The Vancouver Goldeneyes and Seattle Torrent, despite strong rosters, have been eliminated from playoff contention in their debut PWHL season. Both teams will now compete for the No. 1 pick in the upcoming 2026 PWHL Draft.
What went wrong with Goldeneyes, Torrent? Why the PWHL teams’ debut seasons went sideways
Exactly five months ago, the Vancouver Goldeneyes and Seattle Torrent made their Professional Women’s Hockey League debuts with lofty expectations.
Each roster was well stocked with talent, thanks to a player dispersion process that was designed to ensure the league’s first expansion teams were able to compete on Day 1. Seattle started the year with three of the PWHL’s most productive players of all time. Vancouver looked like the team to beat with a roster led by two of the sport’s top defenders, a superstar forward and some of the top league-wide free agents.
And yet, as the PWHL enters the final week of the 2025-26 season, Vancouver and Seattle are the only two teams that have been officially eliminated from playoff contention. Instead of competing for a Walter Cup — as most pundits predicted — each team will spend their final two games fighting for the No. 1 pick in the 2026 PWHL Draft.
How did a season of promise for two franchises go so sideways?
When The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyzyn first launched his PWHL data model, the Vancouver Goldeneyes had the deepest offensive roster in the league, with a 12.9 offensive rating — 10 full points more than the next-best team, the Montreal Victoire (2.2). Vancouver’s preseason expected win percentage (.560) was also among the highest in the league, but in reality has been nowhere close with a .381 percent win rate heading into its final two games of the season.
Those projections were based on each players’ production and five-on-five goal differentials from the previous two seasons, with 2024-25 being weighted more heavily.
Both expansion teams had several players who did not live up to preseason expectations, but let’s begin with Vancouver.
There are some wins here, perhaps none bigger than Izzy Daniel, who was a savvy pick by Vancouver general manager Cara Morey in the expansion draft. Daniel was just fine in her rookie year with the Toronto Sceptres, but took a significant step as a sophomore in Vancouver, scoring seven goals in 27 games – compared to just two last season. That Sarah Nurse only slightly underperformed, despite missing nearly two months of the season due to injury, stands out as a positive. Mannon McMahon and Anna Meixner, acquired via trade with in January, have been solid as well.
Despite having talented rosters, both teams failed to perform as expected, leading to their elimination from playoff contention.
Seattle started with three of the PWHL's most productive players, while Vancouver featured top defenders and a superstar forward.
Being eliminated means both teams will focus on securing the No. 1 pick in the 2026 PWHL Draft instead of competing for the Walter Cup.
The player dispersion process aimed to equip the expansion teams with competitive rosters, but it did not translate into success on the ice.
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But for the most part, players are in the red, including all three big-ticket free agent signings Hannah Miller, Tereza Vanisova and Michela Cava. Those three scored a combined 34 goals on their respective teams last season (Toronto, Ottawa and Minnesota respectively), but have only mustered 10 in Goldeneyes jerseys. Cava only scored one goal in 13 games before she was moved to Ottawa in the January blockbuster. And Miller has only recently come alive consistently, scoring four goals and eight points in her last six games.
It stands to reason that Vancouver’s poor goal differential (-15) collectively brings players’ net ratings down, including Sophie Jaques, who has paced the team in scoring from the blue line. She eats minutes (around 24 per night) and is among Vancouver’s top performers on the ice. But she takes a bit of a hit for scoring at a slower clip than last season (22 points in 25 games compared to 17 through 28) and has been on the ice for more goals against. Last season, Jaques was among the best in the league with a plus-12 rating; this year she’s minus-three.
Very few Goldeneyes players are on pace to match or improve upon their production from last season. So the question is: Why?
Gardner Morey has stood by the roster she built, saying she would not second-guess her lineup choices from the start of the season. So we could just chalk things up to expansion team growing pains. The entire roster had to move out west, adjust to life in Vancouver, learn new systems, and travel more than the league’s original six franchises. Teams in the league’s inaugural season took a while to truly gel, too. So there’s reason to believe a similar core could improve next season, even though it will likely get shuffled due to expansion.
But there should also be some scrutiny on the coach, Brian Idalski, who joined Vancouver from the NCAA’s St. Cloud State. Idalski talked a lot about wanting Vancouver to be difficult to play against with a strong on-ice identity, much like his college team did. But that style hasn’t really translated for Vancouver, which looks like it lacks direction at times.
The Seattle Torrent is a similar story. The team entered the season with an expected win percentage of 0.545 based on the roster Meghan Turner built. However, they’re sitting at a league-worst 0.321.
Turner’s big bet on Danielle Serdachny and Julia Gosling turning things around for their sophomore seasons has panned out well for the Torrent. And Theresa Schafzahl has been a nice addition to the group after being traded from the Boston Fleet in exchange for a struggling Jessie Eldridge, who was expected to be one of the Torrent’s top scoring forwards.
Alex Carpenter and Hilary Knight’s production has dipped from last season, with the latter missing several weeks on long-term injured reserve after winning gold at the 2026 Milan Olympics. Cayla Barnes and Anna Wilgren were one of Montreal’s top defense pairs last season, but are among Seattle’s underperformers.
In many ways, Seattle’s issues are a bit more clearly defined than Vancouver’s. The team is pretty top-heavy with just modest contributions from depth forwards, such as Mikyla Grant-Mentis and Lexie Adzija. And given the roster construction, if star players are even slightly off their game – or out of the lineup entirely – it’s going to hurt the mix.
Goaltending has also been an issue. Corinne Schroeder was one of Seattle’s initial signings back in June and was among the league’s best goalies. In Seattle, however, she’s put up a career-worst .910 save percentage, 2.67 goals against average and has only won five games. When Schroeder really struggled early in the season, rookie Hannah Murphy looked to be a solid back-up plan, winning her first three starts for the Torrent. She’s now lost all eight games she’s started since Dec. 28.
Injuries have also clearly been a factor with Knight and sophomore star Hannah Bilka missing time after the Olympics. Grant-Mentis and top defender Aneta Tejralová have also missed time.
In hindsight, both teams struggled in the 2025 entry draft. Vancouver selected 36-year-old Michelle Karvinen, which at the time looked like another savvy move by Gardner Morey to add a veteran to a roster built to win now.
After a season of struggles, however, it seems a bit more like a mistake to have left younger players like 23-year-old Anne Cherkowski, who has out-produced Karvinen in New York, on the board.
Seattle’s first-round pick, Jenna Buglioni, has played a minimal role for the Torrent, suiting up for just 18 games this season. When she’s been in the lineup, her ice time has been minimal. She has yet to score her first PWHL point.
To be fair to each team, rookies have typically needed time to adjust to the PWHL — save for the Sarah Filliers of the world, who are rookies in name only. However, only two “rookies” from out west have cracked the top 20 in rookie scoring this season: Karvinen, who is not considered a true rookie by the PWHL, and Seattle defender Lyndie Lobdell, who has four points in 23 games.
Outside of those two, not a single first-year player in Vancouver or Seattle has more than one goal. And only Anna Segedi has more than one point (2).
Having to build a team from scratch then immediately tackle an entry draft likely put both Gardner Morey and Turner at a disadvantage. Still, it’s hard not to see each class of 2025 as a missed opportunity, knowing there’s players taken in the third and fifth rounds — such as Sarah Wozniewicz and Abby Newhook — making an impact on other teams this season.
Earlier this month, Brian Idalski made his thoughts pretty clear about travel for both expansion teams.
“We’re both struggling,” he said after a 5-1 loss to the Boston Fleet in Edmonton. “There’s something there. There’s something with the travel and us going back and forth that’s happening to our bodies.
Vancouver and Seattle are geographic outliers in the PWHL, which has five teams on the east coast and one (Minnesota) in the Midwest. That has meant more travel for the league’s newest teams, including cross-continent flights and weeks-long road trips. That PWHL teams fly commercial — not private like their NHL counterparts — is not ideal.
“Switching hotels from one to the next, and flights and connection flights and buses, it takes a toll,” Idalski said.
The results speak to that toll, with Vancouver and Seattle losing most of their games on the road this season and faring better in their home venues. Vancouver has lost 11 of its 15 games on the road; Seattle has lost 13. Meanwhile, both teams are above .500 at home, though that’s true for every team this season except for the Toronto Sceptres, who have a stunning .310 win percentage at home.
The league has clearly tried to limit long-haul flights by scheduling longer east coast road trips. Vancouver’s final road swing of the year started in Boston (March 24) and continued through Toronto, Montreal, Minnesota and ended with a “home game” in Edmonton two weeks later (April 7). Last month, Seattle bounced between Minnesota, Toronto, Montreal, Boston and Chicago for two weeks before returning home to Climate Pledge Arena. The Torrent lost four of those five games.
“Our road trips, we see 17, 15, and eight (days) and I think we’ve improved on how we handle those travels,” Steve O’Rourke said last week. “Our group is a tight-knit group, and we face adversity without complaining (about) how we travel, or any of that stuff.”
Travel is a league-wide concern in the PWHL. The day Boston beat Vancouver at the “Takeover Tour” in Edmonton, Fleet goalie Aerin Frankel posted to her Instagram account that it took the team 52 hours to get from Boston to Edmonton. She made 28 of 29 saves in spite of that. In the league’s first two seasons, the Minnesota Frost had the worst travel in the league and won back-to-back championships.
While Vancouver and Seattle have to travel further, and are surely affected more negatively than any other teams in the league, it’s not the only issue at play.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Vancouver Goldeneyes, Seattle Torrent, NHL, Women's Hockey
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