It’s about to be a busy and transformative two months in the PWHL.
First, there’s the Walter Cup playoffs, which continue with Game 3 between the Montreal Victoire and Minnesota Frost on Thursday at 7 p.m. ET on Thursday. The Ottawa Charge will host the Boston Fleet in Game 3 of the other semifinal series on Friday.
Off the ice, the league is growing. A ninth franchise was added in Detroit on Wednesday and more teams are coming.
“We’re still working through multiple cities,” Amy Scheer, the PWHL’s executive vice president of business operations, told CBC Sports earlier this week.
PWHL executives Jayna Hefford and Amy Scheer chat with CBC Sports about the PWHL’s decision to expand the league with a new team in Detroit.
As many as four new teams could begin play next season. That would bring the PWHL to 12 franchises, a magic number the league has targeted as it looks to secure more corporate partnerships and a major U.S. broadcast rights deal.
Between expansion and a good portion of the league playing on expiring contracts, PWHL rosters should be shaken up significantly next season. Add in the entry draft, with talents like Olympic MVP Caroline Harvey and U.S. forward Abbey Murphy available, and there will be a lot of new faces dominating the league soon.
A team like the Minnesota Frost, which won the last two Walter Cups, was built around a core of star players who’ve been with the team since its formation. They’re unlikely to stay together through another round of expansion.
It’s in the back of players’ minds, but the focus is the playoffs, Minnesota forward Katy Knoll said earlier this week.
“We can’t really control much of it until after the season’s done anyway, so it wouldn’t really make much sense to put too much pressure on it right now,” Knoll said.
No expansion draft
Last year, the expansion teams in Seattle and Vancouver were built through a signing process and an expansion draft. Things will be different this year because so many players are on expiring contracts.
According to a memo the PWHL Players Association sent players several days ago, the new teams will be built through a complicated, multi-phase process.
The memo assumes four new teams, though everything is tentative until the league announces its plans.
It’s official: The Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) is expanding, with a team coming to Detroit next season. For hockey fans and female hockey players in Windsor, it’s an exciting time, with more support for women’s hockey. The CBC’s Emma Loop reports.
In this scenario, phase one would begin later this month after the season ends. Players on expiring contracts can negotiate with any team, but can only sign with their existing team during this phase. Each team will be able to protect three players.
In the second phase, beginning in early June, any player not protected or signed will be able to sign with an expansion team, the memo says.
Expansion teams will submit a target list of 20 players and and can each sign up to five players. Existing teams can only lose a maximum of three players each in this phase.
There are other signing windows after that, and different types of contracts that players can receive during these new signing windows. That includes four-year contracts for the first time.
Again, it’s all subject to change depending on the league’s final plans, but it’s a format that could dramatically alter teams ahead of next season.
The goal was finding a way to maintain “competitive balance” across the league while also making sure players have a say in the process, according to Jayna Hefford, the PWHL’s executive vice president of hockey operations. She emphasized that nothing is certain yet.
The Ottawa Charge practised at the Bell Sensplex Tuesday ahead of Friday’s game against the Boston Fleet. Emma Weller caught up with the team afterwards.
“Those are difficult things sometimes to match, so it’s been ongoing collaborative work with the [players’ association],” Hefford said in an interview.
“Once we have certainty on number of teams and location, then there will be more certainty in that process.”
A marathon in Montreal
It took six periods of hockey for someone to score in Game 2 between Montreal and Minnesota.
In overtime number three, it was Victoire captain Marie-Philip Poulin who was the hero, with a one-timer blast from the circle — in a game where Poulin, who missed more than a month with a lower-body injury, looked to be in a great deal of pain.
It was a significantly different game than the high-scoring, 5-4 victory by Minnesota in Game 1. Game 2 was more like the kind of series that Victoire head coach Kori Cheverie expected to see from these two teams.
“I think both teams were trying to figure out what is this series going to look like, how physical is it going to be, how much defence are we going to play,” Cheverie said after Tuesday’s win. “We realized both teams need to play a lot of defence in the first game. I think both teams cleaned that up for Game 2.”
Marie-Philip Poulin scored in the third overtime giving Montreal Victoire a 1-0 win over Minnesota Frost Tuesday night in Laval, Que.
Rookie defender Nicole Gosling led all Montreal skaters with more than 43 minutes on ice over the marathon game, a sign of how much Gosling has grown in her first season in the league.
Meanwhile, Frost alternate captain Lee Stecklein played more than 47 minutes, and her goaltender, Maddie Rooney, made 51 saves.
Much of the attention has been around the goaltenders on the other three teams in the playoffs. But Rooney has a strong résumé. She backstopped the Americans to an Olympic gold medal in 2018, and along with Nicole Hensley, has helped the Frost earn two Walter Cups.
“What she’s accomplished, both with this team and outside this team, I think some people tend to overlook it just maybe because it’s not as recent with the international stuff,” Frost forward Kelly Pannek said. “But she’s one of the best goaltenders in this league and anybody who doubts that, just look at a game like this.”
Montreal has the momentum after a big triple overtime win. But Minnesota is just as happy to leave Quebec with a split.
They’ll play Game 3 on Thursday night, and then Game 4 on Friday night in a rare playoff back-to-back.
After playing nearly six periods of hockey just two days ago, it’s not an ideal schedule.
“It’s hard on both teams,” Minnesota head coach Ken Klee said. “Both teams played extremely hard. I don’t think anybody was happy to see that’s how the schedule shook out. But these guys are here to play, I’m here to coach. When they tell us that’s when the game is, that’s when we’ve got to get ready to go.”
Action resumes in the Ottawa-Boston series on Friday, with Game 3 inside Canadian Tire Centre. Game 4, if necessary, will be in the same arena on Sunday afternoon.
Source link
