A lot of credit to the players and how they adapted and stuck together throughout this year. They were flexible coming in. They knew some of them chose to be here. Some of them didn't. But they all showed up with the same energy and enthusiasm to make a splash in the community and on the ice. We have to be able to commit to them moving forward.”

No one can deny the fact that the Torrent fans hit the ground running and embraced this team wholeheartedly. From the sold-out home opener to the sold out home closer, the electricity and excitement never waned even when the team was out of the playoffs.

“Look at our home opener and all the records that we've broken. I think it was first to 150 fans this year. You see our social media following is through the roof. There's so many wins, and I think the season we just kept winning in that regard. As far as the fan base goes and the community impact there's just a lot of success there,” Turner said. “Definitely don't want where we landed in the standings to take away from any of the success of growing this game in Seattle and around the state and around the region.”

“The first thing that I talked about is that before you can win, you have to care. And that's who we have- a room of people that care for each other. It's just going to grow, and that caring in our roster gets shaped,” said O’Rourke. “We'll start to win, but it starts there and these players that care for each other, they built from day one day. That starts really with Hillary [Knight], the inclusion that she is as a person. She's so welcoming and generous.”

A down year in the standings doesn’t necessarily mean all players had a down season. Success shows up in so many different ways. Both O’Rourke and Turner mentioned players that had different journeys but would maybe look back at this season with a positive light for their personal games.

“I can't say enough good things about T [Theresa Schafzahl]. She's amazing. I'm pretty sure you all saw it,” said Turner. “She shows up every game playing the same way and we needed some of that reliability. Just to be able to east to west across the ice to make sure that puck stays in the offensive zone. It was the little plays and detailed habits. Also, she was eight [points] in 10 games, so she produced for us as well, and that's what we were looking for from her.”

“People like Natalie Snodgrass is one that really jumps out to me. We had a conversation that she wasn't sure if she wanted to play anymore, and she came here saying, ‘I'm gonna go one more time,’” O’Rourke said. “I think if you ask her, I think she's had a really good experience. If this is her last season, I think she's going to finish where she's really in a happy, good space. If she carries on, she's in a good space.”

The expansion teams had a lot of conversations around the identity of their respective teams. As the season went on, it appeared that pieces were clicking into place and consistencies were becoming more recognizable.

“I don't know if we ever got to the level of physical play that we wanted to, and that's that defending side of it,” said O’Rourke. “We weren't hard enough, and it's something we worked on and on a constant basis of drills around the net, boxing out, forwards, defense, making sure, a word we use is ‘just getting skin’ when we bump people- make sure we’re bumping. That’s an element that still takes time. In this game, checking has just come in. That’s the part of the game that’s really growing. That’s the part of the game that’s really fun for the fans is seeing this physical play, because the physical play leads to fast play. The identity- we gotta continue to push into that.”

“For me, and as an organization, you want to set an identity. I said ‘work hard, have fun,’ and they had fun this year. The fans had a ton of fun,” Turner said. “Winning is fun obviously, but I think we set an identity that is not something where you're not not focusing on what you need to improve, but it's taking some of the positive spin and not always getting down on yourselves because that tends to lead to deep, dark holes, negativity, and things like that. We try to set that example on staff too around the rink in the hard moments. After the game, to start, it's usually a little bit quiet, but next day, it's get yourself up, and let's go to work.”

Of course, with expansion looming, the reality is that not all the Seattle Torrent players will return to the team next season. Just twelve hours after the final game of the season, the general manager, understandably, didn’t have much to share on who might stay or go.

“You'll hear more in the coming weeks from the league. I'll let them speak to that. We have a lot of really good players on this team, and I'd like to keep a lot of them here,” said Turner. “They’ve done a ton of great work in the community. They clearly showed up on the ice so I can't give you specifics at this time, just to be transparent there, but we'll take a look at how the expansion rules go that's gonna drive a lot of our decision making and discussions.”

The off-season will go quickly, though. That means the draft is something that is also top-of-mind for the PWHL organizations, and especially for the general managers.

“As far as the draft goes, we'll kind of find out where exactly we land. Obviously, we know we didn't get number one, but you manage with the situation that you’re dealt,” said Turner. “It's a great draft class coming in. There’s a lot of good hockey players in that class. A lot of them would fit really well into this organization. We'll take a look at those players, meet with them, make sure culturally they fit here and that they fit the identity that we're trying to build and the motivation there. And then, expansion, we'll see how that shapes out. We'll have to adjust as well again.”