PWHL's Decision On Expansion Franchises To Come In 4 To 6 Weeks

The Professional Women’s Hockey League is in the final stages of evaluating expansion proposals, as the league ponders whether to add as many as two more teams to the six-team league as soon as next season.

An announcement on whether expansion will happen next season or not should be coming within the next four to six weeks, the league’s executive vice president of business operations, Amy Scheer, told reporters on Thursday.

Scheer announced last year that the league was open to expansion proposals, and told CBC Sports in November that more than 25 requests for proposals had gone out.

The league is using a weighted model to evaluate those proposals and is looking at things like economic opportunity, demographics, hockey community, media, geography, travel costs and infrastructure for a professional team.

That last item is the most important on the list, Scheer said on Thursday.

“Where will we play the games?” she said. “Is the arena in the building up to the level of professionalism that we would like for our athletes?”

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That also includes what options a market can offer for practice facilities and whether the locker rooms and amenities are at a professional level.

The league and all six teams are owned and operated by the Mark Walter Group, and it’s expected any expansion teams would be part of the single-ownership structure.

Takeover Tour an audition, but not only factor

The PWHL hasn’t revealed a list of all the cities vying for a team, nor has Scheer said which ones are at the top of the list, but there is interest from markets that were included as part of the league’s Takeover Tour.

That includes Quebec City, which already has a pro-ready arena built for an NHL team that never arrived. Videotron Centre sold out a Takeover Tour game between the Montreal Victoire and Ottawa Charge in January, drawing 18,259 fans.

That tour also saw sellout crowds in NHL arenas in Vancouver and Edmonton, more than 12,000 fans in Seattle, and an American-record 14,018 fans in Denver. The league will also play in Buffalo, Raleigh, N.C., Detroit and St. Louis this season.

Two women's hockey players celebrate after a game-winning goal. — Toronto Sceptres forward Daryl Watts, right, celebrates her game-winning goal with teammate Kali Flanagan during the team’s 3-2 overtime victory against the Ottawa Charge in Edmonton on Sunday. (Jason Franson/The Canadian Press)

Scheer said the tour has been “wildly successful,” but cautioned that one game won’t be a major factor in whether the league decides to expand into a city.

“The Takeover Tour is certainly to some small degree an audition, but not the only thing that we look at,” she said.

Whether the league chooses to expand will have a domino effect on other decisions the league has to make for next season, including holding a player draft and building a schedule around players going to the Olympics.

Even whether teams can trade draft picks is affected by whether the league plans to have six, seven or eight teams next season. The league pushed back its trade deadline from March 2 to March 13 at 2 p.m. ET, likely to account for a decision coming on expansion.

Rosters will be frozen on March 14 at noon.

Scoring up thanks to ‘no escape’ rule

Should the league choose to expand, the hockey operations department has been working on the details of an expansion draft.

Adding a new team also requires hiring staff, sorting out logistics, signing arena deals and more, with less than a year to go before the next season begins. That will feel familiar to the PWHL, which launched the league and all six teams in only six months. But no one in the league’s front office will tell you that was easy.

Three women's hockey players raise their arms in celebration while members of the opposing team lay sprawled on the ice in front of their net. — Scoring is up across the PWHL this season after the introduction of the ‘no escape’ rule. (Chris Tanouye/The Canadian Press)

“We’re prepared if the decision is made to expand,” Scheer said. “We are 100 per cent prepared to get in those markets and tackle everything that we need to do to stand up a couple teams to be as successful as our current six.”

More than 382,000 fans have attended a PWHL game so far this season. Scheer expects the total since launch last year will hit 1 million by the end of the season.

Games have regularly sold out in cities like Toronto and Montreal, but the New York Sirens continue to struggle to find a consistent fan base in New Jersey, where the team relocated to the Prudential Center this season.

On the ice, scoring is up after the league introduced the “no escape” rule to try to generate more goals. The rule prevents the team that took the penalty from changing players on the ice until after the first face-off, meaning every player needs to be prepared to kill penalties.

“I think each year we get a little bit stronger and when you look at the draft class and some of the players that came in, the game is certainly faster this year,” said Jayna Hefford, the PWHL’s executive vice president of hockey operations.

“It’s more skilled. We now have all of a high number of players that have been professional athletes under the PWHL resources and infrastructure for well over a year, so even the top players in the world are better because of the training they’ve had over the past year.”

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