PWHL Will Add Two Teams in Expansion Move

The Professional Women’s Hockey League will add two expansion teams, likely before the 2025–2026 season, bringing its total to eight, PWHL SVP of business operations Amy Scheer announced Tuesday.

The fledgling PWHL launched in 2023 with six franchises split evenly across the U.S. and Canada: Boston, Minnesota, New York, Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto. With both countries demonstrating they can support teams, the next question is: Where will the PWHL expand?

The league has not yet tipped its hand, but Detroit and Pittsburgh could be on the list. Both hosted barnstorming games last season, with the former registering an attendance of 13,736—a record for a pro women’s hockey game in the U.S. Pittsburgh also showed it can produce a crowd: Its 8,850 fans in attendance were the ninth-highest total across the league’s 72 regular-season games. 

The PWHL will have further opportunities to test out potential expansion cities, with Scheer telling a crowd at the espnW Summit the league will hold nine games this season at neutral sites. One of those will be Quebec City, which has an 18,259-seat arena with its Videotron Centre, but no NHL team. City councillor Jackie Smith is pushing for the PWHL to place a team there. The league has not announced the remaining neutral venues.

Regardless of where it chooses—other rumored candidates include Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Calgary—the league will have a lot of leeway with the decision. The PWHL owns all its teams, meaning there are no individual team owners to weigh in. According to Scheer, the league is “looking for the right market size, right fan base, right facilities, right economic opportunity.”

The expansion announcement comes early in the PWHL’s existence, but at a time when it’s pushing hard. The league opens its second season Nov. 30 with an expanded season of 30 games, up from 24 last year. It will also begin its first season with new franchise names, which were announced in early September.