Three new coaches will step behind PWHL benches for the 2025-26 season. Two of those coaches are coming via expansion in Seattle and Vancouver, while the Boston Fleet also hired a new coach.
In Boston, the move was necessitated by Courtney Kessel, who served as Boston's coach in the first two seasons of the league, who chose to leave Boston and accept the head coaching position at Princeton University.
The hires - Brian Idalski (Vancouver), Steven O'Rourke (Seattle), and Kris Sparre (Boston) - come with varying degrees of experience. Only Idalski has significant head coaching experience, and only Idalski has ever coached women's hockey.
Each coach is inheriting a situation they didn't help plan to build. In Seattle and Vancouver, the task involves bringing together a brand new roster of players via expansion, but also comes with some of the biggest stars in the game in tow for both clubs. In Boston, the job involves taking over an established team that missed the playoffs last season and lost their captain Hilary Knight to Seattle.
It begs the question, which of the PWHL's three new coaches has the toughest job ahead?
It's Not Brian Idalski In Vancouver
Let's be honest, Brian Idalski is extremely experienced, well respected, and capable of doing this job. He could also put on an old VHS of The Might Ducks trilogy before every game, yell out the names of Sesame Street characters every time his team touches the puck, and take a second intermission power nap each night and still win 15 games. That's simply how good of a roster Cara Gardner Morey put together and handed over to Idalski. With the expectation of the "easy street" ahead, there's an element of pressure that comes with that should this team stumble at any point, but having the roster Idalski does, the experience he does, a general manager with decades of elite head coaching experience herself to bounce ideas off of, it's the best possible situation for a new coach entering this league.
O'Rourke Will Have Different Challenges
Much like Brian Idalski, Steven O'Rourke has the makings of a talented team on-ice. When you look at Seattle's roster, there could be a little concern regarding cohesion. O'Rourke has a lot of players who are confident, but haven't always fit into a team game as smoothly as others on board. He'll need to deal with that and get his team's chemistry sparking, and his top players on the same page. O'Rourke obviously struggled in some ways last year in his first head coaching job in over a decade as he was fired only 30 games in despite leading the Oshawa General to a top record. His special teams and team defence struggled, and communication with management obviously never got on the same page. Special teams shouldn't be an issue in Seattle, nor should defence, particularly given the shutdown nature of his blueline. O'Rourke has challenges ahead, but he also has a roster filled with talented veterans, who are now seasoned professionals. The toughest job ahead? It's not O'Rourke either.
Sparre Is Fighting An Uphill Battle In Boston
Kris Sparre is entering his first ever job as a head coach, and he's doing it with a team that was prepared for an uphill battle even before they lost their existing head coach. Sparre is taking over a team that missed the playoffs last season, and lost the league's co-leading scorer and team captain Hilary Knight in expansion. Add to that the loss of a second top line player in Hannah Bilka, Boston missing on a few key free agents, and several positional question marks, and Sparre has his work cut out for him. Danielle Marmer did a solid job bringing in a number of pros to bolster her lineup, but there's no sugar coating what Boston lost, and where their lineup sits compared to other teams. Getting Haley Winn in the draft was huge, but Sparre is going to need to squeeze a lot out of players who have not scored much in the past two seasons in order to get his team in the win column often. Otherwise he'll need Aerin Frankel at 100% every night. Even in net, Boston has no simple answer beyond Frankel, and an injury to their star goalie would be catastrophic. For an inexperienced head coach, there's a lot going on in Boston that Kris Sparre will need to have answered lined up for and ready to go. There's no new coach in the PWHL with a more challenging road ahead can Kris Sparre with the Boston Fleet.