Top-finishing PWHL team will get to pick its playoff opponent
6-team league announced unique playoff rules, draft plans this week as 1st season hits midway point
The team that finishes atop the standings at the end of the first Professional Women's Hockey League regular season will get a unique power — a 24-hour hour window where they'll have the ability to decide who they'll face in the first round of the playoffs.
The top four teams will make the PWHL playoffs, which begin in May, with the top-seeded team able to choose whether they want to play either the third- or fourth-seeded team, the league announced on Wednesday. Both the semifinals and the championship series will be best-of-five with home-ice advantage given to the higher-seeded team.
It's one of several unique rules and formats the six-team PWHL has adopted in its inaugural season, as the league tries to think outside the box to distinguish its brand of hockey from others.
Other unique PWHL rules include the "jailbreak" rule, which sees a player released from the penalty box if their team scores short-handed, and a 3-2-1 points system that gives an extra point to a team that wins in regulation.
"We're not afraid to try different approaches to things," PWHL advisory board member Stan Kasten told reporters in a mid-season press conference on Wednesday.
The league also announced on Wednesday that it's adopted a draft order format that doesn't automatically reward the last-place team with the first overall draft pick, which will discourage teams from "tanking" to get a highly-touted prospect.
Once a team is mathematically eliminated from making the playoffs, they will start to accumulate "draft order points." Those are the same as the PWHL's standard point system: three for a regulation win, two for an overtime win and one for an overtime loss.
The non-playoff team with the most "draft order points" at the end of the season will get to select first in the draft. In other words, the PWHL is offering an incentive for losing teams to win.
Often called the "Gold Plan," it's an idea that was proposed to the NHL in the late 2000s by statistician Adam Gold, who helped the PWHL adopt the format.
"It's to ensure the competitiveness that, again, we think is so important that exists in this league," said PWHL's senior vice president of hockey operations, Jayna Hefford.
"It's also a way for fans to stay engaged. There will be a different type of race once their team gets eliminated. Every game from that point on means something and it earns them points."
As of Wednesday afternoon, Montreal leads the PWHL with 24 points. Ottawa is in last place with 13 points.
But that gap isn't as wide as it might look. Many of the league's games have been decided by just one goal.
Draft to be held in June
The next PWHL draft will be held some time in mid-June, with as many as 42 players to be selected over seven rounds. The league hasn't said yet where the draft will be held.
It will kick off a busy summer of player movement in the PWHL, with a significant number of current players on one-year deals.
They will be competing with new players entering the league for only 23 roster spots and three reserve positions up for grabs on each team, and many of those slots already spoken for by players on multi-year contracts.
The players on the outside of the roster picture face a dilemma. The PWHL is the only professional women's hockey league in North America. There's no development league, like the NHL has the American Hockey League, for players to develop and get better.
There are professional women's hockey leagues in Europe, most notably the Swedish Women's Hockey League (SDHL). But if a player needs more time to develop and wants to stay in North America, they could find themselves without a place to play.
It's not a problem the PWHL is in position to solve quite yet, with expansion or a development league on the radar but not happening in the league's second year.
"It's something that's in progress," Hefford said on Wednesday. "How can we set up a system that allows those players to continue to develop? We have a lot of different ideas but we're not there yet on one thing that we're ready to commit to."
Another idea that could be on the table is expanding the reserve player pool. Teams were originally supposed to have only two reserve players, but the league increased it to three before the season started.
The reserve player system is designed for situations where a team needs a replacement for an injured roster player. But increasing the pool could be one way to keep a player around and in your system if they have nowhere else to play.
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"There's been discussions around that, do we need to increase that pool or not?" Hefford said. "Is there somewhere else that our players can develop? Those are just ongoing discussions. It will continue to be on the table."
Players who want to enter the league must declare for the draft in order to be eligible to be drafted or to sign as a free agent should they go undrafted. Prospective draft picks have from Friday until May 8 to declare.
The draft doesn't have a minimum or maximum age, but it's likely players will continue to follow the same pathway they've always followed in women's hockey, where they play several years in college or university before turning professional.
A 'deep talent pool' in this year's draft
Last year's draft, held in CBC's atrium in downtown Toronto in September, lasted 15 rounds with a total of 90 players selected. That was much longer because teams were building out their rosters from scratch.
Hefford said on Wednesday that the league settled on seven rounds given the "deep talent pool" coming out of college and university, where players have been able to develop longer due to extra eligibility stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The draft is also the entry point for any European players who want to play in the league. Should a veteran Finnish defender like Ronja Savolainen or Jenni Hiirikoski decide they want to play in North America, they'll likely be high picks.
"We believe that there's an opportunity, if each team brings in seven players [from the draft], that they're going to challenge for spots on their team," Hefford said.
A front-runner for first overall in this year's draft is Canadian Olympic gold medallist Sarah Fillier, who posted 11 points in seven games in Beijing in 2022, when she was only 21 years old. She's been Canada's top scorer at the last two world championship tournaments, and is a key piece of Team Canada's present and future.
This season at Princeton University, Fillier has 41 points in 27 games.
Other likely high picks, should they declare for the draft, include Canadian national team forward Danielle Serdachny (Colgate University), Ohio State stars Cayla Barnes and Hannah Bilka, who were both at least point-per-game players for the U.S. en route to gold at the last world championship, and Julia Gosling (St. Lawrence University), who was centralized with Canada before the last Olympics but didn't make the final roster.
Teams can trade draft picks after season ends
Teams weren't allowed to trade draft picks before last year's draft, nor can they trade them during this season.
That will change once this season ends, when a window will open that allows teams to make trades involving draft picks.
Teams hold rights for drafted players for two seasons. If they aren't signed during that time, they become eligible to enter the draft again.
Players who declare for the draft but aren't selected will be eligible to sign as free agents, but players can't declare for more than two drafts. Undrafted players can be signed as free agents as of June 21.
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