Overview
North America's unified women's professional league, founded in 2023 and expanding fast.
The Professional Women's Hockey League is the top women's professional ice hockey league in North America. It was founded in 2023 to unify a fragmented landscape in which competing leagues and a players' boycott had left the best players without a viable professional home.
The league began with six clubs in Boston, Minnesota, Montreal, New York, Ottawa and Toronto and added Vancouver and Seattle for the 2025–26 season. Its points system rewards regulation wins with three points, and its playoff format lets the top seed choose its semi-final opponent.
Season Format
Recent Champions
Most recent first. Seasons still in progress are marked.
History
Women's professional hockey in North America spent a decade divided between the CWHL, which folded in 2019, and the NWHL, later the PHF. In 2019 more than 200 players refused to play in any of them and formed the PWHPA, seeking one properly funded league.
That standoff ended in 2023 when the Mark Walter Group bought the PHF's assets and, with the PWHPA, founded the PWHL. Attendance has exceeded expectations from the start: a 2024 game in Montreal drew 21,105, then a world record for women's hockey, and Detroit's 2025 neutral-site game drew more still.
Governance
The league is centrally owned and operated by the Mark Walter Group. Players are represented by the PWHL Players Association under a collective agreement running to 2031.