PWHL Expansion Draft: A Mock Outline For Potential Expansion

When the PWHL expands, whether it is this season or next, by one team or two, the league will need to hold an expansion draft. Expansion drafts have been done in many ways, and the PWHL could look at one of those pathways to follow, or they could continue to innovate as the league has done in other aspects of their operation.

Either way, teams will be looking closely at their lineups this season to assess their roster and help make the difficult decisions of who to protect and who to expose.

What have other leagues done?

The WNBA took perhaps the most straight forward path when it came to expansion for their 13th team, the Golden State Valkyries, who begin play this year. Each team in the WNBA was allowed to protect six players. Golden State then selected one player, acquiring their contract or negotiating rights, from each of the 12 existing teams. The NWSL allowed teams to protect nine players ahead of their two-team expansion for the 2024 season. When an expansion team selected a player from a team in the NWSL expansion draft, that team was allowed to move an additional unprotected player to their protected list. Teams were also able to make trades ahead of the draft to avoid selections altogether.

The NHL's most recent expansion drafts for the Vegas Golden Knights and Seattle Kraken used the same rules for both. Teams could choose to protect eight skaters and a goaltender, or seven forwards, three defensemen, and a goaltender. There were also stipulations surrounding who they had to leave exposed, a list that included at least two contracted forwards and one defenseman who had played a minimum number of games, and a contracted goaltender.

The PWHL has many options, and it will likely depend on whether they expand by one team or two, but the league need to put rules in place that help level the playing field and ideally remain consistent for future expansion as well.

Creating A Mock PWHL Expansion Draft

There's no easy answer for this given salary and contract structures, and the newness of the league itself, but there are a number of obvious rules and options that could be implemented.

Rules Of Who Each Team Must Expose

One of the main items that will need to be addressed is how to get the new team(s) up to the salary cap average. The new teams and the league itself could get into trouble if the new teams are forced to overpay current free agents significantly just to get up to cap. Due to low salaries across the league for the majority of players who would be exposed, the PWHL would need to take a note from the NHL and force teams to expose players with certain contracts. The best way to do this would be to require each team exposes at least one player from their inaugural six signings of $80,000 or more. Every team in the league has 11 or more players signed beyond this season. Of those players, each team should be required to expose an additional player from that group. To ensure teams don't get wise to this prior to the expansion draft, the list of players they must choose from should include only players on multi-year contracts entering the 2024-25 season. This would give the expansion teams at least two players earning above league average, and to be competitive, the expansion teams would likely select several of these exposed players.

Finally, teams should have to make available one more player whose rights they own, which would likely be a player drafted in 2024 who they signed to a one-year deal.

Rules Of Who Each Team Can Protect

With every team in the league have 11 players signed to deals beyond this season, with New York and Toronto having 13 signed to those deals, teams should be eligible to protect up to 10 players. It's a number that falls between the NHL's options of nine or 11 depending on the option teams chose. It seems logical that the only restriction on this should be the requirement to protect one goalie, and allow general managers to chart their own destiny from there. This area is likely where the league could get creative, but without a development league, teams need flexibility to keep a core intact.

The Selections

The first issue is how many players will each team get to select. Choosing one player from each team likely won't allow expansion teams to be competitive, and since the league remains under single entity ownership, it's in the league's best interest to field teams who aren't getting blown out every night. It means a deeper cut to the existing teams, but for the overall health and success of the league. With that in mind, we've decided in this mock expansion draft, to allow each expansion team to select two players from each existing team, meaning the existing teams will lose four players each.

If each team is required to expose one player from their original six three-year signings, that means that each of the new teams (if there were two), should be required to select three players from that pool, plus another contracted player. In the future, this would shift to three contracted players of any length, but for year one, to balance cap space for new teams, and to free up cap space for existing teams, these selections would benefit everyone.

To only give a new team only two signed players however, would be problematic. This is where the league will need to make a few allowances to the new teams and bend their existing rules. One way to do that would be to allow each expansion team to pick 12 players (two each from each team), whose rights would be guaranteed to the expansion team for a year. That means just like the rest of the drafted players in the league, those players would be required (if the stay in the league) to play with the expansion team.

Following each selection, the league could allow a protection rule like was seen in the NWSL, or they could just leave selections open like the NHL. For this exercise, we're leaving the list open and allowing no additional protections. To ensure rosters come together, we're stipulating each expansion team must select one goalie, three defenders, and five forwards, and can use their final three picks however they decide. As well, instead of making all picks "team-by-team" in order, we're allowing the expansion teams to pick in any order they want. When a team loses their fourth player, the expansion teams can no longer pick from them. This means, for example, one expansion team could make three selections from Toronto, while the other only gets one. When Toronto's fourth player was chosen, their roster would be locked.

Looking at each team

In this system, if each team had to expose two players from their 11-13 players on multi-year contracts, here's the list of players that each team could protect, and who they may expose. We've bolded all multi-year players and picked players who would satisfy the requirement to expose from the initial six (bolded*), and from their multi-year players (bolded).

Boston Fleet

Protected: Megan Keller, Aerin Frankel, Hannah Bilka, Hilary Knight, Alina Muller, Sydney Bard, Daniela Pejsova, Susanna Tapani, Hannah Brandt, Jessica DiGirolamo

Exposed: Jamie Lee Rattray*, Sophie Shirley, Emily Brown, Lexie Adzija, Kelly Babstock, Jill Dempsey, Loren Gabel, Taylor Girard, Shay Maloney, Amanda Pelkey, Theresa Schafzahl, Emma Soderberg, Klara Peslarova, Emma Greco, Hadley Hartmetz, Sidney Morin.

Minnesota Frost

Protected: Taylor Heise, Kendall Coyne Schofield, Lee Stecklein, Sophie Jaques, Grace Zumwinkle, Claire Thompson, Britta Curl-Salemme, Maddie Rooney, Kelly Pannek, Michela Cava.

Exposed: Nicole Hensley*, Denisa Krizova, Klara Hymlarova, Brooke Bryant, Claire Butorac, Katy Knoll, Brooke McQuigge, Kaitlyn O’Donohoe, Dominique Petrie, Liz Schepers, Charlotte Akervik, Mae Batherson, Natalie Buchbinder, Mellissa Channell, Maggie Flaherty, Lucy Morgan

Montreal Victoire

Protected: Marie-Philip Poulin, Erin Ambrose, Laura Stacey, Cayla Barnes, Ann-Renee Desbiens, Abby Boreen, Kristin O'Neill, Lina Ljungblom, Jennifer Gardiner, Kati Tabin

Exposed: Maureen Murphy*, Amanda Boulier, Catherine Daoust, Mariah Keopple Anna Kjellbin, Dominika Lásková, Kelly-Ann Nadeau, Anna Wilgren, Claire Dalton, Gabrielle David, Clair DeGeorge, Catherine Dubois, Mikyla Grant-Mentis, Dara Greig, Alexandra Labelle, Kennedy Marchment, Sandra Abstreiter, Elaine Chuli

New York Sirens

Protected: Corinne Schroeder, Alex Carpenter, Micah Zandee-Hart, Ella Shelton, Maja Nylen Persson, Sarah Fillier, Jaime Bourbonnais, Abby Roque, Noora Tulus, Jessie Eldridge, Ally Simpson

Exposed: Abby Roque*, Elle Hartje, Emmy Fecteau, Kayle Osborne, Paetyn Levis, Olivia Knowles, Chloé Aurard, Jade Downie-Landry, Élizabeth Giguère, Gabby Rosenthal, Jill Saulnier, Brooke Hobson, Abbey Levy.

Ottawa Charge

Protected: Danielle Serdachny, Ronja Savolainen, Katerina Mrazova, Emily Clark, Brianne Jenner, Ashton Bell, Aneta Tejralova, Emerance Maschmeyer, Jincy Roese, Gabbie Hughes

Exposed: Jocelyne Larocque*, Gwyneth Philips, Victoria Bach, Shiann Darkangelo, Taylor House, Rebecca Leslie, Mannon McMahon, Anna Meixner, Natalie Snodgrass, Tereza Vanišová, Alexa Vasko, Jessica Adolfsson, Zoe Boyd, Sam Isbell, Stephanie Markowski, Madeline Wethington, Logan Angers

Toronto Sceptres

Protected: Sarah Nurse, Emma Maltais, Julia Gosling, Daryl Watts, Renata Fast, Kristen Campbell, Savannah Harmon, Natalie Spooner, Hannah Miller, Kali Flanagan

Exposed: Blayre Turnbull*, Megan Carter, Allie Munroe, Emma Woods, Izzy Daniel, Hayley Scamurra, Sam Cogan, Jesse Compher, Maggie Connors, Anneke Rankila, Noemi Neubauerová, Kaitlin Willoughby, Raygan Kirk, CJ Jackson, Lauren Bernard, Jessica Kondas, Rylind Mackinnon.

Mock PWHL Draft Using Our Rules

If it's a two team expansion, here's a mock selection of how expansion could play out using the rules we devised above.

• Team 1, Pick 1: Blayre Turnbull (TOR-1*)

• Team 2, Pick 1: Jamie Lee Rattray (BOS-1*)

• Team 1, Pick 2: Abby Roque (NY-1*)

• Team 2, Pick 2: Nicole Hensley (MN-1*)

• Team 1, Pick 3: Jocelyn Larocque (OTT-1*)

• Team 2, Pick 3: Maureen Murphy (MTL-1*)

• Team 1, Pick 4: Gwyneth Philips (OTT-2)

• Team 2, Pick 4: Izzy Daniel (TOR-2)

• Team 1, Pick 5: Dominique Petrie (MN-2)

• Team 2, Pick 5: Megan Carter (TOR-3)

• Team 1, Pick 6: Stephanie Markowski (OTT-3)

• Team 2, Pick 6: Hayley Scamurra (TOR-4)

• Team 1, Pick 7: Natalie Buchbinder (MN-3)

• Team 2, Pick 7: Amanda Boulier (MTL-2)

• Team 1, Pick 8: Emily Brown (BOS-2)

• Team 2, Pick 8: Tereza Vanisova (OTT-4)

• Team 1, Pick 9: Denisa Krizova (MN-4)

• Team 2, Pick 9: Mariah Keopple (MTL-3)

• Team 1, Pick 10: Theresa Schafzahl (BOS-3)

• Team 2, Pick 10: Anna Wilgren (MTL-4)

• Team 1, Pick 11: Brooke Hobson (NY-2)

• Team 2, Pick 11: Loren Gabel (BOS-4)

• Team 1, Pick 12: Elizabeth Giguere (NY-3)

• Team 2, Pick 12: Jade-Downie Landry (NY-4)

Expansion Team 1

Expansion Team 2