Jayna Hefford confident in talent pool for PWHL’s four expansion teams

Professional Women’s Hockey League leaders believe the talent pool is up to the task of filling four new teams next season and maintaining a high level of play.

The PWHL expanded into Northern California with Tuesday’s announcement that San Jose will join the league in 2026-27 alongside Hamilton, Detroit and Las Vegas.

That’s an intake of 92 more full-time players, plus a dozen reserves, a year after Vancouver and Seattle joined the original six clubs of Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Boston, New York and Minnesota.

“I feel confident after seeing what we did last season with two new teams and the play on the ice, the competition, and I really haven’t heard otherwise, it’s only risen,” said PWHL executive vice-president of hockey operations Jayna Hefford.

“Looking at this upcoming draft declaration, we have 235 players that have declared. We have a really strong European draft group. We have potentially a generational college group that are coming into the league that are going to have an immediate impact.

“Excited to be able to provide more people the opportunity to play.”

The PWHL will be a 12-team league in its fourth season.

Details on how expansion rosters will be built, and how new teams will be incorporated into the June 17 draft in Detroit, have yet to be revealed.

“We are bringing you the highest level hockey in the world,” PWHL executive vice president of business operations Amy Scheer said Tuesday in San Jose’s SAP Center, which is the home arena of the NHL’s Sharks.

“We have over 60 Olympians taking the ice this season. There will be a bunch more next year. Each game is so competitive. Every shift matters. Every point in the standings matter.

“I will tell you, the games are the highest level of competition and you will love it.”

The PWHL had stated its intention to increase by two to four clubs for 2026-27.

“We’ve been pretty public about the fact we wanted to get to 12 as quickly as we could under controlled environments,” Hefford said.

“It just helps geographically. We’ve now crossed North America. We have Pacific time zones. We have Mountain time zones, we have Eastern time zones. It just feels like a legitimate number for a league. A six-team league felt small, eight teams was good and now, it just feels more significant.”

With five teams in Canada and seven in the U.S., the PWHL no longer has an even split of teams in each country as it did in its first three seasons.

“There were a lot of markets that were interested and were strongly and highly considered,” Hefford said. “We as a league have never said we were going to have an even split forever.

“Our priority through this round of expansion was to secure the best four markets we could to ensure long-term success of this league and this is where we landed, but can’t speak to moving forward that we may or may not continue to look for more Canadian markets.”

So Hamilton is the lone new Canadian team next season. It will play out of the recently renovated 18,000-seat TD Coliseum.

Of the 27 neutral-site Takeover Tour games the PWHL held in its first three seasons to build audience and test possible expansion markets, none were held in San Jose or Las Vegas.

Half of this season’s 16 Takeover Tour games were played in Canada, including a pair of games in both Edmonton and Halifax. Hamilton, Calgary, Quebec City and Winnipeg also hosted games.

Three neutral-site games in Edmonton over the past two seasons were the most in a Canadian market.

San Jose hosted a Rivalry Series game between Canada and the United States on Nov. 6, 2024, at Tech CU Arena, which is the home of the AHL’s San Jose Barracuda.

Minnesota Frost forward Kendall Coyne Schofield drew attention to women’s hockey there in 2019, when her speed lap in the NHL’s all-star skills competition in San Jose was competitive with the men.

San Jose’s PWHL team is the third professional women’s sports team to enter the Bay Area in as many years, following the National Women’s Soccer League’s Bay FC in 2024 and the WNBA’s Golden State Valkyries in 2025.

Sharks Sport and Entertainment and the City of San Jose led the expansion bid for a PWHL club.

“We just have three players from California in the PWHL,” Scheer said. “Our job now is to get that to 13, to 23, to 43, to 53. With the help of the Sharks, we will be able to do that.”

The PWHL operates under the single-entity ownership of TWG Global, whose founder, Mark Walter, financially backed the league’s creation and for whom the league’s championship trophy is named.

Since private or NHL team ownership of a PWHL team isn’t yet an option, the PWHL’s relationship with whoever controls the arena is a key piece of the expansion puzzle.

“I would have a hard time saying No. 1 driver. It is a driver certainly,” Hefford said.

“We’ve talked many times about the different boxes that these markets need to check, in arena availability, quality of the facility, partners in the market. All of those things are important in addition to economic opportunities, commercial partners, pipeline of talent, grassroots, fan engagement.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 19, 2026.

Donna Spencer, The Canadian Press