If you haven’t yet checked out part one, featuring the Boston Fleet and PWHL Detroit, make sure to do so!
PWHL Hamilton
As mentioned in the Boston Fleet section of this piece, 2026 PWHL Coach of the Year Kris Sparre can almost make any goalie look very good. I’m sure that if I played a game, I’d let in half the goals I normally would behind a Sparre-coached team. It’d still be a lot of goals, but it’d be half of a lot. If you’re a goalie who likes seeing your team create lots of offence, then Sparre isn’t the coach for you. If you’re a goalie who wants to see your numbers explode, then seeing Sparre behind your bench is great news.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Aerin Frankel and Abbey Levy had, by far, their best PWHL seasons of their careers yet. That should make Kayle Osborne, Emma-Sofie Nordström, and an unannounced camp invite or two very excited. It turns a goaltending room of questions into one where you throw out history and just look at the talent and how those goalies would fit into a Sparre system. In the case of Osborne and Nordström, it looks obvious that Hamilton general manager Meghan Duggan listened to Sparre’s needs.
Kayle Osborne
I’m sure Sparre would love a surefire top-two goalie like he had in Frankel. However, that goalie wasn’t available. Instead, he gets Team Canada’s Olympics number-three goalie Kayle Osborne. To go along with Osborne is Team Denmark’s number-one goalie Emma-Sofie Nordström. They could even add the elusive free agent Sandra Abstrieter in camp. That’d truly make it truly a goalie room of Sparre’s ideal goalies.
They’re the best fits for a Sparre team that aren’t just other Frankels. Sparre wants goalies that can handle a north-south-type game with little east-west play and not much chaos. That’s what makes Osborne such a great pick-up by Hamilton. Osborne is clearly skilled despite the post-Olympics numbers, and she didn’t make Team Canada by accident. Osborne should thrive on Hamilton with Sparre’s coaching and the blueline in front of her. There’ll be a lot of rush chances exchanged, as they did with Boston last season. So, Duggan gave Sparre the roster needed to give Osborne her ideal environment.
Emma-Sofie Nordström (and Sandra Abstreiter too!)
Emma-Sofie Nordström’s standing at 5’ 10”. She’s posted a career NCAA save percentage (SV%) of 0.933, while having zero NCAA seasons below a 0.930 SV%. This looks like Duggan giving Sparre a better-on-paper version of Amanda Thiele. I don’t think it’s a secret that Sparre likes himself some goalies who literally stand tall in net. Thiele and Levy were over 5’ 9”. Osborne is about 5’ 9” and plays tall. This might be the best fit for Sandra Abstreiter, who stands at 5’ 11” and plays a very strong positional game.
From the forwards to the blueline to the goaltenders, I don’t think Sparre could ask for a more ideal roster from Duggan. The strength of the goaltending room (or potential goaltending room) is that it’s looking like it’ll be all Sparre-type goalies. There is the legitimate concern about Nordström being the number two behind a goalie who hasn’t proven herself able to handle the workload of a top-three goalie. Ideally, Osborne only starts 20 games. Odds are against Nordström getting 10 starts. She’s coming from the NCAA, and Sparre’s reluctant to not play his best goalie a lot. Getting Abstreiter would go a long way to creating a goaltending room that can handle Osborne getting only 20 starts or fewer.
If you’ve noticed I’ve named Sparre a lot in this section. It’s not a coincidence. Sparre is among a select group of coaches where the goaltending results are influenced by his defensive systems. Osborne is a talented goalie who most likely would have done well anywhere she went this year. Her numbers are going to receive a boost, though I doubt she gets anywhere else, except for one or two other teams. It’s been one season of Sparre, but until someone proves they can break his defence, count on him and his goalies to make life frustrating.
PWHL Las Vegas
While it’s understandable that fans of established PWHL teams were unhappy with expansion, I enjoy it. I find it very interesting because of the insight you gain. PWHL expansion rules are essentially an expansion general manager’s dream. Teams can only protect three players to start with. That leaves a lot of talent available for general managers to create the team in their image. There’s not many obstacles for general managers to put their team building philosophy to the test. PWHL expansion is the key to how these general managers think about hockey.
For Las Vegas general manager Dominque Didia, it appears her line of thinking about the goaltending position is a mix of new and old. The old-school thinking is that you need a surefire number-one goalie who can do that wherever they go. The new-school thinking is that goaltending is often a product of the team. Therefore, it’s best to build up a strong team before investing in goaltending. Another way to look at it is: why invest in goaltending when, apart from about three goalies, you’re going to be getting around the same kind of results?
Nicole Hensley
When we hit Phase Two of the expansion process, two of the four expansion teams took goalies. LV was not one of them and instead opted for five skaters. It wasn’t until Phase Three that Didia went for arguably the best goalie available in Nicole Hensley. This is where we see that new- and old-school thinking come into contact with each other. Didia wanted who she believed to be some of the best skaters available. They would impact the game more than your average goalie would. Her focus in Phase Two was to build key pieces up front to make it easier for whichever goalie is in net.
Why not just forgo taking Hensley at all and continue building up front? There’s a calculus to be done when comparing skater impact to goalie impact. For PWHL Detroit, that calculus was that they could get a goalie in the draft who they have faith in, providing an impact that matches the average PWHL number one goalie. With PWHL Hamilton, the calculations said that to get acceptable goaltending, they needed a goalie among their top five signings. For PWHL Las Vegas, the calculus told them they needed a goalie who had the ability to carry the number-one load. However, their calculations also said that they don’t need to rush for a goalie.
There are fair concerns about Hensley being the goalie currently tasked with being the number one. In 2024, Hensley posted good numbers with a 0.714 Quality Starts %. She was also the goalie who outlasted Aerin Frankel in the 2024 Walter Cup Final. Since then, Hensley’s career has been on a slide. Her QS% went from a 0.545 in the 2024-25 season to 0.462 this past season. Hensley also went from being the number-two goalie for Team USA to being off the roster completely. The cherry on top is that Rooney completely took over the number-one role in the playoffs in 2026. They have swapped consistently in the two previous playoff runs.
This is why Didia went out and grabbed three very good blueliners in Phase Two. Erin Ambrose, Mae Batherson, and Kendall Cooper together are a good starting point for a blueline. Having them also makes it easier to live with Hensley behind them. Hensley is still a talented goalie, which means that however unlikely it might be now at the age of 32, there’s still a moderately high ceiling in the right circumstances. It’s just a question if Didia has brought together the right team with the right coach to create those circumstances.
Saskia Maurer
Should circumstances not create the environment Hensley needs to succeed (thereby continuing her career’s slide to her career), Dida drafted Saskia Maurer as the next goalie up. The Swiss national team goalie is a complete wild card. She had a decent two-year run in the NCAA with St. Thomas. The top Swiss women’s league doesn’t have numbers, but we can see that Maurer is the three-time Goalie of the Year and has a championship. Her IIHF World Hockey Championship numbers, with a career 0.892 SV%, aren’t confidence-inducing.
The hope you’ll see from people is that her performance from the Olympics carries over. Maurer was fun to watch at the Olympics, as Andrea Brändli took time returning to the net. If you had watched the Canada versus Switzerland game (or even seen the chatter around it), you’d know the public loves Maurer. The question of course is always: how is that going to translate to the PWHL?
It’s probably fair to say that expecting much of Maurer this year is putting too much pressure on her. She’s spent the last three seasons in the Swiss top women’s league, which isn’t a bad league. However it’s also not a league that is a small step away from the PWHL. And yes, Maurer has played against the best competition internationally. She’s the number-two goalie on Switzerland, though, and sees two to three starts a tournament. Not much consistent action there. Throwing her to the wolves in the PWHL leaves a low probability for success. Not a zero percent chance, but about what you’d expect from your average number-two goalie at best.
In terms of question marks in net, Las Vegas is in the upper echelon of the league for taking a risk with their goaltending. Hensley is looking for a bounce-back year, Maurer (you hope) doesn’t need to take on more than the number two role, and whoever is the number-three goalie won’t matter in the grand scheme of the season most likely. This is why Didia has focused so much on building up the roster in front of her goalie room. She’s noticed that even teams with good-to-great goaltending aren’t guaranteed a playoff spot. Good-enough goaltending and a very good roster has so far been the better bet in the PWHL.
