A few hours after PWHL Hamilton GM Meghan Duggan finished making picks at the six-round 2026 PWHL Draft, she couldn’t think of any holes on her expansion team’s roster.
She started building with a mix of leadership, skill and youth. Early on, she added two members of the Ottawa Charge’s leadership group in Brianne Jenner and Emily Clark, along with promising young goaltender Kayle Osborne (New York Sirens), rookie of the year nominee Nicole Gosling (Montreal Victoire) and top two-way forward Alina Müller (Boston Fleet).
Then, at the draft, the GM bolstered the team’s blue line by selecting reliable and steady defender Nelli Laitinen from the University of Minnesota at sixth overall. By all accounts, Laitinen rarely has a bad shift.
“I really don’t feel like we’re missing anything,” Duggan said after the draft. “We’ve got some size, we’ve got some skill, we’ve got some speed, we’ve got some grit. We’ve got two fantastic goaltenders. I think we’re strong on the back end.”
After nearly a month of expansion signings and player movement, each of the 12 team’s rosters are starting to come into focus.
For Hamilton, the picture is looking pretty good. Other teams are still missing key puzzle pieces. They’ll look to find those in PWHL free agency, which opened on Friday afternoon.
Here’s a look at how all five Canadian teams look after a month of the PWHL off-season.
Montreal Victoire
The Victoire lost six key members of last season’s championship team, including Gosling, alternate captain Erin Ambrose and forward Hayley Scamurra.
Montreal chose last at the 2026 PWHL Draft and picked six new players, including Finland’s Petra Nieminen. The team also re-signed forward Abby Roque on a two-year contract.
It’s also not yet clear whether Marie-Philip Poulin will be healthy and back in uniform on opening night this fall, after playing through a knee injury sustained at the Olympics.
But Montreal always seems to find a way.
This time last year, the Victoire were similarly depleted from expansion, saying goodbye to young defenders Cayla Barnes and Anna Wilgren, as well as forwards Jennifer Gardiner and Abby Boreen.
GM Danièle Sauvageau made quick work of filling those holes in the 2025 off-season. She drafted Gosling to replace Barnes, swung a draft-day trade to acquire Abby Roque, and signed players like Scamurra and Shiann Darkangelo in free agency. She created the deepest Victoire roster yet, and it paid off with a Walter Cup title.
Madame Sauvageau has her work cut out for her again, but Montreal is a destination for players.
Sauvageau had a good start by re-signing Roque and defenders Maggie Flaherty and Nadia Mattivi. She was also pleasantly surprised to be able to draft Finnish star Petra Nieminen with the last pick of the first round.
Nieminen, 27, has experience playing against the best players in the world as a key member of the Finnish national team that won Olympic bronze in 2018 and 2022, and five medals at the world championships.
She won’t shy away from physicality, but Nieminen will also be looking to put the puck in the net, something she did 191 times over 264 games with Luleå in the Swedish Women’s Hockey League.
Nieminen led the league in points this past season (45 in 27 games).
“You could teach defence, you could teach structure, but someone who knows how to score goals, these are the things that obviously we were attracted to,” Sauvageau said.
PWHL Hamilton
It’s hard not to like what Duggan is building so far.
A solid defensive core is taking shape with Gosling, Laitinen, Allyson Simpson, Riley Brengman and Zoe Boyd.
“It was important for us to get just a really reliable, two-way, great skater,” Duggan said about the Laitinen pick.
Fifth-round pick Emma-Sofie Nordstrøm — the first Danish player to be selected in the PWHL Draft — could back up Osborne, who proved last season that she can handle a big workload.
Up front, Jenner can elevate any line she plays on, something she’s shown consistently over the past three seasons in the PWHL.
There’s a lot of upside with Abby Hustler (signed from Minnesota) and draft picks Jade Iginla and Elyssa Biederman, the latter of whom has a lot of talent but is lacking in size. If Biederman can figure out how to translate her fiesty game to the pro level, she could be a steal.
If there’s something that could complete the picture in Hamilton, it may be another top-six winger who can score.
Toronto Sceptres
The Sceptres went into the draft in the eighth spot and a massive need for offensive skill, thanks to the departure of Daryl Watts to Detroit.
As luck had it, the exact type of player the Sceptres needed fell to No. 8.
That’s Kirsten Simms, the University of Wisconsin and U.S. team winger who will bring offensive instinct to Toronto’s forward group. She finished third in the NCAA in points per game (1.90), behind Abbey Murphy and Caroline Harvey.
“I may not be the biggest or the fastest out there, but I think I have a hockey IQ that I really pride myself in,” Simms said before the draft. “I can see little plays and create plays that not everybody can see on the ice.”
When GM Gina Kingsbury interviewed Simms before the draft, she was most impressed by her competitiveness and desire to get better.
That, combined with her natural skill, leaves a lot of room to grow.
“I think this is an athlete that in the right environment, hopefully we can see a lot of growth and push her play to a whole new level,” Kingsbury said.
Even with Simms, things are still looking thin up front for Toronto. Emma Maltais is expected to sign elsewhere, and Toronto also lost Maggie Connors and Jesse Compher to expansion teams.
That leaves only one of Toronto’s top-five scoring forwards from last season, and that’s captain Blayre Turnbull, who’s expected to re-sign. Turnbull had the best offensive season of her career in 2025-26, putting up 17 points in 30 games.
Toronto scored the fewest goals in the league last season, and that was with Watts. Adding more game-breaking skill should be the priority for the Sceptres, though it may be a longer climb back to where Toronto once was.
“I think this is going to be a little bit of a puzzle that we’re going to have to build for one, two, three years here, where the next draft or some trades or free agency moving forward will be important for us to kind of piece together what we’re going to look like for the next five years or so,” Kingsbury said.
Ottawa Charge
By protecting Rebecca Leslie over Jenner and Clark, the Charge bet that Leslie can repeat the all-star worthy season she had this past year, and that she can do it without Jenner down the middle.
It’s a tall task, and that top-centre hole looms large for the Charge.
There isn’t a player like Jenner available in free agency. Instead, the Charge may have to look from within. Could Gabbie Hughes or a healthy Kateřina Mrázová step into that role?
Could there be centre depth coming from Florida-born Jordan Ray, a player GM Mike Hirshfeld believes could be a second-round steal, or third rounder Tereza Pištěková, the 21-year-old who head coach Carla MacLeod knows from her time coaching the Czech national team?
With the 11th pick in the 2026 PWHL draft, the Ottawa Charge selected defender Vivian Jungels from the University of Wisconsin.
On defence, first-round pick Vivian Jungels is a smart defender who Hirshfeld expects will play “significant minutes.” She joins a defensive core that also includes Ronja Savolainen and Jocelyne Larocque.
“She can make a first pass,” Hirshfeld said. “It’s really important in this league in breakouts with the tough forechecks you have.”
Vancouver Goldeneyes
Vancouver retained much of the talented lineup that GM Cara Gardner Morey acquired during expansion last year, including captain Ashton Bell and top defender Sophie Jaques, forwards Sarah Nurse, Jennifer Gardiner, Abby Boreen and Izzy Daniel, and starting goaltender Emerance Maschmeyer.
That’s an advantage on the ice, but it’s also huge for the team’s culture.
“They are the reason that everybody wanted to come back,” Gardner Morey said about her leadership group.
On top of that, the Goldeneyes added one of the best defenders in women’s hockey in Caroline Harvey, who was taken first overall in Wednesday’s draft.
Harvey should transition seamlessly to the PWHL, and gives the Goldeneyes two of the best young offensive defenders in the game. Gardner Morey joked that Vancouver might score 100 goals from the blue line next season, if Jaques and Harvey are paired together.
The Vancouver Goldeneyes selected American Caroline “KK” Harvey from the University of Wisconsin as the first-overall pick in the 2026 PWHL Draft. Harvey becomes the first defender chosen as the top pick in PWHL history.
It softens the blow of potentially losing Claire Thompson, who could return to medical school after two seasons in the PWHL.
A full season from a healthy Nurse and bounce-back offensive seasons from Hannah Miller and Tereza Vanišová, plus a new voice behind the bench to replace former head coach Brian Idalski, could transform the Goldeneyes into the team everyone expected to see last season.
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