PDRD returns as a team-by-team recap of the past week of PWHL action, now moved over from its former home on Rinksiders. This year, it will be formatted as a PWHL power ranking and will include an outside-the-box stat for each team! Here’s how they’re all looking on paper heading into the 2025–26 season.

8. Boston Fleet

The Fleet sustained heavy losses at every position, through expansion or otherwise. Up front, Hilary Knight and Hannah Bilka are off to the Seattle Torrent, as is Amanda Pelkey in a front office role after retiring.

Jessica DiGirolamo, Sidney Morin, and Emma Greco departed the Boston blueline via free agency, while Emily Brown and Sydney Bard were snagged in the expansion draft.

In goal, Klára Peslarová and Emma Söderberg both left for a larger opportunity in the SDHL ahead of an Olympic year. Even behind the bench, former head coach Courtney Kessel is now taking up that mantle at Princeton.

Even though they made many moves to address this, not many of the Fleet’s additions outside the top of their draft class inspire confidence that they’ll move the needle the same way as those they’re replacing. For Boston to have a chance this season, they’ll need said draft class to quickly adjust to the pro level, and likely for Chloé Aurard-Bushee to find the chemistry she had with Alina Müller at Northeastern again. At the very least, they did manage to retain Susanna Tapani, who is always a treat to watch.

Nat’s Stat: Of Boston Fleet draftee Ella Huber’s 48 points in her senior season at the University of Minnesota, 40 of them consisted of goals and primary assists. Her 83.33% primary point rate is the highest among the top ten draft picks, with the next closest being veteran Michelle Karvinen’s 82.86% with Frölunda HC of the SDHL.

7. Minnesota Frost

Starting the season off with a hot take to rival the cold of the Frost, the two-time defending champs’ offseason was rough, to say the least. Morin and Kendall Cooper are good additions on the blueline, but stepping into the void left by Sophie Jaques and Claire Thompson is a very tall order. Losing their ability to control possession will lead to more time in their own end, which isn’t an exciting prospect given that Minnesota’s inconsistent goaltending is unchanged from last season.

The forward depth also took a pretty sizable hit. Michela Cava and Denisa Křížová were key pieces of their titles, and they got a lot more out of a rookie Brooke McQuigge than expected. The Frost will be in tough after only squeaking into the dance last season, but with how Taylor Heise looked next to Abbey Murphy at the Rivalry Series, though, missing the playoffs might not be the worst thing in the world?

Nat’s Stat: In her last two seasons with PWHL Montréal and the SDHL’s SDE, Minnesota Frost camp invitee Madison Bizal had a 0.16 points per game rate in the regular season. In 11 combined postseason games, that number more than doubled to 0.36.

6. Ottawa Charge

I’m not particularly sold on either of last year’s finalists, but I’m more willing to bet on the team with a better foundation in net. Gwyneth Philips and Sanni Ahola make up arguably the best goaltending tandem in the league this season. The questions start to roll in when looking at who’s in front of them.

The most striking aspect of Ottawa’s roster construction is a distinct lack of signed right-shot defenders, but Ashton Bell has been the only one of those in team history. They’ve operated like this for a while, and I’m not worried.

The forwards, on the other hand, are a concern. There’s a distinct lack of centre depth, and the most obvious move to address it would be to break up the Clark-Hughes-McMahon line that was so good for Ottawa down the stretch. They need so many things to go right, like Kateřina Mrázová staying healthy, Brianne Jenner and Élizabeth Giguère proving they’re more than what they showed last year, and especially Anna Shokhina and Fanuza Kadirova making good on the faith put into them. Lightning already struck once last season, and I’m not sure it will happen again for the Charge.

Nat’s Stat: Last season, two defenders in the entire NCAA recorded at least four assists while also having more goals than helpers. Both of those defenders happen to be present at Ottawa Charge training camp: Cornell’s Rory Guilday and Yale’s Vita Poniatovskaia.

5. Toronto Sceptres

I get it. When you have the opportunity to trade for Ella Shelton without subtracting from your current roster, you don’t let it go by. All I’m saying is the Sceptres passed up their last chance to properly address their issues down the middle in doing so. Adding Shelton to a blueline already featuring Renata Fast, Savannah Harmon, Allie Munroe, and Kali Flanagan feels like stylistic overkill, and Casey O’Brien would look real nice at 2C right about now.

The goaltending is a question mark, but it was always going to be given how the playoffs went last season. Toronto held on to the best they had in Raygan Kirk, and the addition of Elaine Chuli makes for a tandem where either could feasibly run with the 1A position. This team is very hard to get a read on, and they’re liable to move much higher or lower than their current ranking quite quickly.

Nat’s Stat: Toronto Sceptres draft pick Sara Hjalmarsson has 13 points in 16 games with Linköping HC in the SDHL, who had scored 29 goals as a team at the time of her departure for training camp. Hjalmarsson’s 44.8% involvement rate is second in the league, only to Brette Pettet, who has one more point than Hjalmarsson on a Djurgårdens team that scored one more goal than Linköping in one more game played.

4. New York Sirens

After an incredibly active draft day, the Sirens are nearly unrecognizable from past years. Less than half of the training camp roster consists of players returning from last season. It’s clear that the front office doesn’t want a repeat of the last two seasons, and they’re willing to take risks to prevent that.

New York’s performance depends on their rookies shoring up the offence and Kayle Osborne being able to handle a starter’s workload, and with three of the first five forwards selected in June and Osborne coming off a Rivalry Series appearance, it certainly looks promising. Maintaining a strong defence through the expansion process and also having someone named Sarah Fillier has the Sirens in a good spot overall for the time being.

Nat’s Stat: New York Sirens unsigned draft pick Makenna Webster finished her field hockey season at Ohio State with 19 goals and 45 points. Her next closest teammate had five and 12, respectively.

3. Montréal Victoire

Montréal is in the best position of any of the Inaugural Six teams after expansion, and it’s largely to do with their free agent class. Hayley Scamurra, Shiann Darkangelo, Jade Downie-Landry and Jessica DiGirolamo are quite the haul, and maintaining Alexandra Labelle despite all the forwards they had under team control at the time was one of the more subtly shocking moves of the offseason.

The big three of Marie-Philip Poulin, Laura Stacey, and Ann-Renée Desbiens remain intact, while Nicole Gosling and Natálie Mlýnková easily slot into the places of Cayla Barnes and Jenn Gardiner. Barring injury or other unforeseen circumstance, they should be back in the playoffs, but as Victoire fans have likely heard all offseason, it’s all about what they do when they get there.

Nat’s Stat: Montréal’s draft class had a collective increase of two points between 2023–24 and 2024–25 in the NCAA. Nicole Gosling and Maya Labad had the same point total as the year prior, Natálie Mlýnková had one more, Skylar Irving had two less, and Tamara Giaquinto had three more.

2. Seattle Torrent

Seattle was built with defence in mind, which is a wild sentence for a team whose first moves in team history included bringing in Hilary Knight and Alex Carpenter. From snagging half the Victoire’s blueline to taking Aneta Tejralová with their first pick in the expansion draft, the Torrent are solid top to bottom in front of a very good goalie tandem of Corinne Schroeder and Hannah Murphy.

As alluded to earlier, the higher end of their offence is incredible, but the depth raises a lot of concerns, especially if Julia Gosling and Danielle Serdachny play more like their last season’s selves instead of what their draft pedigree would imply. Seattle might be able to keep their opponent off the scoresheet, but it’s got to get on the board itself if it wants to get somewhere.

Nat’s Stat: Seattle Torrent draft pick Jada Habisch has never had a season with more assists than goals, dating all the way back to 2016–17, and this remains true even when separately considering playoff runs. The closest she’s been was an equal number of goals and assists in her freshman year with the University of Connecticut (5–5–10).

1. Vancouver Goldeneyes

What can I say that hasn’t been said already? This team has been a contender since the announcement of Sophie Jaques and Claire Thompson’s contracts, and a Walter Cup favourite since the first day of free agency. Their draft class included a future hall-of-famer in Michelle Karvinen and a dream depth player in Maddy Samoskevich, among others. On paper, no one else is all that close. The key words there, though, are “on paper.”

Maybe they take a while to gel as a team and start slow. Maybe the bunch of forwards with high shooting percentages last year that the Goldeneyes have collected come back down to earth. Maybe they succumb to the apparent curse of the first-place team getting ousted in round one of the playoffs. Maybe… I’m really trying here, okay?

Nat’s Stat: Vancouver’s signings on the first day of unrestricted free agency had a combined 75 points last season. The entire rest of the league’s signings had 99.