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? Underperforming rosters 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.
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