Hockey fans may have tuned in to the 2026 Olympics excited about the long-awaited return of NHL players, but by the end it was the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) that turned heads and earned a growing wave of new fans.
Team Canada captain Marie-Philip Poulin — also captain of the Montreal Victoire — set an all-time Olympic goal scoring record, and teammates Sarah Fillier, Emily Clark and Claire Thompson became household names.
Two months on, ticket and merch sales are up and excitement around rising stars within the PWHL hasn’t slowed down, says Cheri Bradish, director of the Future of Sport Lab and Sport Initiatives at Toronto Metropolitan University.
“The individual social profiles of those athletes really increased,” said Bradish, who has also studied the expansion of women’s basketball and soccer leagues in North America.
“And I think that’s important because it helps grow the game and it helps grow the profile and recognition of these women as individual athletes,” she said.
The Seattle Torrent and New York Sirens set a new U.S. attendance record at Madison Square Garden earlier this month, with 18,006 people in the stands for the league’s Takeover Tour series. That comes in behind the Canadian record set at Montreal’s Bell Centre, with 21,105 fans attending a Toronto vs. Montreal game. (For comparison, the Vancouver Canucks drew 18,001 to Rogers Arena in late March amid a disappointing season.
The PWHL says ticket sales are on pace to rise 70 per cent above last season, with 30 more games on the calendar and merch sales that jumped 101 per cent in February. The league’s 61 Olympians also collectively gained 760,000 new followers on social media, the PWHL says.
The Olympic afterglow has seen U.S. captain and Seattle Torrent forward Hilary Knight appear on Saturday Night Live and Sarah Nurse of the Vancouver Goldeneyes and Renata Fast of the Toronto Sceptres present at the Juno Awards.
The Torrent and Goldeneyes are new expansion teams that have leapt to the top of the league’s attendance ranking. Both teams averaged more than 11,000 fans at their first four home games. Now in its third season, the league hasn’t absorbed a boost like this before.
Players are now seen by hundreds of thousands of fans on social media and name-dropped by top athletes and influencers alike, contributing to a sense that the PWHL has staying power.
Now that the league has some breakout stars, Bradish says the PWHL needs to think more carefully about how to build up the brand and retain talent.
That could mean renegotiating the pay structure — only a handful of PWHL players currently make more than $100,000 US under an agreement negotiated between the players association and management in 2023.
Each team currently has a collective cap of $1.34 million US. For comparison, the salary cap in the WNBA is $7 million US.
Last month, a hockey news website published PWHL salaries from the 2024-25 season. Previously, the PWHL only disclosed minimum and average salaries, set at $37,131.50 US and $58,349.50 US for this season.
According to The Hockey News, Poulin was the top earner with a $121,570 US salary last season, followed by Ottawa’s Brianne Jenner with $118,450 US and New York’s Abby Roque at $113,300 US. Knight, who played for Boston last year, Toronto’s Renata Fast and Emily Clark of the Ottawa Charge all took home $103,000 US. Everyone else in the league made less than six figures.
PWHL director of communications Madeleine Davidson referred questions about player salaries to the players association. The PWHLPA did not respond to a request for comment from CBC News.
Salaries work in tandem with ticket sales, says Bradish, so we could see a situation where those salaries need adjustment before the next collective agreement, which is scheduled for 2031.
But, she says, pay is unlikely to change by “leaps and bounds” overnight. The WNBA’s most recent salary negotiations stretched round the clock for weeks, with players ultimately securing big gains.
“One thing to understand is that this is the best hockey in the world for women, and so I think that holds great promise,” Bradish said, adding that some leagues compete with other parts of the world for talent.
Bradish says the PWHL is still new compared to other women’s leagues like the WNBA, which is heading into its 30th season. But the current trend suggests the draw of individual athletes could outpace the league’s salary structure over time.
“I definitely think that we’re going to see salaries continue to increase,” she said. “It will be interesting to see, how does this ownership model continue to work? Will that change over time?”
All teams in the PWHL are owned by the Mark Walter Group, the same owner as the Los Angeles Dodgers and other sports properties — “so they have pretty deep pockets,” said Bradish. Other leagues have a franchise system, which can potentially encourage more competitive salaries, she said.
Bradish points to the rising value of WNBA teams in recent years for clues on where things are headed. Toronto’s franchise started for $50 million US in 2024, whereas the Connecticut Sun franchise recently sold for $300 million US.
“We know that the value of women’s sports is rising exponentially,” she said.
Bradish says the PWHL stands out from the early days of men’s hockey by leaning into health benefits, reproductive care and child care.
Jill Moffatt runs a Canadian non-profit that supports family planning and reproductive health for elite women athletes. Her group Momentum provided grants to Olympians and Paralympians in Milan, including two PWHL players in 2026. She says it’s rare for athletes in other sports to get paid maternity leave.
The PWHL is expected to expand into new cities next season, which will kick off in November, with announcements likely coming in a matter of weeks. The Takeover series has tested markets large and small, including Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Hamilton, Quebec City and Halifax in Canada, and Denver, Dallas, Detroit, Chicago and Washington, D.C., in the U.S.
“I think that they’ll be really strategic,” Bradish said of the league’s next moves.
“We know there’s great interest in women’s sports, so I think it’ll be fascinating to see what the PWHL looks like in two or three years.”
