As the Montreal Victoire players gathered with reporters on Tuesday, everyone seemed to acknowledge the same reality: change was coming, and the same group wouldn’t be back next year.
It’s not unique to the Victoire, which lost to the Ottawa Charge in four games in the semifinals last week.
The league will hold an expansion draft to help build new teams in Seattle and Vancouver, which begin play next season. It means every team will lose stars, putting rosters across the league into a blender.
“Every time you lose in those big moments, it’s emotional,” Victoire captain Marie-Philip Poulin told CBC’s Jay Turnbull and other reporters gathered at locker clean out day on Tuesday. “You go through so much with your team as individuals. You want to do well for your team. It is very sad.”
WATCH | Montreal Victoire reflect on playoff loss, expansion:
As players cleaned out their lockers, they looked back on the 2024-25 PWHL season and what’s to come with the league’s expansion.
The expansion draft is set for at June 9 at 8:30 p.m. ET. Here’s how the process will work, how we got here and how it could affect teams and players.
The protection list
Each team will only be able to protect three players from expansion, to start. Those lists are due on June 3 at 12 p.m. ET.
It’s a tiny number, and one that seemed to send shock waves through team fan bases over the weekend.
The idea is to make sure Seattle and Vancouver can be competitive from the beginning. Parity has been a key pillar of the league since it launched, and that’s come with success. More than half of the league’s games have been decided by one goal or a shootout, and three teams finished tied in the points standings this season.
The league spent months working on these rules, executive vice president of hockey operations, Jayna Hefford, said ahead of Game 1 of the Walter Cup finals.
“It was really critical that we got it right because decisions like this do shape the future of the league,” she said. “For us, the priority is always about competitive balance.”
The league also negotiated with the players’ association throughout the process, as well as general managers, coaches, the league’s advisory board and others.
Hefford acknowledged on Tuesday that the rules may not be popular among fans of existing teams.
Only players who are under contract or team control next season have to be protected. That means pending free agents, like Toronto’s Natalie Spooner or Hannah Miller, for example, can’t be taken in the expansion draft.
The signing window
After the protection lists are submitted, the Seattle and Vancouver teams have a five-day window to speak with and potentially sign up to five unprotected players each. The expansion teams can also sign players who are on expiring contracts.
The idea, Hefford said, is to give players a bit more power over where they’re going to sign, especially if they think they could be selected in the expansion draft.
“It’s their decision at the end of the day, but we definitely had a little bit of an impact on what we thought was best for the players, especially in terms of free agents,” said Laura Stacey, who is the Victoire’s player representative on the players’ association.
Once a team has given up two players, either through the signing window or the draft itself, the team can protect a fourth player.
The negotiation window closes on June 8 at 5 p.m. ET.
Draft day – June 9
It’s not yet clear whether Seattle or Vancouver will select first, but both teams will alternate picks until they each reach 12 players.
If a team comes into the draft with more signed players than the other, then they may have extra picks to get to the magic 12 number.
The league has yet to name a general manager for Vancouver. Seattle will be built from scratch by Meghan Turner, who’s been the assistant general manager with the Boston Fleet for the last two seasons.
Terms of players’ salaries aren’t made public in the PWHL, but it’s safe to say the new teams can’t draft a team full of superstars and stay under the salary cap.
Still, there’s no doubt the process will end with existing teams having big holes in their lineups to fill.
For Montreal, it could undo what was a strong entry draft in 2024. The Victoire added defenders Cayla Barnes and Anna Wilgren, as well as rookie of the year nominee Jennifer Gardiner, who is from British Columbia.
“We are most probably going to lose some of those players that we drafted, we picked, we evaluated, we developed this year,” said Montreal GM Danièle Sauvageau, who added that her team hasn’t decided which three players to protect yet.
“But they’re going to be playing in this league and this is what we have to be proud of because at the end of the day, we are here to grow the league and we are here to build the market that is growing the league as well.”
The PWHL is a single-entity league, which means every team has the same owner. In other words, what helps make the expansion teams in Seattle and Vancouver successful will help lift the other six teams, too.
“It’s never fun to hear but again, it’s part of professional sport,” Poulin said about the prospect of losing teammates. “There’s two teams coming in. It’s exciting. There are going to be more women playing hockey.”
Anxiety and excitement
For players, especially those whose seasons have ended, the next two to three weeks are full of unknowns. Will they return to the same team next season? Or will they be moving across the country?
Until those questions are answered, players can’t make big life decisions, nor can general managers fully plan for the upcoming PWHL entry draft, which is set for June 24 in Ottawa.
For defender Erin Ambrose, who has a year remaining in her contract with the Victoire, it could mean leaving a city and team she has come to love and regard as family.
Like others around the league, she said she’s trying to focus on the bigger picture — the same way players did when they vowed not to play professionally until they could create a sustainable league, or when the PWHL launched in the summer of 2023 and players waited to see what the future would hold.
“There’s a lot of anxiety around it,” Ambrose said. “But I also am really excited because it means that our league is doing something good. It means that we are growing as a professional league. It’s an unfortunate situation because I would love to stay here, but it is out of my control.”