On April 23, 2025, the PWHL announced their first official expansion team — the Vancouver Goldeneyes. This very team played in their first-ever game in front of 14,958 fans [https://thehockeynews.com/womens/pwhl/dreams-to-reality-vancouver-goldeneyes-home-opener-a-beacon-for-young-hockey-players] on Friday, November 21, 213 days after their expansion was announced. It’s impressive how quickly both the Goldeneyes and their expansion sister, the Seattle Torrent, were able to get things up and running; but in a league that’s growing so rapidly, this type of turnover is almost mandatory for expansion teams. “There’s always things that you do differently,” PWHL Senior Vice President of Business Operations, Amy Scheer, said ahead of the Goldeneyes’ historic home-opener [https://thehockeynews.com/womens/pwhl/vancouver-goldeneyes-defeat-seattle-torrent-4-3-in-ot-on-historic-opening-night]. “The timing makes it tough, in the sense of like, we have to do all of our due diligence. You have to pick the right city for the right reasons, and by the time you do that, you need to hire staff. Making sure you have the right staff in place takes a good amount of time, and certainly that’s not the process that you want to rush.” While it’s a difficult task to take on, the PWHL has tackled it well with their first two expansion teams. “In a perfect world, we would love to have team staff in place sooner, to give us more bandwidth and more time as a ramp-up, versus four months,” she added. “It’d be nice to have six, seven months. But, on the other side of showing that we can do it, and we’ve pulled rabbits out of our hat before, and I think we’ll do it again. I think if ever we have the luxury of time, that would be the one thing I’d love to change.” With 16 Takeover Tour games on the docket for the 2025–26 PWHL season, expansion is still on the mind of many. Five teams [https://thehockeynews.com/womens/pwhl/are-the-dual-date-markets-on-the-pwhl-takeover-tour-the-league-s-expansion-front-runners] have two Takeover Tour matches scheduled — Detroit, Denver, Edmonton, Chicago, and Halifax. The results of the 2024–25 Takeover Tour heavily impacted the two expansion markets to come out of it. Having these five cities host the tour twice indicates the league may be eyeing them for expansion. “It’s less about time zones versus making sure that we’re in the right market,” Scheer explained, referencing the logistics behind expansion. “Vancouver and Seattle, they’ve provided a level of what expectations could and should be, and so versus time zones, it’s more important to make sure that we’re measuring the markets with the right metrics and picking them for the right reasons.” While it’s been confirmed that anywhere from 2–4 teams will join [https://thehockeynews.com/womens/pwhl/pwhl-confirms-league-will-expand-by-2-4-teams-following-this-season] the PWHL for the 2026–27 season, Scheer insists that the league will make their decisions when they’re ready. “One thing that we don’t like to do at the league and with the PWHL is to put artificial timelines on ourselves. It’s more important to do the work. It’s more important to find the right answers and make the right decisions than to put ourselves on a timeline. When we feel we’ve got the cities in place, and we are at the point where we have agreements in place, we’ll make the announcement, but there’s no reason to put an artificial deadline on us.” Whether it’s Denver, Detroit, or another Canadian city, one thing is certain — more expansion teams are coming to the PWHL. It’s only a matter of time.
