PWHL awards expansion franchises to Hamilton, Las Vegas for next season

This combo of images provided by the PWHL shows the badges for the league's new women's hockey teams in Las Vegas and Hamilton, Ontario. (PWHL via AP)

The Professional Women’s Hockey League added a Canadian team in Hamilton and also brought Las Vegas into the fold Wednesday.

Hamilton and Las Vegas join Detroit, announced last week, as the PWHL’s expansion clubs for the 2026-27 season. The league is expected to add one more team to reach 12 franchises after launching with six in 2024.

The PWHL’s stated plan was to expand by two to four teams for its fourth season.

Vancouver and Seattle joining last year made for an eight-team league. The original six teams are Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Boston, New York and Minnesota.

The PWHL operates under the single-entity ownership of TWG Global, whose founder, Mark Walter, financially backed the league’s creation and for whom the league’s championship trophy is named.

Since private or NHL team ownership of a PWHL team isn’t yet an option, the PWHL’s relationship with whoever controls the arena is a key piece of the expansion puzzle.

Hamilton’s team will play out of the recently renovated 18,000-seat TD Coliseum, which is also home to the National Lacrosse League’s Toronto Rock. Beginning next season, the arena will also be shared with the New York Islanders’ AHL affiliate, relocating from Bridgeport, Conn.

A neutral-site in Hamilton on Jan. 3 as part of the league’s Takeover Tour drew 16,012 to watch the Seattle Torrent beat the Toronto Sceptres 3-2 in a shootout. The league said 70 per cent of those in attendance had never previously attended a PWHL game.

The PWHL says 15 per cent of the league’s current players come from the Hamilton area.

“Hamilton and its surrounding communities have long been central to the growth of girls’ and women’s hockey, producing generations of talented players and passionate fans,” PWHL executive vice-president of hockey operations Jayna Hefford said in a statement Wednesday.

“This is a region with deep hockey roots, and the response we saw during our Takeover Tour game at TD Coliseum made it clear that fans in the region are ready to rally around a team of their own.”

Names and logos of the expansion teams will be unveiled at a later date. Hamilton’s jerseys will be gold, maroon and cream.

Gold was chosen to complement the colours of the CFL’s Hamilton Tiger-Cats and the former Hamilton Tigers of the NHL from 1920 to 1925. Maroon pays homage to the colour of aged steel in a city known as “Steeltown.”

Ontario will host the most PWHL teams of any state or province with three next season. Detroit is just across the border from Windsor, Ont.

Another professional women’s sports team in Ontario — the WNBA’s Toronto Tempo — played its first game last week at Coca-Cola Coliseum.

“It’s an exciting time for women’s sports in Ontario, and bringing a new PWHL team to Hamilton is a major milestone for the game, for this city, and for our province,” said Neil Lumsden, Ontario’s minister of sport and MPP for Hamilton East-Stoney Creek, in a statement.

“With Ontario now home to three PWHL teams, this expansion reflects the growing momentum behind women’s sport, and this new Hamilton team will help inspire the next generation of athletes and create more opportunities for girls and young women to pursue a career competing in professional sport.”

Of the 27 neutral-site games the PWHL held in its first three seasons, none were in Las Vegas.

The women’s team there will share T-Mobile Arena with the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights.

The PWHL states that since the Golden Knights arrived in Nevada in 2017, youth and hockey participation has grown by 600 per cent in the state.

“While professional women’s hockey may be new to the market, we know Las Vegas is ready to welcome and champion a PWHL team of its own,” said PWHL executive vice-president of business operations Amy Scheer.

Colours for the southwestern U.S. team will be green and gold.

“We do need to geographically expand past the northeast and the north in general,” Scheer said. “So that’s part of the plan as we start to branch out: What are the right markets that make sense to obviously become a little bit more geographically diverse.”

With San Jose, California, and Denver in the running to become the next expansion market, the PWHL would be in a position to break off into either two six-team conferences or three four-team divisions based on geographical proximity.

The PWHL staged Takeover Tour games to build audiences and test potential markets.

Half of this season’s 16 Takeover Tour games were played in Canada, including a pair of games in both Edmonton and Halifax. Calgary, Quebec City and Winnipeg also hosted games.

Three neutral-site games in Edmonton over the past two seasons were the most in a Canadian market. Announced attendance at each of the two Rogers Place games this season was just under 11,000.

Two games at the smaller Scotiabank Centre in Halifax were declared sellouts at just under 10,500 each.

Quebec City’s game was attended by 14,624 at Centre Vidéotron.

Winnipeg’s was a sold-out 15,225 at Canada Life Centre. Calgary drew 16,150 to Scotiabank Saddledome on April 1.

Arena availability factored into the PWHL’s decision-making, with several markets ruled out because of scheduling conflicts.

With files from the Associated Press.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 13, 2026.

Donna Spencer, The Canadian Press