What Will A Twelve-Team PWHL Look Like?

With expansion announced in three cities and one more to come, the PWHL will look vastly different in 2026-27. Not only will there be more fan bases, more viewers and players and a growing awareness of women’s hockey, there will be some changes to the shape of the competition itself.

First, when the player dispersal process gets underway, there will be some pain for existing fans, just as there was last year when superstars left and took on new roles with Seattle and Vancouver. This time around, there will be a lot of upheaval and more top players moving to lead the new franchises.

Which superstars are likely to join the new teams? That will depend first on which players are protected by the existing eight teams, which we can speculate will leave some top names on the board: Kendall Coyne Schofield? Alex Carpenter? Brianne Jenner? Alina Müller? Ella Shelton, Tereza Vanisova, Grace Zumwinkle, Kayle Osborne, Susanna Tapani, Emma Maltais, Erin Ambrose, Kali Flanagan, Julia Gosling, Rebecca Leslie, and more will definitely be prime targets for the new franchises.

Those departures means the amount of top talent on all teams will be a notch below what it was this season. But the incoming draft class will help bolster that. Caroline Harvey (likely to be taken #1 by Vancouver), Abbey Murphy, Laila Edwards, and others will give an influx of skill and speed that won’t be matched in coming draft years, so the stretch to 12 teams at this point makes sense. 

All 12 teams will gain at least one star player from the draft and probably two or three others to offset any outgoing talent. Expect all teams to have a solid top two lines/top defense pairings because of this, and then for free agency to spread out the remaining talent. 

Will the overall scoring decrease because of the high-quality goaltending in the PWHL? Possibly. There are only a small number of forwards who can truly score regularly, and after that, it has to be done by committee. Aerin Frankel, Gwyneth Philips, Ann-Renée Desbiens and others are still going to backstop their teams, and diluting the offense might mean tighter, low-scoring battles.

Then again, with defenders also spread out, those netminders might be in for a rough ride. Are there enough top goalies for each team to have a true #1? Think of Elaine Chuli, Hannah Murphy, Nicole Hensley, and Kristen Campbell as possibilities to take on that position, plus Andrea Brändli, who is sure to be drafted and become a solid starter, as well as Tia Chan and Hailey MacLeod from the draft.

As far as the structure of the season, some have speculated that there might be two conferences, east and west, or three divisions of four teams - an eastern division, midwest, and west.

This would allow for easier travel but would probably mean an unbalanced schedule where some might have easier or more difficult opponents. It’s impossible to predict going into the season whether that would upset the competitive balance, but points could be harder to come by if you find yourself in a division with, for example, Montreal and Ottawa, rather than out west with Seattle and Vancouver.

However, all bets are off with the re-shuffling of rosters, and we learned not to make predictions based on how combinations look on paper with the way this year’s expansion teams finished.

The schedule will likely remain at 30 games for now as the league irons out dates in new arenas and a more complicated travel itinerary overall. Takeover Tour games should still be in the mix as well as the PWHL continues outreach across the continent.

The playoffs might include the top six teams, and a play-in round or a bye for the top two, with the other four teams playing a best-of-five series and then a semi-final after that. This would provide an extra round of playoff games and more competition for the fans to dig into after the regular season is finished. 

What will your team look like when next year begins? Picture losing four important players, much like this past season, and also a turnover of free agents where another one or two might leave. But some very good rookies will take their places, and any holes in the lineup could be patched with free agents who could take on bigger roles. 

In order to complete the rosters of four new teams, it will take more than just the incoming draft class of approximately 40-50 PWHL-ready players. (Some intriguing names have joined the draft eligible list, like former Canadian Olympians Meghan Agosta and Laura Fortino). You might see some players who moved on to the SDHL or other leagues make their returns - think Chloe Aurard, Akane Shiga, Samantha Cogan, etc, along with others who didn’t make the PWHL straight out of their draft seasons.

At twelve teams, the overall competition will be more varied and some rivalries will no doubt be created. There will be some bumps in the road, but the path forward is clearer with the stability of holding at 12 teams for the near future. 

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