By: Alexis Caines | Follow me on Twitter/X @alexiscaines_
The Professional Women’s Hockey League is expanding to four new teams before the start of the 2026-27 season. Detroit, Las Vegas, and Hamilton have already been announced. San Jose is expected to be the fourth with an announcement tomorrow, bringing the total teams in the PWHL to 12.
To the public eye, much of the expansion process remains unknown. A document was obtained by The Hockey News, The Athletic, and The Ice Garden, but the league has not issued any official statement. According to a few reports, they are forgoing the expansion draft process they did last season, and instead are taking a more player-focused approach.
According to Boston Fleet rookie Haley Winn, there was a team discussion about what could lie ahead. “I think for people the unknown is scarier than even a long document of maybe some confusing rules,” she said to the media. “It came out one night, and we had the next day, we made a little Q&A, and we talked about it as a team.“
In last year’s expansion, every single one of the original six teams got shaken around quite a bit. The Fleet most notably lost Hilary Knight and Hannah Bilka, both to the Seattle Torrent.
Per Hailey Salvin of The Athletic, there will be five phases in the expansion process this offseason. The first is player protection, in which existing teams can protect three of their players. The last time around, free agents did not need to be protected, but now they do.
The Fleet have 16 free agents headed into the start of the 2026-27 season. Big names on the list include Jamie Lee Rattray, Jill Saulnier, Jessie Eldridge, and Sophie Shirley, amongst others. The choices for Danielle Marmer and the rest of the Fleet front office staff will not be easy.
Phase Two is when the new expansion teams submit a target list of 20 players they have a legitimate interest in getting. The team can give one of two contacts: an Expansion Franchise Offer or a Foundational Player Offer. The EFO comes with “several incentives,” and the player is required to sign if they are given this option. The expansion teams only get one EFO. The latter of the two means the player is not required to sign, but if they do reject, they must sign a new contract during Phase Three.
Phase Three allows for the existing eight teams to protect three more players. This brings the total protected players up to six; last year, it was four at its maximum. Expansion teams are also permitted to sign three more players during this phase.
By Phase Four, expansion teams must reach a total of ten players to their roster. Any player not protected or signed yet can sign with any expansion team at this point. If they are unable to reach ten rostered players, they have their pick of players under contract elsewhere.
Phase Five, the final phase, allows for remaining free agents to sign back with their team or anywhere else once the deadline opens sometime in June. At this point we also expect the 2026 Entry Draft will be happening soon, or have just happened, so every team will have a clear understanding of how their team is shaking out.
The document is a lot to digest. It’s lengthy, and it’s confusing in parts. But there are some positives. As many Fleet players pointed out on breakup day, expansion just proves how much growth the league is experiencing.
The losses Boston might face could be made up for during the draft. The incoming 236 players are regarded as some of the world’s most talented. With a total of 12 teams in the PWHL, there is a need and a place for all this high-end talent to land.
Fleet General Manager Danielle Marmer was quick to acknowledge that she does not yet know how she’ll approach the expansion and draft process. “We’re still in this sort of wrap-up process,” she admitted to the media early last week. “I’ll certainly spend the next couple of weeks, that’ll be my only job [it] will be figuring out what the plan is for expansion and what our priorities are, but at this time I don’t have an answer for you.”
The season is not yet over as we await the Walter Cup Champions of either the Ottawa Charge or the Montréal Victoire. From there, the league is expected to provide more detail on what the off-season will look like. For now, fans, players, and even general managers can just stand by for more.
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