Expansion teams are usually bad because they’re contingent on being bad. For narrowing the other teams’ slices of the revenue pie, they can join the league only at a high cost and at some competitive disadvantage. If they do fashion something workable from everyone’s leftovers, a la the Valkyries or Golden Knights, good for them, but that success wouldn’t be by design.
What if this pie doesn’t get sliced at all? In October 2024, the PWHL announced its plans to expand from six to eight teams for the 2025-26 season, with new franchises in Seattle and Vancouver. The league is wholly owned and operated by a single entity, Dodgers owner Mark Walter’s holding company. In this case, it’s actually in the interest of the owner for any expansion teams to be good and competitive right away. Maybe too good and too competitive, some PWHL fans thought when all the details came to light. Rather than let existing teams keep their rosters mostly intact, these expansion draft rules were unusually favorable to the expansion teams: The original six could protect only three players each.
Real-deal superstars were up for grabs. Hilary Knight, long one of the faces of women’s hockey, tied for the league lead in points last season. But the Boston Fleet used their three slots on younger talent and left Knight unprotected in the draft, where she’d be selected by the Seattle Torrent. Five of last year’s six first-round draft picks ended up out west.
So far, it hasn’t been quite the romp some fans expected. By points percentage, the Vancouver Goldeneyes and Torrent sit fifth and sixth in the league standings, respectively. Expansion-team growing pains might just be unavoidable, but things might be looking up in Vancouver. After a disastrous early-season road trip, the Goldeneyes headed into the PWHL’s weeklong international break with their first regulation win, a 4-0 shutout of the New York Sirens. On Tuesday night, with a 2-1 win over the Ottawa Charge, they became the first PWHL team to win their first three home games. Vancouver’s hockey fans have little else to celebrate these days; here’s a team that might not be completely miserable.
It's hard to construct a “weak” unit when you practically have free rein to raid the other teams, but the blue line assembled by the Goldeneyes was particularly splashy. Claire Thompson and Sophie Jaques, Defender of the Year finalists and Walter Cup champions with the Minnesota Frost last year, were both nabbed by Vancouver, which—sorry to Frost fans—is pretty funny. The two are elite puck-moving defenders who should help the team score more once the forward group gets clicking. Winger Sarah Nurse, formerly of Toronto, may be the biggest name on the roster, but she’s on injured reserve for the time being.
The expansion teams might be PWHL pillagers, but in a couple of cases, Vancouver just took back what was rightfully theirs. Both of Vancouver’s goals against Ottawa on Tuesday were scored by British Columbians Katie Chan and Jenn Gardiner. If there’s a future star to watch in Vancouver, it’s the 24-year-old Gardiner. She spent her rookie season last year on the Montreal Victoire, where cut her teeth on a line with Marie-Philip Poulin and Laura Stacey. This season, she’s proven herself one of the more explosive skaters in the game, playing at a quick pace that still never feels out of control. Her first goal of the season, a shorthanded goal that freed teammate Michelle Karvinen from the penalty box, was fortuitously caught on a mic’d-up segment. (“That was so fun, breaking you out of jail,” she told Karvinen.)
The home crowd in Vancouver was treated to Gardiner's speed and precision again last night, when she nabbed a puck in the neutral zone and broke back to the Ottawa net for a score. She’ll play her next game against her former team, the Victoire, on Saturday, their first meeting of the season. This odd expansion process means no player left unprotected should take it personally, but athletes will find bulletin-board material wherever they can. If you can’t join them, beat them.
