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By the end of the Professional Women’s Hockey League Expansion Draft it was clear that any list of winners and losers would be topped by the two new teams themselves.Based on the star power added during the five-day signing period and the additional elite talent drafted on Monday night, Seattle and Vancouver are – before even playing a single game – legitimate contenders.
The PWHL was determined to help its newest franchises stock themselves as well as they could with rules that heavily favored the expansion teams over its original six franchises. And both general managers — Cara Gardner Morey in Vancouver and Meghan Turner in Seattle — did just that.
Nine Olympians, five first-round picks and five major award finalists over the league’s first two seasons were either drafted or signed by Seattle and Vancouver.
They’re the obvious winners here, as well as women’s hockey fans on the West Coast who will get to watch these teams hit the ice in 2025-26. The PWHL’s original six teams, meanwhile, have lost … a lot.
But that would make for a pretty boring list. So with the expansion draft complete, here are some of the biggest winners and losers (beyond the obvious) of the last week of roster building.
Winners
Danielle Serdachny
With just two goals and eight points, Serdachny, it’s fair to say, had a rookie season in Ottawa that fell short of the lofty expectations put on the No. 2 pick in the 2024 PWHL Draft, who some even thought could have been drafted No. 1 over Sarah Fillier.
Initially playing in Ottawa’s top-six, Serdachny moved down the lineup until she stuck on the fourth-line, playing as little as seven minutes in a playoff game against Minnesota.
When the Charge — which protected forward Emily Clark, defender Ronja Savolainen and goalie Gwyneth Philips — left Serdachny unprotected, she signed one of the five cornerstone contracts with Seattle. In a press release, Turner said Serdachny is “only beginning to tap into her full potential,” and is a “tremendous addition to our group.”
In a news conference last week, Serdachny made it clear she was looking forward to the change.
“This fresh start will be really, really good for me and a new opportunity to play under a new staff and with new teammates,” she said.
Turner has already referred to Serdachny as a top-six forward for the new club, where she could pencil in with other young, skilled forwards in Julia Gosling and Jessie Eldridge. Serdachny had a standout career at Colgate University – where she’s the all-time leading scorer in program history – and has found a consistent role on Team Canada.
She struggled in Ottawa, but there’s definitely more to give. Even Ottawa GM Mike Hirshfeld knows that.
“I’m sure she’ll be incredible and dynamic in Seattle,” he said in an interview with the Ottawa Citizen. “I’m sure we’ll be really upset that we lost her.”
Erin Ambrose
Ambrose was very open about her desire to stay in Montreal, and her anxiety that she might be on the move through the expansion draft process.
“I’d love to stay here,” she said during Montreal’s final media availability last month. “But it’s out of my control.”
If Ambrose was available in the draft, she’d have been a no-brainer selection. She was the 2024 Defender of the Year and actually improved on the defensive side of the puck this season.
But with Cayla Barnes signing in Seattle and Jennifer Gardiner signing in Vancouver, Montreal was able to protect Ambrose with its fourth (and final) protection slot. The Victoire will be better for it next season, especially with the additional loss of defender Anna Wilgren, Barnes’ most frequent defense partner, who was taken in the draft by Seattle.
But the big winner is Ambrose, who gets to stay in Montreal, where she’s played since 2018 in the now-defunct Canadian Women’s Hockey League.
Grace Zumwinkle and Minnesota’s top-six
Like Ambrose, Zumwinkle is among the winners of the night because she gets to stay put. Unlike Ambrose, however, Zumwinkle was not protected at all throughout the expansion process.
After Minnesota lost Claire Thompson and Sophie Jaques in the signing window, the team protected rookie forward Britta Curl-Salemme with its fourth slot, leaving Zumwinkle available in the draft.
Perhaps her injury history, down season, or a potentially lofty contract was a deterrent for Seattle and Vancouver. Still, at her best, Zumwinkle is a strong power forward who can thrive in the PWHL’s physical game and score goals in the dirty areas of the ice. She was seventh in league scoring last season, third in goals, and won Rookie of the Year over 2023 first-overall pick Taylor Heise.
Protecting Curl-Salemme over Zumwinkle was a gamble that Minnesota ultimately won. While the back-to-back champions lost two Defender of the Year finalists, the Frost can at least run back a pretty similar forward group next season — with Kendall Coyne Schofield, Heise, Curl-Salemme, Zumwinkle and Kelly Pannek.
Brooke McQuigge — who finished fifth on the team with eight goals — is a loss, but if Zumwinkle can get healthy and find her game again that should lessen the blow at the top of the forward lineup. Zumwinkle, meanwhile, will get to remain in her home state, where she’s played hockey her entire career.
The Toronto depth chart
Relatively speaking, the Toronto Sceptres look OK.
Yes, the team lost a star in Sarah Nurse and its top-three draft picks from last year’s draft. But every single team lost elite players over the last week and, for Toronto, it could have been worse.
The Sceptres still have their MVP candidate and No. 1 defender Renata Fast, captain Blayre Turnbull and star forward Daryl Watts, who led the team in scoring last season. Only Marie-Philip Poulin — the best player in the world — has more career points in the PWHL than Watts, who also ranks third in all time goals behind Poulin and Natalie Spooner.
Emma Maltais — a fan favorite — was protected on Monday night after Gosling was selected, which feels like a win for Toronto, despite the loss of a potential top-six power forward.
Beyond losing Megan Carter — a local, shutdown defender — Toronto’s blue line was untouched, leaving the Sceptres with its top pair (Fast and Savannah Harmon) intact, Allie Munroe under contract and a spot open for Kali Flanagan to re-sign. Their goalie depth chart — Kristen Campbell and Raygan Kirk — is unchanged as well, though I wonder if the team will look for more consistency than Campbell has provided.
Losing Nurse hurts, but GM Gina Kingsbury should have some cap space available to re-sign Spooner and Hannah Miller, should they choose to stay, and try to grab a top defender when free agency opens on June 16.
Don’t get me wrong, the Sceptres lost a lot — including skilled winger Izzy Daniel — but they might be the most well-equipped of the original six teams to perform well next season.
Losers
Ottawa’s blue line
It’s hard to imagine a worse start to the expansion draft for the Ottawa Charge with the first two selections coming from the team’s top-four. Ashton Bell, maybe Ottawa’s best defender in the PWHL Finals, was taken first by Vancouver. When Seattle was on the clock, it took Aneta Tejralová, a solid, two-way second pair defender.
The bright side was that teams weren’t able to take any more players from the Charge after the first two selections. The damage was already done with two immediate hard hits to a team that already lost a star goalie (Emerance Maschmeyer) and an elite young talent (Serdachny).
Save for Serdachny, Ottawa’s forward group looks fine with Clark, captain Brianne Jenner and Gabbie Hughes all under contract. If Ottawa can re-sign top winger Tereza Vanišová and center Shiann Darkangelo, it could largely return the forward group that made the PWHL Finals this season. However, Ottawa currently only has two defenders under contract, Ronja Savolainen and 37-year-old Jocelyne Larocque, who just lost her d-partner in Bell.
If the team cannot re-sign free agents Zoe Boyd and Jincy Roese, one of the team’s legitimate strengths — depth on defense — is going to turn into an issue very quickly.
The New York Sirens
The New York Sirens finished last in the PWHL standings two years in a row, and just lost their No. 1 center, starting goalie, a top line winger and a depth center.
Sure, they have the No. 1 pick in the entry draft later this month, and didn’t lose a single defender to expansion. But the Sirens roster is looking pretty grim, with star forward Sarah Fillier — who GM Pascal Daoust still needs to convince to stick around long-term — left with a supporting cast of forwards who just haven’t been good enough.
New York’s remaining forwards — Abby Roque, Noora Tulus, Elle Hartje, Emmy Fecteau and Paetyn Levis — combined for 12 goals last season, fewer than Fillier’s own goal total and just one more than Carpenter, who was made available to sign in Seattle.
Letting Eldridge go unprotected — in favor of defender Maja Nylén Persson with the fourth slot — was almost just as confounding, considering Eldridge is top-10 in all-time PWHL scoring, and has played well on a line with Fillier.
Perhaps Daoust was looking to do a major reset of the roster after two disappointing seasons. But it’s hard to imagine the Sirens digging out of the basement anytime soon.
Danielle Marmer
In an expansion draft with no shortage of tough decisions, perhaps no general manager was put in a worse position than Marmer, who was forced to choose between the future of the Boston organization and one of the best women’s hockey players of all time.
We know now that Marmer opted for the former, protecting forward Alina Müller over captain Hilary Knight, who signed with Seattle on Wednesday night. As shocking as it was to see Knight unprotected, it was a completely defensible decision, given Knight will turn 36 this summer and likely carries one of the league’s larger cap hits.
That Marmer had to make that decision at all speaks volumes about how unforgiving the PWHL’s expansion rules were.
And not only did Marmer lose Knight, but also Seattle drafted 2024 fourth-overall pick Hannah Bilka with the third selection in the expansion draft, and fourth-round pick Sydney Bard. Seattle GM Meghan Turner also grabbed Boston’s steady veteran defender Emily Brown, who Marmer probably hoped would slip through the cracks. But Turner, who was Marmer’s assistant GM in Boston, knew exactly the value Brown could bring to her startup blue line.
Marmer protected the future of the team in Müller, but she now also only has eight players under contract for next season, which is among the fewest in the league heading into free agency. Marmer will have a ton of work to do if she doesn’t want the decision to lose Knight to be for naught.
Teams competing with Vancouver in free agency
Gardner Morey prioritized building her team from the back-end and out, with four puck-moving defenders, and several young, gritty, two-way forwards. And outside of big signings such as Nurse, Jaques and Thompson, Vancouver’s initial 12-player roster looks pretty affordable.
We don’t yet know exactly what players are making next season, but it’s fair to assume that Rosenthal and McQuigge aren’t paid quite as much as Seattle’s big name selections like Gosling or Bilka.
After the draft, Gardner Morey said the team is going to look for a few more top-six forwards, which tells us she probably has some decent cap room to go to work with during the league’s next signing window. And with that in mind, grabbing elite depth players such as Denisa Křìžová and McQuigge makes a ton of sense, especially if Vancouver can go out and sign a skilled forward like Hannah Miller or Michela Cava in free agency.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
NHL, Sports Business, Women's Hockey
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