Veteran players say PWHL has changed their minds and their hockey

Playing hockey for a living has changed the way some women in the Professional Women’s Hockey League see themselves in the game.

The PWHL’s third season opens Friday with the Vancouver Goldeneyes and Seattle Torrent squaring off, and the Walter Cup champion Minnesota Frost hosting the Toronto Sceptres.

As the league has evolved since the first game Jan. 1, 2024, so have players. Their dream of more games and practices, a living wage, and the competitive support their male counterparts have finally come true — but it also meant wrapping their heads around it.

“For so long, I was an Olympic athlete, I am an Olympic athlete, I’m at the top of my top of my game, I’m one of the best players in our country, the best players in the world, but hockey still felt like a hobby almost,” recalled forward Sarah Nurse, who signed with the expansion Goldeneyes in the summer after two seasons with the Sceptres.

“We didn’t have great ice times, we didn’t have access to the best resources, the best people, and you’re practising at 10 o’clock at night. You kind of start thinking, ‘Is this real? What are we doing?’

“It felt like a hobby prior to the PWHL and now like just with the travel, with games, with practices, with the pressures of the media, with the pressure of the fan bases that we’ve been able to establish, it’s all good, but it changes the way that you really view the game and it really does become a job.”

For Canada’s top players, pressure to win is no longer confined to world championship and Olympic Games tournaments, and a handful of international games against the United States each winter.

Competition to earn a PWHL job, keep a PWHL job and satisfy a fan base that wants the Walter Cup has upped the hockey ante in their lives.

“As a player, as an individual, it just makes you realize, what can I do to be successful in this league? How do I prepare? How do I eat? How do I discipline myself? How do I get ready to go?” said Montreal Victoire captain Marie-Philip Poulin. “If I look back … yes, we had the CWHL, but it was not quite the same.

“The PWHL, just knowing how hard it is to play in this league, it does make me better because I know I have to be ready day in and day out.

“It’s hard physically, mentally. You have to be ready to go. If not, you’re getting smoked in the boards, you’re getting hit.”

The PWHL allows body-checking in pursuit of the puck — not open-ice hits — which Sceptres defender Renata Fast says brought a new element to her game.

“It allowed me to excel on the physicality side of my game that I know I’ve always had, but never was really allowed to use,” Fast said.

The 31-year-old has blossomed in the PWHL. Fast was named best defender at the 2024 world championship by the IIHF directorate and the PWHL’s top defender last season.

She led the league in average ice time per game at almost 25 minutes while contributing six goals and 16 assists in 30 games in her second season.

“I wouldn’t have had the season that I had this past year if it wasn’t for the PWHL and the challenges that it’s brought,” Fast said. “‘It changed me a ton.”

With the national team, “you kind of get put in a box of the role that you’re going to play, and it’s hard to veer and try to see if you have another part of your game,” Fast said. “The PWHL has given me an opportunity to take on a bigger role.”

Victoire goaltender Ann-Renée Desbiens, Canada’s starter internationally, has noticed changes in her game and in her head as a PWHL player.

“It’s easier to have your confidence, keep building up, rather than fluctuate just based on one game per year type of thing, so I’ve definitely been emotionally a little more stable than I used to be in past,” she said.

“Definitely changed a bit in a way that allows myself to be a little more consistent in my performance. That’s the biggest change I’ve seen with the level of good games that we play. It’s been easier to know my strengths, to work on the things I need to improve, and to get more consistent as a goalie, which I personally believe is the biggest quality that a goalie can have.”

Ottawa Charge forward Brianne Jenner, who was among the players who negotiated the first collective bargaining agreement with the league, says she’s been pushed out of her comfort zone for her betterment.

“The seasons in the PWHL, I’ve learned a ton because I’ve been put in environments that I haven’t always been put in doing travel and volume and interactions with a fan base,” Jenner states. “For myself as a player, I’ve had to learn how to be the best I can be on the ice and with new challenges and new environments.”

The arrival of the expansion Goldeneyes and Torrent this season brings 46 new players to the PWHL, plus another six reserves.

Each club will play 30 regular-season games plus playoffs. The PWHL will pause from Jan. 29 to Feb. 5 for the Olympic Games.

— With files from Abdulhamid Ibrahim.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 19, 2025.