PWHL Expanding to Vancouver For 2025-26 Season

The news everyone’s been waiting for is official: the PWHL is adding at least one more team for the 2025-26 season. They’re expanding their footprint to the West Coast, with the new club calling Vancouver home.

"Today is a great day for a city that passionately supports its teams," Jayna Hefford, PWHL Executive Vice President of Hockey Operations, said at a livestreamed press conference in Vancouver. "This expansion brings greater visibility to the West Coast, expands our geographic footprint, and most importantly, grows the game."

The team will call the Pacific Coliseum home for games, which holds 16,281 fans, and practice at the PNE Agrodome. Vancouver was the second city visited during the PWHL’s Takeover Tour this season, and they drew a tour-leading 19,308 fans.

"The Pacific Coliseum and Agrodome will be a first for us in the sense that we will be the primary tenant in this venue," Amy Scheer, PWHL Executive Vice President of Business Operations, said during the press conference. "For us, that's an extraordinary accomplishment to happen in our third year."

Pacific National Exhibition (PNE) CEO Shelly Frost spoke about her group's excitement and pride that the Pacific Coliseum will be the home of the PWHL in Vancouver.

"We are deeply honored to have the Pacific Coliseum, with its incredibly rich history of hockey in our province, be the new home for the PWHL expansion," Frost said. "Many of you were there and we all experienced the energy and the excitement at the PWHL Takeover Tour in January, and the PNE can't wait to welcome the league and its players."

The team colors are Pacific Blue and cream. They will operate as PWHL Vancouver until a permanent brand identity is announced, which no timeline was given for.

It has long been reported that the PWHL will expand to eight teams ahead of next season, but only Vancouver was announced today. Given the travel logistics, it's not a stretch to imagine the next team will also be on the West Coast, with heavy rumors pointing to Seattle as the other landing spot.

Much went into choosing Vancouver as the league's first expansion team. Scheer stated that the process started about eight months ago when a small group of PWHL staff members met with the PWHL's board to discuss the league's future. Once they decided what criteria they were looking for, they started in-depth conversations with cities across North American along with an extensive Request for Proposal (RFP) process. PNE, which is operated by the City of Vancouver and owns the land that holds the Coliseum and Agrodome, presented an "unbelievably robust response" for Vancouver, which Scheer said "floored" them. Outside of PNE's proposal and the draw of being a venue's primary tenant, Scheer pointed to the hockey community in Vancouver as a huge reason they chose it as their first expansion team.

"Obviously, coming here to the third-largest market in Canada [is] really important," Scheer said. "You've shown a remarkable commitment to growing the game of hockey. I think the last stat I saw from BC hockey was the girls and boys registration is just about 50/50, and that's huge. BC Hockey's efforts have been huge in growing the game, and we want to help build and continue that momentum that you already started. You have a vibrant and engaged corporate community, one that we think is inspired by sports and what happens in sports. I think you saw in that video and you saw it by our youth team here, your fan base is engaged. It's vibrant. It's fun. [There were] over 19,000 people at our game here. A fun fact as well is that out of all of our nine Takeover Tour games, the social engagement for the week of our game here was the highest of all the nine cities we played in."

Until now, Vancouver has been largely left out of the professional women's hockey picture. The Vancouver Griffins played one official season as part of the original NWHL (2002-03) and two exhibition seasons before that, but otherwise, no league has ventured that far. However, the sport has a long history in the area. The Vancouver Amazons, which first formed in 1918, were pioneers in women's hockey. They were part of the first organized international women's hockey tournament in 1921, during which they took on the Victoria Kewpies and Seattle Vamps in a six-game series.

"More than a century ago, not far from here, young women at Denman Arena fell in love with the speed, skill, and toughness of hockey," Hefford said. "They called themselves the Amazons. Fortunately, a few things have changed since then. Our uniforms are not long skirts anymore, but the passion and intensity remain the same. The PWHL is setting a new standard for women's hockey. The game has never been faster, more physical, or more skilled, and that's exactly why fans of all ages, genders, and backgrounds are so excited about the PWHL."

There will be an expansion draft this summer, the details of which will be announced "shortly" per Hefford. She later said that it will be followed by the entry draft, so look for it to happen sometime before June 24.

Overall, both Scheer and Hefford repeatedly expressed their gratitude for league's rapid growth and the warm welcome they have received in Vancouver.

"It's crazy that we're in our second season, we haven't even started the playoffs yet in our second season, and here we are," Scheer said. "I just can't emphasize enough that we do not take this for granted for a minute."