Professional Women’s Hockey League

Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL), organization of professional women’s ice hockey teams in North America. The PWHL was formed in 2023 with six teams, three in the United States and three in Canada, and played its inaugural season in 2024. The league added two expansion teams starting in its third season (2025–26) and added four more in 2026–27.

Organization

Similar to the National Hockey League (NHL), the PWHL’s inaugural franchise group is known as the “Original Six,” and the locations were chosen in part because each had an existing NHL team and fan base. The PWHL expanded to eight teams beginning in its third season. The league’s twelve teams are:

Each team carries 23 players on its active roster. The PWHL’s first regular-season game was contested on January 1, 2024, pitting New York against Toronto.

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History and formation

The PWHL is the culmination of several years’ efforts to unify women’s ice hockey in North America. One antecedent organization, the Canadian Women’s Hockey League (CWHL), was founded in 2007 but folded in 2019 after failing to become financially sustainable. Another fledgling league, the National Women’s Hockey League (from 2021 the Premier Hockey Federation [PHF]), was formed in 2015. After the collapse of the CWHL, women’s hockey players formed the nonprofit Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association (PWHPA) to protest the lack of adequate pay and other working conditions in existing leagues and to advocate for the creation of a viable, economically secure future for the sport.

In 2022 the PWHPA partnered with Los Angeles Dodgers co-owner Mark Walter and his wife, Kimbra Walter, and former tennis star Billie Jean King to create a new professional women’s league. The PWHL was born in 2023, after the Walters purchased, and then dissolved, the PHF. The Walters are the majority owners of the PWHL and its teams, and King, a longtime champion of gender equality in sports who founded the Women’s Tennis Association in 1973, is a member of its board of directors.

A collective bargaining agreement between the PWHL and a players’ union was also announced from the outset. Among other items, the agreement ensures a pay scale for every team (with a $35,000 minimum salary in the inaugural season), housing and food stipends, and health insurance.

The NHL partners with the PWHL on marketing and consulting, but there is no financial relationship between the two leagues. A number of PWHL games have been held in NHL rinks, and several squads share home arenas with NHL teams.

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Schedule and rules

In the inaugural season, each team played a 24-game regular-season schedule that began in January and ended in May 2024. The second season expanded the slate of games to 30 contests and ran from November 2024 to May 2025, a format that was repeated in the third season. The top four teams qualify for the playoffs, which are made up of two rounds of best-of-five-game series. The champion receives the Walter Cup, the equivalent to the Stanley Cup in the NHL, and the best player of the regular season receives the Billie Jean King Most Valuable Player Award.

Although the PWHL’s game rules largely mirror those of the NHL, there are a number of notable exceptions. A “jailbreak” rule allows a team that is short one player because of a minor penalty to free that player from the penalty box if it scores a short-handed goal. In addition, the standings are determined differently: in the PWHL, teams receive three points for a win in regulation, two points for a win in overtime or in a shootout, and one point for an overtime or shootout loss.

Seasons, champions, and MVPs