Now is an exciting time for women’s hockey. The Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) has successfully expanded to add two new teams for the 2025-26 season. The Takeover Tour will be bringing professional women’s hockey to new cities across the continent, and women’s international hockey will be taking center stage at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina.
Now in its third season, the PWHL is starting to take on the attributes found in many other professional leagues: rivalries are forming, player transactions are having major impacts on play, and young players are forcing their way into the lineup and on the scoresheet. Here are some surprises from the first few weeks of the season, as well as some sure-things that are less of a surprise.
Surprise: The Boston Fleet Are Dominating
When you lose Hilary Knight and Hannah Bilka in the offseason, you’d think there’d be a bit of a drop-off, but not so for the Boston Fleet, a team that is getting scoring from all four lines, stellar defense, and the best goaltending in the league.
The Fleet are a perfect 4-0-0-0 to start the season, leading the league in goals-for (11) while allowing the fewest goals-against (two). Goaltender Aerin Frankel has been unreal, stopping 96 of 98 shots in the first four games.
Captain Megan Keller leads the team with four points in four games, and after that, the scoring is pretty evenly distributed amongst the forward group. Alina Müller seems to win every faceoff she takes (currently at 64%), and Susana Tapani has started strong with two goals in her first four games. Rookie Abby Newhook has three goals to start the season; her hard-charging game translates nicely to the PWHL. Keller and rookie Haley Winn have been stellar, dominating possession and establishing themselves as the best defense pair in the league.
Sure-Thing: Kendall Coyne-Schofield
With four goals and five points in her first four games, the Minnesota Frost’s Kendall Coyne-Schofield is leading the PWHL. She scored the league’s first goal of the season on Nov. 21 against the Toronto Sceptres, then netted a hat trick in a 5-1 victory over the Ottawa Charge on Dec. 2. The Frost captain has led her team to back-to-back Walter Cup championships, but the drive to win is an eternal flame for the 33-year-old.
“The goal doesn’t change,” Coyne Schofield told Sportsnet’s Emily Sadler. “You know, every day, we wake up, the goal is to win a Walter Cup. For some players it would be three in a row, for some players it would be two in a row, and for some players it’d be their first time. The work that it takes to get there doesn’t change. We know that this is a long season and this is only the very beginning and it’s really hard to win. I think, just, the focus doesn’t change.”
The “girl with the braid,” as she was known during her youth hockey days, will be playing in her hometown of Chicago for the first time as a PWHL player as Minnesota takes on Ottawa on Dec. 21.
Surprise (or Maybe Not): Ottawa May Lose the Charge
The Walter Cup finalist Charge have had a tough start to the 2025-26 season, both on and off the ice. Despite captain Brianne Jenner starting hot with three goals and two assists in her first four games, the Charge have gone 1-0-0-3 out of the gate, allowing 13 goals against.
The Charge lost a number of key players in the offseason, among them goaltender Emerance Maschmeyer, Danielle Serdachny, Ashton Bell, Zoe Boyd, Tereza Vanišová, and Jincy Roese.
Off the ice, the Charge have been dealing with the distractions surrounding their possible future home at Landsdowne 2.0, a proposed city-owned sports complex with the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group (OSEG), owners of the Ottawa 67’s and Ottawa Redblacks, as the primary tenant. For the Charge, who draw on average between 7,000-8,000 fans for their games at the soon-to-be-demolished TD Place Arena, the new 5,500-seat arena will mean a loss of ticket revenue.
“We’ve certainly been clear with OSEG and the City that we will not go backward, we will not play in a 5,500 seat building,” said PWHL’s executive vice president of business operations Amy Scheer. “These women have worked too hard to get to the point today where a 5,500 seat building is well below what we average in Ottawa.”
Besides the financial impact, the downsized arena would mean fewer fans having the opportunity to experience one of the most exciting and devoted hockey communities in North America. The Charge and their fans have created something special in Ottawa, and it is something that deserves to be showcased. The public debate has also highlighted the not-so-surprising undervaluing of women’s hockey that is driving some of the financial decisions by the city and OSEG, despite the Charge consistently out-drawing the 67’s in crowd size.
Surprise: Expansion Teams Aren’t Yielding Initial Success
The hockey world followed last spring’s PWHL Expansion draft and free-agency frenzy with a mixture of delight and chagrin as several of the league’s top stars packed up their gear for the West Coast.
The Seattle Torrent grabbed Knight, Bilka, Alex Carpenter, Serdachny, and Cayla Barnes in the offseason, stacking their roster with some high-quality talent. The Vancouver Goldeneyes locked down Maschmeyer, Sarah Nurse, Jenn Gardiner, and Sophie Jaques, among others, in solidifying their lineup.
Related: Keller & Fleet Rookies Lead the Way in 4-1 Win Over Frost
In their inaugural seasons, the Torrent and Goldeneyes looked poised to compete from day one. But as the new season has gotten underway, the two expansion teams find themselves near the bottom of the league’s standings. The Torrent are currently sitting in seventh place with a 1-0-1-1 record and the fewest number of goals-for, although they’ve only played three games. The Goldeneyes have played five games and sit at sixth, going 1-1-0-3, having allowed the most goals in the league (15) despite excellent performances by Maschmeyer, who has played in four out of five games.
The two teams faced off on Nov. 21 at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver with the Goldeneyes’ Abby Boreen scoring dramatically in overtime. Unfortunately, Nurse sustained an upper-body injury in the game and hasn’t played since.
What may not be a surprise to most hockey fans is that both expansion teams are starting slow, given that historically this has been the case for most new teams. The Vegas Golden Knights bucked this trend when they entered the NHL in 2017-18, but for most teams, the first few years have been tough sledding. For the two PWHL teams, the fact that the players have not had enough time to develop chemistry and timing could be a major factor.
