For the first time in PWHL history, the league’s individual player salaries are public.
On Tuesday, the PWHL’s Players Association website published a “player salary guide,” with the annual compensation for each of the league’s 194 players as of April 12. Salaries range from a minimum of $37,131.50 earned by 16 players, to a maximum of $126,090 earned by a single player.
According to Front Office Sports calculations, the average salary for a PWHL player is $57,206.55, while the median is $49,000. The PWHLPA has yet to confirm these numbers with FOS. The figures indicate that only 66 of the 194 players (34%) are making $60,000 or more.
Ottawa forward Emily Clark, who spent the league’s three-season history with the Charge, is the single-highest-paid player in the PWHL. Nine other players earn more than six figures, including Boston captain Megan Keller ($105,000), Seattle captain Hilary Knight ($106,090) and Montreal captain Marie-Philip Poulin ($110,216).
Other notable salaries include the $90,500 per year earned by New York’s Kristýna Kaltounková, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 PWHL Draft. There’s a big disparity in the rookie contracts, however—No. 2 pick Haley Winn of the Fleet earns just $60,000 a year.
Toronto Sceptres top scorer Daryl Watts, who notably made headlines for signing a two-year contract in the Premier Hockey Federation that was worth $150,000 for the 2023–24 season, earned just $59,000 last season in the PWHL. (The PHF was sold to PWHL owner Mark Walter in June 2023, so Watts did not play that PHF season.)
Notably, the PWHL’s CBA does not include a hard salary-cap number, but instead a fluctuating cap and floor. Teams were required to field an average annual base salary within 10% of $58,349.50 during the 2025–26, with that number increasing by 3% in every year of the CBA agreement (during the 2026–27 season, it will rise to $60,099.99). The current CBA, ratified in July 2023, expires in July 2031.
This data makes the PWHL the first of the three major North American women’s sports leagues to reveal their individual player salaries. The WNBA does not make this information public, though contract figures are often reported by the media. Meanwhile, the media has only reported the individual salaries of a handful of top NWSL players.
Last May, the PWHLPA decided to permit salary disclosure throughout the league, but numbers were not made available to the public yet. In March, The Hockey News reported the full PWHL’s 2024–25 salaries, which it says was obtained from “sources involved in the PWHL.”
The PWHL wrapped up its 2025–26 season last week, with the Victoire winning the franchise’s first Walter Cup. This upcoming season, the league will expand from eight to 12 teams, with Detroit, Hamilton, Las Vegas, and San Jose joining as new markets.
