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Professional Women's Hockey League
PWHL
Sport Ice hockey
Founded [[August 29, 2023 (2023-08-29)]]
No. of teams 6
Official website thepwhl.com

The Professional Women's Hockey League is a women's professional ice hockey league based in the Canada and the United States. The league was established over the summer of 2023 as a result of an investment group buying the Premier Hockey Federation outright and working with the Professional Women's Hockey Players Association on a collective bargaining agreement to create a league starting in January of 2024. On August 29, 2023 the location of the first six teams were announced with teams planned for Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto, as well as Boston, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and the New York City area.[1]

Organizational structure[]

The PWHL and all six of its teams are owned by the Mark Walter Group. League management includes Jayna Hefford, announced as the senior vice-president of hockey operations.[2] Brian Burke acts as the executive director of the players' union.[3]

The new league has the participation of the members of the Professional Women's Hockey Players Association (PWHPA), a group of top American and Canadian players—including many national team players—who had refused to play in the PHF following the collapse of the Canadian Women's Hockey League in 2019.[4] The PWHPA organized a formal union in early 2023 and, upon creation of the PWHL, became the players' union representing all PWHL players.[5] Unique to professional women's hockey, the PWHL established an eight-year collective bargaining agreement with the players' union.[6]

The inaugural season will have 24 regular season games and is planned to include neutral-site games. Later seasons are expected to run from November through May.[7]

The league conducted the inaugural 2023 PWHL Draft In Toronto, Ontario on September 18, 2023.

Professional Women's Hockey League logo 2023

Original working league logo

Establishing of team rosters[]

The league will have a ten day free agent signing period with each team allowed to sign three players. This phase excludes current or graduating NCAA or U Sports players whom will be eligible to be drafted if they register for the draft prior to a September 3rd deadline. The draft, to be held on September 18th, will consist of 15 rounds. The draft order for the first round will be determined in a lottery with the subsequent rounds using a flip-flopped order in the next round. Players selected in the draft can not be traded until the end of the 2023-24 season. Any un-drafted player will be eligible to be signed as a free agent. Teams are limited to no more than 20 Standard Player Agreements prior to the start of the first training camp. Six players on each team will be signed to three year SPA's of no less than $80,000 (US) per league year.

Teams[]

On October 25, 2023 the league filled applications for trademarks on the following names:Toronto Torch, Montreal Echo, Ottawa Alert, Minnesota Superior, Boston Wicked and New York Sound indicating possible names for the teams.[8]

Team Training Facilities[]

Arenas[]

On November 28, 2023 the league announced the home rinks for the original six teams.[9]

Team Metropolitan Area Arena
Boston PWHL team Boston/Lowell, Massachusetts Tsongas Arena
Montreal PWHL team Montreal/Verdun Verdun Auditorium
Minnesota PWHL team Minneapolis-St. Paul Xcel Energy Center
New York PWHL team New York City/Bridgeport, Connecticut Total Mortgage Arena
Ottawa PWHL team Ottawa TD Place Arena
Toronto PWHL team Toronto Mattamy Athletic Centre


References[]

External links[]

This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Professional Women's Hockey League. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Ice Hockey Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License 3.0 (Unported) (CC-BY-SA).


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