The PWHL will develop to eight groups subsequent season by including Seattle as its second new franchise alongside Vancouver, B.C., and The Related Press has realized that plans are already within the works so as to add two extra in a yr’s time.
Seattle’s addition, introduced Wednesday, provides the PWHL a powerful foothold within the Pacific Northwest and comes per week after the disclosing of the brand new workforce in Vancouver for the 2025-26 season. The westward transfer broadens the league’s attain throughout the continent in two markets with a historical past supporting girls’s sports activities and separated by only a three-hour drive.
“Of course the geography makes a ton of sense and I think we have a built-in rivalry here that will just naturally happen,” government vice chairman of enterprise operations Amy Scheer informed the AP.
“But most importantly is they met all the criteria in terms of what we were looking for,” she added. “There’s just a ton of business reasons to do it. And those are the only things we’re focused on.”
The 2-team growth for Season 3 is just the start for a league that launched in January 2024 with 5 Jap franchises — Boston, New York, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto — and one in St. Paul, Minnesota.
The PWHL plans to develop to 10 groups for its 2026-27 season, an individual with data of discussions informed the AP on the situation of anonymity as a result of the talks are personal. The particular person mentioned the league is accelerating its plans primarily based on the energy of responses and suggestions obtained throughout its eight-month growth search through which the PWHL thought of greater than 20 markets.
Scheer didn’t fully dispute the plan, with out offering a precise timetable.
“I think we’ve been pretty clear from the outset that this is the first year of a multi-year process,” Scheer mentioned because the PWHL closes the ultimate week of the common season. “It could come in Year 4. It could come Year 5. I think that those conversations are still being had.”
Impartial web site stops this previous season in Denver, Detroit, Quebec Metropolis and Edmonton every topped 14,000 followers.
The brand new workforce will initially go by PWHL Seattle and its colours shall be emerald inexperienced and cream. The workforce will play out of the NHL Kraken’s Local weather Pledge Enviornment and follow on the Kraken Neighborhood Iceplex. Vancouver additionally has not introduced a nickname but.
Although all PWHL groups are centrally managed by the league, Seattle’s growth bid was led by the Kraken and the Oak View Group, which developed and operates Local weather Pledge Enviornment.
Oak View has longtime ties to girls’s hockey, and expressed curiosity in touchdown an unique six franchise when the league was established in June 2023 by Los Angeles Dodgers proprietor Mark Walter, his spouse Kimbra, and tennis icon Billie Jean King.
Seattle encompasses a rising youth hockey program, is dwelling to the WNBA’s Storm and NWSL’s Reign, and beforehand proven assist for ladies’s hockey. In November 2022, Seattle drew a U.S.-Canada Rivalry Sequence file crowd of 14,551. In January, the PWHL drew a crowd of 12,608 in kicking off its nine-game Takeover Tour of impartial web site video games in Seattle.
Boston Fleet captain and four-time U.S. Olympian Hilary Knight was a proponent of Seattle within the weeks forward of her workforce’s Takeover Tour recreation towards Montreal.
“I have yet to experience another crowd like that,” Knight mentioned of the Rivalry Sequence recreation. “Seattle holds a special place in my mind, and that’s why I’m super excited to be able to share that experience with other teammates, whether it’s on the Fleet or on the Montreal team.”
The PWHL plans to announce the date of an growth draft and the way Vancouver and Seattle shall be built-in into its entry draft on June 24 at a later time.
“Seattle is an incredible sports city and we’ve seen firsthand the passion for the women’s game,” mentioned Kraken proprietor Samantha Holloway. “We’re also proud to grow the game of hockey … and together we’ll continue to inspire the next generation of hockey players and fans alike.”
Within the greater image, the PWHL’s accelerated growth plans coincide with wealth of faculty expertise anticipated to enter the league over the subsequent two years. The league’s development can be anticipated to lure extra Europeans to North America.
“Upon launch, you’ve got six teams and maybe if you’re not North American, you don’t know really what to expect,” PWHL government vice chairman of hockey operations Jayna Hefford mentioned. “Now I think these players are seeing that this league is here, it’s thriving, it’s growing, and they are going to want to be a part of it.”
In overseeing the growth search, Scheer was impressed by the response.
“I feel more encouraged than ever about what our business looks like and what our business can be,” she mentioned. “As we look to expand and move beyond Year 3, we’ll have plenty of suitors along the way as we look to grow.”
