There’s a lot of news this week in the Professional Women’s Hockey League! Host Maya Smith jumps right in with news about the ninth PWHL expansion team, coming to Detroit next season.
Detroit is also hosting the PWHL Draft next season, which ties into the next big headline: changes to next year’s expansion process. Last year, when Seattle and Vancouver joined the league, there was an exclusive signing window where free agents could sign only with either Seattle or Vancouver. Next year, The Ice Garden has learned, it’s a little bit more complicated. The new system will involve five different phases, each with different rules about which players can sign with which team. Smith breaks it down in detail on the podcast, but the bottom line? This system will likely allow for increased player autonomy.
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“So there’s a lot of details here, a lot of phases, a lot of things that still need to be clarified,” Smith said. “But some of the things that you can take away from this is that there won’t be an expansion draft in the way we’ve seen it before, and that players will be given a lot more autonomy on where they go.”
The PWHL playoff picture
Later, Smith is joined by Minnesota Frost writer Reid Lemker and Boston Fleet writer Lydia Murray to talk about the Walter Cup semifinals match-ups between the Boston Fleet and Ottawa Charge and the Minnesota Frost and the Montréal Victoire. Both series are tied 1-1 heading into game three.
Boston and Ottawa, Murray said, are evenly matched.
“The only thing that I said ahead of the series that could give Boston an edge is their defensive structure, and it’s what gave them the edge in Game 1, but then it took a hit in Game 2, so I’m not convinced they could keep it up for all five games against this specific team, because the Charge just seemed to have them figured out,” Murray said. She went on to say that even though the Charge have just broken 20 shots on goal in each contest, they’ve still managed to score on Boston goalie Aerin Frankel — something that isn’t easy to do.
In the other series, Game 1 featured an offense-heavy 5-4 overtime victory for Minnesota, and Game 2 with an offense-absent 1-0 triple overtime win for Montréal.
“It’s a weird one,” Lemker said, adding that the Frost probably feel pretty good about the way they played for the majority of that second game.
“So it’s one of those things where, like Lydia said, small margins, you know, the puck goes in or it doesn’t,” they said.
Smith and the guests go on to discuss the Britta Curl-Salemme suspension and make predictions about the direction of each playoff series going into the weekend.
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