Detroit — Hockeytown appears to be making room for another hockey team.
All signs point toward Detroit landing a Professional Women’s Hockey League franchise this week, with the Ilitch organization and city of Detroit officials touting an unspecified but “exciting” announcement at Little Caesars Arena on Wednesday morning.
There have been multiple media reports within the last week that the PWHL’s latest round of expansion is imminent, and Detroit long has been on the league’s radar.
In March, during the PWHL’s latest stop at LCA, Amy Scheer, vice president of PWHL business operations, told The News, “Listen, this is Hockeytown. … I don’t want to play anywhere else. This is where we want to play.”
The PWHL launched in 2023-24 with six teams, and it had its first round of expansion ahead of this season. Detroit missed out on that round of expansion, as the league added teams in Seattle and Vancouver.
The PWHL has expressed a desire to add two to four teams ahead of next season, and has had several cities under consideration, many of them participating in the league’s annual city “takeover tour” games — one-offs played in locations without a permanent team.
The PWHL has hosted four “takeover” games at LCA, all of them well-attended:
A PWHL franchise would give LCA, which opened in 2017, its latest sports tenant. The building already is home to the Detroit Pistons and Detroit Red Wings, and it will be home to a new WNBA franchise, starting in 2029. PWHL teams played more than a dozen regular-season home games a season, which stretches from November to April.
“We want to play in the NHL buildings,” Scheer told The News in March. “This might be the premier venue in the United States when you look at the clubs, the building.”
The PWHL and its eight franchises are owned by the Mark Walter Group, led by the Los Angeles Dodgers owner. The league’s advisory board includes tennis legend Billie Jean King. Minnesota has won the league’s first two championships, with the 2025-26 playoffs ongoing.
The PHWL currently has four teams in the United States (Minnesota, Boston, New York and Seattle) and four teams in Canada (Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver).
There are more than a dozen PWHL players who call Michigan home, second-most in the league behind Minnesota. Among them is Farmington Hills’ Megan Keller, the Olympic gold-medal hero who plays for Boston.
tpaul@detroitnews.com
@tonypaul1984
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: As PWHL rolls out more expansion, Detroit appears ready for its franchise
Reporting by Tony Paul, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
