Former Boston Fleet captain Hilary Knight is now a member of expansion PWHL Seattle.
Are these all-star squads or expansion teams? After last Monday’s first-ever PWHL Expansion Draft, it was hard to tell.
But since the PWHL is a single-owner league that has successfully prioritized parity across its franchises, the league’s newest teams are being built with the goal of making them immediately competitive. With only so much talent to go around, that comes at a cost to the six original squads, and has caused heartbreak among those fanbases.
Both PWHL Seattle and PWHL Vancouver took advantage of an exclusive signing window to ink five big-name players to their rosters. Each then added seven more names in the expansion draft.
When all was said and done, Seattle general manager Meghan Turner had basically set the top of her forward group, with U.S. national team stars Hannah Bilka, Alex Carpenter and Hilary Knight supported by Canadians Julia Gosling, Danielle Serdachny and Jessie Eldridge.
“We got the first two lines, I feel like, pretty solid,” Turner said.
After spending the last two seasons as the assistant general manager in Boston, Turner had a front-row opportunity to watch Knight, the current U.S. national team captain, Olympic gold medalist and all-time record holder for most medals at the women’s world championship (10 gold, five silver). The 35-year-old has announced that her fifth Olympics in Italy in 2026 will be her last, but the opportunity to help build PWHL Seattle was irresistible for the Idaho native — and Turner is thrilled to have her.
“Hilary is a superstar in every way, right?” she said. “The way she plays, the way she carries herself in the locker room, the way she carries herself outside the rink — she’s really got it all. I think she oozes leadership from a hockey perspective. But also, I’m excited for her to to be part of the Seattle community. I think it’s going to be a really good fit for her. She’s going to do so well, and I think she’s going to fit right in with a lot of the big names that already exist in Seattle.”
Turner’s first 12 players also includes California-born defender Cayla Barnes and goaltender Corinne Schroeder.
In Vancouver, GM Cara Gardner Morey placed a stronger emphasis on defense. She scooped up both Claire Thompson and Sophie Jaques from the blue line of the Walter Cup champion Minnesota Frost, then added Ottawa Charge defender Ashton Bell with the first-overall pick in the draft.
“I was a defender, and I really think it’s such a valuable position,” Gardner Morey said. “Finding the right ‘D’ and having a great core — one through eight — is what makes championship teams.”
Up front, Gardner Morey’s marquee signing was 2022 Olympics leading scorer Sarah Nurse, one of the most high-profile and marketable players in the women’s game.
After rookie Gwyneth Philips seized the net in Ottawa and was named 2025 playoff MVP in a losing cause, Gardner Morey snagged the Charge’s original starter and Canadian national team regular Emerance Maschmeyer as her No. 1 netminder. But rather than fill out her forward ranks with offensive stars in the expansion draft, Gardney Morey placed her emphasis on lower-profile players.
PWHL salaries are not publicly disclosed, but many of Gardner Morey’s selections likely carry relatively low price tags. As she reminded the media, roster building is far from complete and salary-cap space will be a valuable commodity.
“We had five great signings initially that we really, really loved,” Gardner Morey said Monday. “The next priority was finding some of those undervalued players that were truly outperforming where their analytics and metrics should have been. For me, that’s a great type of player that’s always proving others wrong in a way — that’s outperforming and and outworking other teams. We kind of went with that, and then managing the cap. So we still have a little bit of money to go into free agency, which is the next phase of this.”
The PWHL is not using the term ‘free agency’ to describe the next roster-building phase, which begins on Monday, June 16 at 9 a.m. ET. They’re calling it a signing period for players on expiring contracts. On Friday, the league announced that trades will also be permitted in this window, including the trading of draft picks.
The signing period will extend through June 27 — which includes the 2025 Entry Draft, scheduled for June 24 in Ottawa. It will open again on July 8.
The PWHL’s inaugural six squads each lost four players in the expansion process. They all have holes to fill — but those losses also opened up cap space. Starting Monday, expect to see the inaugural six teams being aggressive when re-stocking their rosters or retaining important players.
Per the teams’ roster breakdowns at The Ice Garden, the long list of players on expiring contracts includes notable players like forwards Hannah Miller, Michela Cava and 2024 PWHL MVP Natalie Spooner, defender Melissa Channell-Watkins and goaltender Maddie Rooney.
On Friday, the league also revealed the final details for the 2025 entry draft. It features 199 eligible players from 15 countries, including 115 who played NCAA Div. I hockey last season.
After 42 players were selected over seven rounds in 2024, this year’s draft will see 48 players chosen over six rounds, thanks to the addition of the two new teams. Vancouver and Seattle will choose seventh and eighth, respectively, in Round 1, then will switch spots with each other for each subsequent round.
And while the PWHL expansion draft process is new to everyone this year, expect it to become old hat very soon. The PWHL’s 2025 expansion process may be its first, but it is not expected to be the last. The league hopes to continue to grow aggressively in future years.
