This week on The IX Sports Podcast Hockey Edition, host Maya Smith walks listeners through some big offseason updates. Then, Smith starts an off-season series where she will be joined by the beat reporter from the Ice Garden for each Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) team. This week, she starts off solo talking about the Vancouver Goldeneyes.
Poulin to undergo surgery
The Montreal Victoire announced last week that Marie-Philip Poulin will be undergoing surgery on her ACL and meniscus and will be out for the foreseeable future.
“We knew that she had some kind of injury. It happened at the Olympics, and it was re-aggravated in the playoffs, and that was a torn ACL and torn meniscus. So you can imagine that there is a long road to recovery, but recovery does seem to be the goal. There was no mention of retirement,” Smith said.
Recover from this type of surgery typically takes at least nine months — so don’t expect to see Poulin hitting the ice when the PWHL season starts in November.
Vancouver Goldeneyes
The Vancouver Goldeneyes had the first overall pick in the 2026 PWHL Entry Draft, selecting Caroline “KK” Harvey, a defender from the University of Wisconsin.
But what does the rest of their roster look like going into the very long PWHL offseason. It’s a little complicated, as Smith breaks down.
“It’s actually very lopsided, so they have a large chunk of forwards signed, and then they only have three defenders signed, and two goaltenders signed. One of the things that I think is an interesting detail here, which kind of affects the other things we’re going to talk about, is that teams can only have 19 players signed going into camp, and the Goldeneyes have 15 right now, so they have 10 forwards, 3 [defenders] and two goaltenders,” Smith explained.
Tune in to the podcast to hear Smith break down the roster as it currently stands and then discuss players who could re-join, join anew, or even leave the team going into next season.
Make sure to subscribe to The IX Sports Podcast for in-depth coverage of women’s soccer, hockey and basketball; and tune in each weekday morning for a quick overview of the biggest headlines on Women’s Sports Daily, like WNBA news and PWHL expansion updates.
