While The Last Round Of PWHL Expansion Was Painful, This Time Around Teams Will Be Ready
· Yahoo Sports
The 2025 PWHL expansion adding the Seattle Torrent and Vancouver Goldeneyes gutted rosters across the league. While the league may tout the fact Seattle and Vancouver struggled in year one as evidence their plan worked, the fact is, both rosters have more talent than the rest of the league, even if it didn't meld, and the speed bumps of a new organization slowed their rise.
Like the original New York Sirens, sometimes chemistry is the problem, which could explain Seattle's woes, and Vancouver is coming, and will be stronger in year two than they were this year.
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Fans did not like the original expansion rules, but don't expect the league to waver far from that plan. The problem is, PWHL teams now know what's coming, and there will be teams entering this round of expansion who may not even have enough signed players to expose. The general managers got wise, and it will make this round of expansion challenging both for the league, and for the, as many as, four new teams being added.
Leading the charge for teams who have positioned themselves to control their future are the Toronto Sceptres. Currently, the Sceptres only have five players signed beyond this season, which means under last season's rules, they'll only have two signed players, plus a handful of 2025 picks whose rights they'll retain, available for expansion. Their signed players include Jesse Compher, Elle Shelton, Natalie Spooner, Emma Gentry, and Jessie McPherson. 2025 picks who they'd need to protect include Kiara Zanon, Sara Hjalmarsson, and Clara Van Wieren. The rest of their roster are all free agents.
Keeping some top players as free agents was a tactic both expansion teams used. In Vancouver, the Goldeneyes didn't add extra years to contracts for Jennifer Gardiner, Claire Thompson, or Sarah Nurse, while in Seattle there were no extensions for Alex Carpenter, Hilary Knight, Julia Gosling, Jessie Eldridge, or Aneta Tejralova. It means that if the players want to stay in those markets, they can, and there's nothing that can change that via expansion. In essence, by allowing those players to remain on expiring contracts, it gives Seattle and Vancouver a guaranteed opportunity to at least negotiate with their stars. Otherwise, they'd risk losing those players immediately passing them to yet another expansion team.
Minneota sits in a similarly comfortable position with Taylor Heise, Kendall Coyne Schofield, Lee Stecklein, Kelly Pannek, Grace Zumwinkle, and Nicole Hensley all on expiring deals. None of them can be selected in expansion.
Not every team however, is set up as well, and it's a strange reverse punishment for teams who gave players more "stability" signing them to longer deals, and for those players who were happy enough to sign those deals to stay in a market.
For example, if last year's expansion rules are repeated, the Boston Fleet will lose one of Alina Muller, Megan Keller, Haley Winn, or Aerin Frankel. There's no easy decision there.
The New York Sirens, who have more players signed beyond this season than any other team will be one of the hardest hit. They will only be able to choose three players from Sarah Fillier, Kristyna Kaltounkova, Casey O'Brien, Micah Zandee-Hart, Maja Nylen Persson, Kayle Osborne, Anne Cherkowski, and Jaime Bourbonnais. Odds are that they'll lose half that list.
The expansion teams won't escape unscathed either. Vancouver would be able to protect three of Sophie Jaques, Claire Thompson, Hannah Miller, Emerance Maschmeyer, Ashton Bell, or Tereza Vanisova, but they'll lose at least two from that group, as well as almost certainly watching Nina Jobst-Smith and Abby Boreen plucked.
If Montreal protects their big three of Marie-Philip Poulin, Ann-Renee Desbiens, and Laura Stacey for the second straight season, it means they'll again lose their top picks in the draft. Last year they watched Cayla Barnes and Jennifer Gardiner get snapped up. This year it would be Nicole Gosling and Natalie Mlynkova, or potentially newly minted Canadian national team blueliner Kati Tabin.
No matter how you look at it, the PWHL's new expansion teams will get a wealth of talent, and they'll add even more in a stacked 2026 PWHL Draft. The original six teams will feel the hurt, for the second straight season, and while PWHL brass may think their plan worked, ripping an even larger group of players from teams who held on this year could be catastrophic for parity.
With as many as four new teams coming in, teams may also be forced to relinquish more than the four players they gave up last season. If each of the existing eight teams lost players in expansion, it would give four expansion teams 12 players each. A number that would climb to the same 18 Seattle and Vancouver had if the league maintains a six round draft.
In the case of New York, it could mean keeping a quartet like Fillier, Kaltounkova, Zandee-Hart, and Nylen Persson, while losing O'Brien, Osborne, Cherskowski, Bourbonnais, Ally Simpson, and Paetyn Levis.
With more expansion on the horizon, teams must weight the risk of losing signed players in expansion with no chance, or risk losing them in free agency with at least a fighting chance to negotiate.
It could be a major reason why some teams have chosen to keep more of their stars unsigned, betting on themselves as the place those players hope to stay.