The Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL) released its expanded 90-game 2024/25 schedule on Tuesday, with the puck dropping on the league's second season on November 30th.

The PWHL's six teams — all featuring fresh branding including new names and logos — will play 30 games each, up from 24 last hockey season.

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"Our teams and players are so eager to bring their new identities to life, and the schedule announcement elevates that sense of anticipation," stated Senior VP of Hockey Operations Jayna Hefford in an official league release.

"We have more games, new uniforms, a talented rookie class, and so much more for the PWHL community to look forward to. For our players and our fans, the season ahead will be intense, competitive, and fun."

PWHL teams to face each other six times

PWHL teams will play each other six times across the season, with three home and three road matchups on the schedule.

Opening day will see the Boston Fleet visit the Toronto Sceptres at 2 PM ET, with the Montréal Victoire hosting the Ottawa Charge at 5 PM ET. Last year's champions, the Minnesota Frost, will open their 2024/25 title defense at home against the New York Sirens at 6 PM ET on December 1st.

Speaking of the defending Walter Cup Champions, the Frost's second game will be a rematch of last season's deciding Game 5, as Minnesota visits 2023/24 runners-up Boston on December 4th.

PWHL regular season play will run through May 3rd, 2025, with three international breaks on the docket. They start with one-week gaps in December and February for the Women's Euro Hockey Tour and the Canada-USA Rivalry Series, followed by a 22-day pause in April for the 2025 IIHF Women’s World Championship.

Record-breaking inaugural season shifts some PWHL venues

With the first-year league seemingly breaking attendance records every few days last season, some PWHL teams moved into larger venues during the offseason to accommodate demand.

The Sceptres home ice is now Toronto's Coca-Cola Coliseum, which seats 8,140 fans — more than double the 3,850 capacity of their previous home, the Mattamy Athletic Centre. Toronto already sold out their new arena during last season's playoffs, packing 8,500 into the Coliseum.

Similarly, Quebec's Place Bell will now permanently house the Victoire, increasing Montreal's fan capacity from Verdun Auditorium's 3,795-seats to more than 10,000.

After two successful games at New Jersey's Prudential Center last season, the New York Sirens will call the NHL venue home throughout their 2024/25 campaign.

The newly released schedule also includes 14 games without a listed venue, as the PWHL solidifies plans to stage those tilts at either neutral sites or larger arenas in home markets.

It's a tactic that paid off last season, which saw Toronto and Montreal draw the sport's largest crowd on record when 21,105 packed Montreal's Bell Centre. The league also saw success in drawing hockey fans from non-PWHL cities, including Detroit and Pittsburgh.

Camps and contract negotiations impact PWHL rosters

While all six teams released their training camps rosters on October 11th, final lists aren't due to the league until November 27th, after training camps and scrimmages.

Each franchise can roster a maximum of 23 players, plus an additional three reserves.

Contract negotiations can continue through the training camp period, with fans most anxiously awaiting news of Princeton University alum Sarah Fillier. The PWHL's 2024 overall No. 1 draft pick remains the league's only first-round selectee still without a signed contract.

While she features on the Sirens's training-camp list, Fillier is reportedly seeking a shorter two-year deal in order to enter negotiations in 2026 — one season earlier than the three-year contract on the table.

2024/25 PWHL season ticket packages now on sale

While the league is still finalizing broadcast details for the upcoming season, fans will be able to buy season ticket packages starting as early as Thursday, October 17th, depending on their local team's roll-out schedule.

Canadian teams are set to release single-game tickets on October 30th, with US franchises dropping theirs on November 1st.

The NWSL has made a decision, as the league officially moves forward with its new "High Impact Player" rule despite stated opposition from the players union.

Announced last week, the rule change allows clubs to exceed to the NWSL salary cap by up to $1 million to attract or retain players that meet one of eight qualifying metrics set by the league.

Those metrics include major media award rankings like the 30-player Ballon d'Or shortlist and ESPN FC's Top 50 Football Players, as well as marketing power, top USWNT minutes, and end-of-year NWSL awards.

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Developed with Washington Spirit superstar — and current free agent — Trinity Rodman and her potential contract in mind, the "High Impact Player" rule will not go into effect until July 1st, 2026.

Meanwhile, the NWSLPA has spoken out against the mechanism, proposing instead to up the salary cap by $1 million without league-imposed spending regulations.

"Under federal labor law, changes to compensation under the salary cap are a mandatory subject of bargaining — not a matter of unilateral discretion," the union wrote on Wednesday.

Additionally, per The Athletic, NWSLPA executive director Meghann Burke expressed concerns that the rule ties top athlete pay, in part, to player valuations in third party publications — a move that externally defines who a club can consider "high impact."

Led by six Kansas City athletes and five from Gotham FC, just 27 current NWSL players across 10 of the 16 clubs in the expanded 2026 season meet the new HIP qualifying criteria — though all teams could use the mechanism to attract a new athlete to the league.

In a growing global market, the NWSL could be falling into a trap of half-measures, as the union pushes back with league parity potentially on the line.

The Kansas City Current have apparently found a new manager, with ESPN reporting last week that the 2025 NWSL Shield-winners will bring on former MLS head coach Chris Armas to lead the team in 2026.

Armas built his career in the MLS, coaching the New York Red Bulls from 2018 to 2020 before taking over Toronto FC in 2021, then spending the last three years heading up the Colorado Rapids.

The ex-USMNT player also has experience in the women's game at the college level, leading the Division II Adelphi University women's soccer team from 2011 to 2014.

Despite their many victories in 2025, the Current found themselves without a coach after third-year boss Vlatko Andonovski moved into a sporting director role with the club in November.

ESPN reported that Kansas City chose Armas over internal candidates like assistants Milan Ivanovic and ex-Angel City and Gotham manager Freya Coombe.

"I want my staff and people I've worked with to become successful coaches. These are things I'm very passionate about and want to be able to execute," Andonovski told ESPN last month.

Armas would be the first former MLS coach to make the leap to the NWSL, with the winds of change in Kansas City blowing stronger than anticipated.

With the 2026 Winter Olympics fast approaching, US skiing icon Mikaela Shiffrin has started the 2025/26 FIS World Cup cycle in top form — particularly in her favored slalom event.

Closing out last season with a victory, Shiffrin is currently on a multi-event winning streak, earning her sixth straight slalom title in Semmering, Austria, on Sunday.

"It was a really hard day today, tough conditions, a really big fight, and the pressure's on… I did my best, best possible run," Shiffrin said afterwards.

Momentum is on her side, with Shiffrin set to enter the 2026 Winter Games in Italy as the winningest skier in World Cup history, surpassing Swedish legend Ingemar Stenmark's 86 wins in March 2023 and becoming the first skier to reach 100 World Cup victories earlier this year.

Sunday's race marked the 30-year-old's 106th career World Cup title, with Shiffrin looking to add to her ever-growing historic record with three more slalom events scheduled before the Olympic women's Alpine skiing events kick off on February 8th.

The 2014 Olympic slalom champion and 2018 Winter Games giant slalom gold medalist is aiming to return to the podium after failing to medal at the 2022 Beijing Olympics.

Shiffrin will likely hit the slopes again next weekend, when the women's FIS World Cup lands in Kranjska Gora, Slovenia, for a giant slalom and slalom competition.

South Carolina basketball is stocking up, as top-ranked high school senior Jerzy Robinson announced her commitment to join the head coach Dawn Staley and the No. 3 Gamecocks last Tuesday.

"I chose South Carolina because I had a sense of peace when it came down to the decision for me," Robinson told ESPN. "When I visited South Carolina, I was already home. I was already valued there.... I felt like this was where I needed to be for the next four years."

A 6-foot-2 guard who averaged 27 points and 10.2 rebounds in her junior season at Los Angeles's Sierra Canyon High School, Robinson is now the highest-ranked Class of 2026 recruit heading to South Carolina — as well as the final Top 5 player to make a college decision after also visiting No. 1 UConn and No. 5 LSU.

Robinson first made a name for herself at the youth level, winning three gold medals and the 2025 U-19 FIBA World Cup with Team USA.

The young talent also inked one of the first-ever shoe sponsorships for a high school player, signing an NIL deal with Nike in November 2024.

"Basketball has always been my love and my passion," she said. "To see it pay off and the hard work and the hours pay off, in the sense of I get to play for one of the best universities in the country, I just have so much gratitude."