Expansion is on the table for the six-team Professional Women’s Hockey League, and executives aren’t placing limitations on which North American markets they’ll consider in a bid to add as many as two franchises for the 2025-26 season.
The only certainty is a vision of the timing being right to build on the support the PWHL generated in its inaugural year, and the growth the league projects entering its second season, which opens on Nov. 30.
“I don’t think we rule out any market,” senior vice president of hockey operations Jayna Hefford told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “This is a good opportunity for us to learn and continue to explore. So everything’s on the table right now.”
To reinforce how open-ended the PWHL’s expansion search will be, senior VP for business operations Amy Scheer told the AP the league has targeted more than 20 markets to be issued requests for proposals for expansion by next week. And that doesn’t include additional markets that might approach the league for consideration.
“I think we want to be an open book, and I think we want to be open to things that we haven’t thought about or things that we haven’t considered,” Scheer said. “Until we have the data and the facts and the conversations, we might be surprised. So let’s go for it.”
The initial timeline calls for requests for proposals to be returned by the end of December to determine interest before assessing each market. Though the goal is adding two teams by next year, Hefford and Scheer would not commit to that being a certainty.
Scheer said geography won’t be a limitation for a league that currently has teams based in Boston; Newark, New Jersey; St. Paul, Minnesota; Toronto; Montreal; and Ottawa, Ontario. Neither will a market’s affiliation with an NHL team, though both aspects will be considered.
The only factors to help guide the search, Scheer said, will be market size, access to facilities, economic partnership opportunities and fan base potential.
Hefford wouldn’t rule out considering Southern California or Seattle as possibilities, saying: “This is a good opportunity for us to learn and continue to explore.”
Two potential candidates are Detroit and Pittsburgh, where the PWHL played neutral-site games last season. Nine more neutral-site games are scheduled for this season, though the league has yet to say where they’ll be held.
In the U.S., Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia would be regarded as candidates after both were previously considered, with Chicago and Denver also options.
In Canada, Quebec City already has announced its intention of being a candidate. Calgary would be a potential option, with the city previously being home to the Inferno from 2011 to 2019, before the Canadian Women’s Hockey League folded.
The timing for expansion comes with the league having a full offseason to catch its collective breath after having six month last year to essentially start from scratch to open play on Jan. 1. The PWHL got its start in late June 2023, when Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter agreed to finance the league while buying out its North American competitor, the Premier Hockey Federation.
The PWHL averaged nearly 5,500 fans over 72 regular-season games and set a women’s pro hockey record for attendance, with 21,105 turning out for a game between Toronto and Montreal held at the NHL's Canadiens' home arena. The league reached sponsorship deals with companies including Scotiabank, Air Canada, Discover and Hyundai, while having each game broadcast in local markets along with a streaming rights deal with YouTube, which drew 113,000 subscribers.
Just as important is how expansion would address an immediate need in opening roster spots to be filled by a growing number of European players seeking to compete in North America, and the next crop of U.S. college graduates. In June, 167 players representing 19 countries declared being eligible for a seven-round draft in which just 42 were selected.
“The talent pool is only going to continue to grow,” Hefford said.
The PWHL is centrally controlled, with each team operated by the league. There’s long-term stability with Walter committing hundreds of millions of dollars to build the league and with players working under an eight-year collective bargaining agreement running through July 2031.
This season features an expanded schedule with each team playing 30 games, up from 24 last year. Beyond this season, Scheer said the league is considering holding an outdoor game as well as playing games in Europe.
Expansion was always under consideration, though Scheer stressed the league is taking a patient approach.
“We will make the right decisions based on growth for hockey, financial decisions, what is the best way to move forward,” she said. “Nobody here is making rash decisions.”
Hefford wouldn’t rule out future rounds of expansion, without saying how many teams would be ideal for a league still in its early stages.
“We know we want to grow,” Hefford said. “But I have a really hard time throwing out a number right now.”
AP Women’s Hockey: https://apnews.com/hub/womens-hockey
FILE - Professional Women's Hockey League senior vice president of hockey operations Jayna Hefford speaks before the PWHL Toronto team opened the Toronto Stock Exchange in Toronto, Jan. 12, 2024. (Cole Burston/The Canadian Press via AP, File)
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Two Israeli airstrikes in the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday killed at least 88 people, including dozens of women and children, health officials said, and the director of a hospital said life-threatening injuries were going untreated because a weekend raid by Israeli forces led to the detention of dozens of medics.
Israel has escalated airstrikes and waged a bigger ground operation in northern Gaza in recent weeks, saying it is focused on rooting out Hamas militants who have regrouped after more than a year of war. The intense fighting is raising alarm about the worsening humanitarian conditions for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians still in northern Gaza.
Concerns about not enough aid reaching Gaza were amplified Monday when Israeli lawmakers passed two laws to cut ties with the main U.N. agency distributing food, water and medicine, and to ban it from Israeli soil. Israel controls access to both Gaza and the occupied West Bank, and it was unclear how the agency known as UNRWA would continue its work in either place.
“The humanitarian operation in Gaza, if that is unraveled, that is a disaster within a series of disasters and just doesn’t bear thinking about," said UNRWA spokesperson John Fowler. He said other U.N. agencies and international organizations distributing aid in Gaza rely on its logistics and thousands of workers.
In Lebanon, the militant group Hezbollah said Tuesday it has chosen Sheikh Naim Kassem to succeed longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike last month. Hezbollah, which has fired rockets into Israel since the start of the war in Gaza, vowed to continue with Nasrallah’s policies “until victory is achieved.”
A short while later, eight Austrian soldiers serving in the U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon were reported lightly injured in a midday missile strike.
The peacekeeping force, known as UNIFIL, said the rocket that struck its headquarters in Lebanon was “likely” fired by Hezbollah, and that it struck a vehicle workshop.
The Gaza Health Ministry's emergency service said at least 70 people were killed and 23 were missing in the first of Tuesday's strikes in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya. More than half of the victims were women and children, the ministry said. A mother and her five children — some of them adults — and a second mother with six children, were among those killed in the attack on a five-story building, according to the emergency service.
A second strike on Beit Lahiya on Tuesday evening killed at least 18 people, according to the Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its count.
The nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital was overwhelmed by a wave of wounded women and children, including many who needed urgent surgeries, according to its director, Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya. The Israeli military raided the hospital over the weekend, detaining dozens of medics it said were Hamas militants.
“The situation is catastrophic in every sense of the word," Safiya said, adding that the only remaining doctor at the hospital was a pediatrician. "The health care system has collapsed and needs an urgent international intervention.”
U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller referred to the “horrifying incident” in Beit Lahiya in comments to reporters. He said Israel's yearlong campaign against Hamas has ensured it cannot repeat the type of attack that started the war in Gaza, but that “getting to here came at a great cost to civilians.”
The Israeli military said it was investigating the first Beit Lahiya strike; it did not immediately comment on the second.
Israel’s recent operations in northern Gaza, focused in and around the Jabaliya refugee camp, have killed hundreds of people and driven tens of thousands from their homes.
The Israeli military has repeatedly struck shelters for displaced people in recent months. It says it carries out precise strikes targeting Palestinian militants and tries to avoid harming civilians, but the strikes often kill women and children.
On Tuesday, Israel said four more of its soldiers were killed in the fighting in northern Gaza, bringing the toll since the start of the operation to 16, including a colonel.
As the fighting raged, Hamas signaled it was ready to resume cease-fire negotiations, although its key demands — a permanent cease-fire and full withdrawal of the Israeli military — do not appear to have changed, and have been dismissed in the past by Israel. Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said on Tuesday the group has accepted mediators’ request to discuss “new proposals.”
Hezbollah said in a statement that its decision-making Shura Council elected Kassem, who had been Nasrallah's deputy leader for over three decades, as the new secretary-general.
Kassem, 71, a founding member of the militant group established following Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, had been serving as acting leader. He has given several televised speeches vowing that Hezbollah will fight on despite a string of setbacks.
Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel, drawing retaliation, after Hamas’ surprise attack out of Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023. Iran, which backs both groups, has also directly traded fire with Israel, in April and then again this month.
The tensions with Hezbollah boiled over in September, as Israel unleashed a wave of heavy airstrikes and killed Nasrallah and most of his senior commanders. Israel launched a ground invasion into Lebanon at the start of October.
Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets into northern Israel on Tuesday, killing one person in the northern city of Maalot-Tarshiha, authorities said. Israeli strikes in the coastal city of Sidon killed at least five people, the Lebanese Health Ministry said.
UNRWA and other international groups continued to express outrage Tuesday about the Israeli parliament's decision to cut ties to the agency.
Israel says UNRWA has been infiltrated by Hamas and that the militant group siphons off aid and uses U.N. facilities to shield its activities, allegations denied by the U.N. agency.
Israeli government spokesperson David Mencer vowed that aid will continue to reach Gaza, as Israel plans to coordinate with aid organizations or other bodies within the U.N. “Ultimately, we will ensure that a more efficient replacement for UNRWA takes its role, not one which is infiltrated by the terrorist organization,” he said.
Multiple U.N. agencies rallied Tuesday around UNRWA, calling it the “backbone” of the world body’s aid activities in Gaza and other Palestinian areas. UNRWA provides education, health care and emergency aid to millions of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation and their descendants. Refugee families make up the majority of Gaza’s population.
Israel has sharply restricted aid to northern Gaza this month, prompting a warning from the United States that failure to facilitate greater humanitarian assistance could lead to a reduction in military aid.
In its attack on Israel last year, Hamas killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took around 250 as hostages. Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed over 43,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities. Around 90% of the population of 2.3 million have been displaced from their homes, often multiple times.
Magdy reported from Cairo and Mroue from Beirut. Associated Press writers Tia Goldenberg in Tel Aviv, Israel, Matthew Lee in Washington, and Jamey Keaten in Geneva, contributed to this report.
Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
Rescue workers search for victims at a destroyed building hit in an Israeli airstrike, in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
Rescue workers use a bulldozer to remove rubbles as they search for victims at a destroyed building hit in an Israeli airstrike, in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
An Israeli drone flies over Beirut, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Neighbors clean blood stains from the ceiling of a damaged house where one person was killed after a projectile launched from Lebanon slammed into Maalot-Tarshiha, northern Israel, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Neighbors examine the damaged house where one person was killed after a projectile launched from Lebanon slammed into Maalot-Tarshiha, northern Israel, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
People react at the site where one person was killed after a projectile launched from Lebanon slammed into Maalot-Tarshiha, northern Israel, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
People react at the site where one person was killed after a projectile launched from Lebanon slammed into Maalot-Tarshiha, northern Israel, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Members of the Israeli police bomb squad work at the site where one person was killed after a projectile launched from Lebanon slammed into Maalot-Tarshiha, northern Israel, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Palestinians mourn their relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip at a hospital morgue in Deir al-Balah, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians mourn their relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip at a hospital morgue in Deir al-Balah, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Hezbollah's deputy leader Sheik Naim Kassem, speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
An ultra-Orthodox Jewish man walks past the east Jerusalem compound of UNRWA, the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
FILE - Hezbollah's deputy leader, Sheikh Naim Kassem, listens to a speech by then-leader Hassan Nasrallah on a screen in southern Beirut, Wednesday, June 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein, File)
