New York Sirens
Apart from the expansion teams who entered the 2026 PWHL expansion process with zero goalies, I don’t think there was a PWHL team where goaltending was more of a topic this off-season than the New York Sirens. Having lost Corinne Schroeder to the Seattle Torrent in the 2025 PWHL expansion process, Kayle Osborne took the keys to the crease. The 2024 PWHL entry draft pick got off to a great start for the Sirens this past season. She started the season off with a shutout in Ottawa. Then, by the time the Olympic break came, Osborne added two more shutouts.
There was concern about letting Schroeder go to Seattle, as Osborne had one PWHL season under her belt. Head coach Greg Fargo had zero hesitation in letting Osborne run with the job, though. Osborne started 15 of 16 games leading to the Olympic break. She posted a -0.660 Goals Saved Above Average, 0.937 even-strength SV%, and a 0.533 quality starts%.
Coming back to the PWHL post-Olympics, the Sirens as a whole struggled. A combination of puck luck, big mistakes, and injuries sent the Sirens on a tough path. Either way, by the time the season ended Osborne had finished with a -11.639 GSAA, 0.917 EVSV%, -0.504 GSAA/30, and 0.444 QS%. The numbers don’t look great, though her EVSV% is similar to Corinne Schroeder and Emerance Maschmeyer’s. Like I said, there are a lot of questions about what exactly happened post-Olympics for the Sirens.
Despite the numbers and post-Olympics crash, it’s clear Osborne has a lot of talent and a decently high ceiling. She made Team Canada and was a large part of New York’s success to start the season. Osborne also did help make a good push for the playoffs when New York’s season was on the line. Hamilton general manager Meghan Duggan clearly agreed that Osborne has a lot to offer despite the numbers. Duggan would go on to use one of five Phase Two spots on Osborne. For the second year in a row, the New York Sirens have lost their number one goalie to an expansion team. They are the only team to experience this.
This left the Sirens in a predicament. When the Sirens lost Schroeder they had Osborne with 10 games and 8 starts in her rookie campaign. There was at least a solid foundation of hope there that Osborne could take Schroeder’s spot, and she did. Due to injuries and riding Osborne’s early season high, Callie Shanahan was the most experienced goalie left on the roster. Shanahan finished the season with four games and three starts. Despite the narrative coming from media and fans that New York had to draft a goalie, Sirens general manager Pascal Daoust disagreed. It’s not hard to see why.
If you’ve read the Detroit section of this series, I go deeper into the decision Detroit general manager Manon Rhéaume took compared to Daoust. Rhéaume took Swiss star goalie Andrea Brändli at the top of the second round. Add in the signing of Alice Philbert, they will go into the season with zero PWHL experience in the goalie room barring a Sandra Abstreiter signing. Daoust, on the other hand, decided on going the other route. Rather than draft a goalie, he went for the best free agent goalie left in the PWHL: Elaine Chuli.
Chuli brings three seasons and 26 PWHL starts to the Sirens — not to mention the experience she racked up playing in the Canadian Women’s Hockey League, then the Premier Hockey Federation. Whether or not Rhéaume and Daoust want to be tied at the hip for their goaltending decisions, this is going to be a good case study in experience versus accolades. Brändli was very hyped up prior to the draft, and for good reason. She had just won Bronze at the Olympics and was named Olympic Top Goalie. Not to mention, she’s also had an excellent SDHL career to go with a very good international career.
It’s not as though Chuli has had a quiet career herself. She was excellent for the University of Connecticut and was great in the PHF. Chuli left the PHF with Goalie of the Year honours in 21/22 and won the last Isobel Cup in 2023. Even Chuli’s first year in the PWHL was fantastic. She led the league in GSAA (6.987), GSAA/30 (0.828), SV% (0.949), QS% (0.875), and that was all done in only eight games.
If Chuli was able to keep that momentum going there’d be zero concerns about this signing. It would look as though New York has completely replaced Osborne. But Chuli wasn’t able to keep up the momentum, and her numbers the past two seasons have been below average. In 24/25 she had a 0.500 QS%/-0.137 GSAA/30 and followed that up this past season with a 0.500 QS%/-0.894 GSAA/30. These numbers are concerning. However, Chuli is moving from two defence-first teams to a NY team that likes to play aggressive. We’ve seen goalies thrive when changing defensive environments and Chuli’s resume shows she is a talented goalie. There are worse bets to make in net than a goalie such as Chuli.
New York’s other hope in net is Callie Shanahan. Her stats, on face value, are going to give people pause. A 0.871 SV% pops out in the wrong way. With Shanahan you can kind of write off last season. I’ll say it again: she saw one start before the Olympic break and it wasn’t until January 20, which was 14 games into the season. The season is nearly half over before Shanahan got a start. There’s still a lot of hope and promise for Shanahan. She was in the Team USA national team development program, often attending summer development camps, and was great for Boston University. She was especially great her last year at BU, where she led an unlikely team to a Hockey East Championship.
I’ve been bereft to mention Kaley Doyle and that’s been on purpose. As of now it doesn’t look as though she’ll be getting a look in net. She can always surprise, though through three seasons now of the PWHL, if you’re the number three goalie don’t expect more than a start. When Shanahan was injured for parts of this season and Doyle was the number two goalie behind Osborne, Doyle still wasn’t given any playing time. That stretch happened post-Olympics, too — when you wouldn’t blame a coach for trying a different goalie for the sake of trying something new. Maybe Doyle has an amazing off-season, comes into camp, and steals a spot. Right now, though, all eyes and hopes are on Chuli/Shanahan.
Ottawa Charge
This feels as though it should be the easiest team to write about it, though maybe that makes it the hardest team to write about. What more is there to be said about Gwyneth Philips? She’s solidly the third best goalie in the PWHL. That’s not an insult when you consider the two goalies in front of her are Ann-Renée Desbiens and Aerin Frankel. These are the three goalies in the league who you can confidently put in any situation and expect them to be a top three goalie.
Philips has proven that immediately in two seasons thanks to the Dr. Jekyll/Mrs. Hyde identity of the Ottawa Charge. When Philips took over the net for Emerance Maschmeyer in the 2024/25 season, the Charge were playing legitimately great hockey. They were suffocating opponents and acting like a swarm of killer wasps. In the last 11 of 12 games Philips played to finish out the 24/25 season, she only saw 25.67 shots against/60. It’d be the 7th best shot suppression we’ve seen out of a team in PWHL history if Ottawa kept that up all season.
The Ottawa Charge found what Charge hockey meant in 24/25 and Philips thrived in that situation. In those last 11/12 games Philips posted a 0.923 SV% and a 0.778 QS%. Ottawa managing to make the playoffs when Philips is having a great run to end the season should not be too surprising. Add in the fact that Ottawa also scored 2.45 goals per game, which over the course of a full season would have landed them with the 7th best goal scoring performance in PWHL team history, the Charge were firing on all cylinders. Everything was working until the 2025 Walter Cup final.
Philips was rightfully given the keys to the crease coming into this season. Head coach Carla MacLeod had found the right buttons to push that turned Ottawa into a suffocating team. They’d skate all over and through you. With Philips it was a team that could make another run to the Final. The narrative was Philips went through a baptism of fire in 24/25. She took the number one spot and needed to play a notable part to save the season. If only she knew what was awaiting her this season.
The cohesive, tight play of Ottawa was absent for the vast majority of the season. It only happened to show up here and there throughout the season. Philips hit two milestones before any other goalie has hit one. The one milestone being the first goalie to see +700 shots against in a season. She’s the only goalie to do it. In the second last game of the season, the Boston Fleet helped Philips hit the +800 shots against mark. Philips started 28 games, saw 30.82 SA/60, and 844 shots against. It was the heaviest workload we’ve seen by a long shot in the PWHL so far.
It was a lot of quantity and quality shots against, making it surprising with the statline Philips finished the 2025/26 season with. In 28 starts Philips posted a 6.988 GSAA, 0.248 GSAA/30, 0.750 QS%, and 0.941 EVSV%. She is easily the third best goalie in the league with arguably the best case for a goalie for Most Valuable Player — and maybe even the best case out of everyone in the PWHL for regular season MVP. She didn’t even run out of gas until about five minutes in Game Four of the Walter Cup Final.
It’s hard to blame Ottawa fans who are confident about getting back to the playoffs no matter what the team in front of Philips does. It’s hard to imagine that MacLeod won’t ride Philips again. That looks to be about 25 starts, meaning there’s five starts up for grab between Sanni Ahola and Kendra Woodland.
For those who have watched international play for a couple of years now the idea of Ahola only getting into five games can seem ludicrous. Ahola has seen action in three IIHF World Championships, appearing in 13 games. This season you can add in an Olympic appearance, playing in four games. To further Ahola’s international resume, she was the starting goalie in two World bronze game wins and was named to the Worlds All-Star team in 2024. It’s not hard to see why a notable amount of people have faith in her being a good PWHL goalie.
There are two problems currently holding Ahola back from getting the opportunity many want to see her have. The first, of course, being that she’s behind Philips. When the goalie in front of you has been to back-to-back Walter Cup Finals, it’s going to be difficult taking games away from her. The other issue is that Ahola dealt with either injuries or illness, leading to her only getting two starts. When it’s Philips in front of you and last season you were only healthy enough to be given two starts, hard to justify significantly more ice time.
The upside is Ahola performed well in her two starts. She posted a 0.944 EVSV% in her first, then a 0.957 EVSV% in her second. I’ve mentioned Ahola’s international resume above — another plus. Lastly, Ahola’s NCAA hockey career went quite well. She finished with a 0.917 SV% while playing on, at best, the fifth best team in a conference with arguably three of the best teams in the NCAA. Should disaster strike there’s a level of confidence in Ahola having the talent to step in for Philips.
Whether that would lead to success would require the Ottawa Charge to play a lot better than they have this past season. There are not many goalies that could find the success that Philips did with the amount of games played that she had. That’s not so much a slight on Ahola or Woodland. It’s just that, should Ottawa play the same way they did last season, they’re going to need to heavily rely on Philips again. Ahola will get a handful of starts while Woodland sees some games as the number two. Success for Ottawa, though, is going to come off the back of either Philips or major improvement by the team. This should be a season where Ahola is able to experience what it’s like to be a healthy number two goalie.
