Get ready for women's pro hockey in Las Vegas

Boston Fleet's Riley Brengman battles Toronto's Natalie Spooner for the puck during a game at Agganis Arena at Boston University on Tuesday, March 17, 2026. The league will announce Wednesday it is expanding to Las Vegas. LAS VEGAS — When the NHL announced in 2016 it was expanding to Las Vegas, one of the mandates for the new organization, at the time unnamed, was to grow the sport in Southern Nevada, both at the youth and adult level.

It also meant growing the game for both genders. With participation in girls hockey in Nevada having grown 600 percent over the nine years the Golden Knights have been operational from less than 100 to more than 600 and with the added sheets of ice throughout the valley, it only made sense that the Professional Women's Hockey League would eventually put down roots here. Wednesday is that day.

The PWHL will announce that it will expand to Las Vegas for the 2026-27 season. Las Vegas will join Detroit, which was announced last week as the league’s ninth franchise. This past season, Seattle and Vancouver competed as first-year teams, joining Toronto, Montreal, Minnesota, New York, Boston and Ottawa, the PWHL’s “Original Six.

” What’s interesting about the move is the PWHL did not test-drive the Las Vegas market with one of its popular and successful “Takeovers” where the league goes into a town that doesn’t have a team and plays a one-night stand. And it has resulted in huge crowds to watch women’s hockey. It also is a single-entity ownership so the league controls all the teams and its salaries.