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With three games left in their regular season, the Goldeneyes (8-1-4-14) are holding onto slim playoff hopes.
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Published Apr 16, 2026 • Last updated 58 minutes ago • 4 minute read
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Vancouver Goldeneyes’ forward Sarah Nurse: “There’s not a time that I don’t leave my house that I don’t find a Goldeneyes fan.” Photo by ETHAN CAIRNS /THE CANADIAN PRESSArticle content
To hear Sarah Nurse tell it, much of this first year with the Vancouver Goldeneyes has been first rate.
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“I’ve loved everything about the city,” explained Nurse, a 31-year-old forward from Hamilton who is a mainstay with the Canadian national team program. “I think the community has been so incredible. There’s not a time that I don’t leave my house that I don’t find a Goldeneyes fan — someone who wants to come up and say hi and chat about the season, or somebody wearing merch. The city, this arena, every time we play a home game it’s been so electric. I have nothing but great things to say.
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“The merch thing has been pretty crazy. It’s one of the first things I noticed in Game One. Our team had just gotten branding a few weeks prior, so I really didn’t think there were going to be that many jerseys or shirts or sweaters in the stands. It’s just a testament to our fan base and how passionate they are.”
The expansion Goldeneyes are second in the eight-team PWHL for attendance, with an announced average of 11,254 for their games at the Pacific Coliseum. And you can wonder where they might be in that regard and with their merchandize sales if they had played better to date.
With three games left in their regular season, the Goldeneyes (8-1-4-14) are holding onto slim playoff hopes. The top four teams advance to the postseason and Vancouver sits in seventh spot, six points in back of that final position.
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The Goldeneyes are at the Seattle Torrent on Saturday, home to the Montreal Victoire on Tuesday, and then home to the Minnesota Frost on April 25. Considering they have three teams to jump in the standings, they likely need to win each night to have a chance at continuing past that Frost game. The PWHL awards three points for a regulation win, two for an overtime/shootout win, and a single point for an overtime/shootout loss. So there’s a lot of math at play here.
The league did seem to do its best to set up the Goldeneyes and their Torrent expansion cousins to be instant contenders. That included giving both teams an exclusive window to sign five free agents or players left unprotected by their teams prior to the expansion draft even occurring.
Vancouver inked Nurse — who played the first two seasons in the league with the Toronto Sceptres — during that window to a one-year deal. They also added forward Jenn Gardiner, defenders Claire Thompson and Sophie Jaques, as well as exceptional goaltender Emerance Maschmeyer in that period. That first quintet of Goldeneyes all represented Canada at the Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics.
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The Goldeneyes’ struggles have included producing offensively. Their power play at home is working at a league-worst 5.9 per cent (2-for-34). Nurse missed 11 games early in the campaign with an upper-body injury, and that clearly stung. The Goldeneyes won just three of those contests.
“I think that we had very high expectations for ourselves at the beginning of the year, and obviously things have not gone the way we wanted to for a multitude of factors,” said Nurse (7-6-13), who trails Thompson (3-13-16) and Jaques (8-6-14) on the team scoring parade. “Some are within our control and some are out of our control.
“As the season has gone on, it’s been disappointing because we want to play our absolute best for this city and these fans.”
The PWHL is talking about expanding again over the summer. There has been a suggestion it could bring on two new teams, some believe that it could be four.
The rules of engagement with the new teams this time around remain anyone’s guess. Vancouver general manager Cara Gardner Morey couldn’t offer up too much about that earlier this week. She did say Nurse is “obviously someone we would love to keep around,” citing her profile, her leadership, and her play.
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For her part, Nurse says that she hopes that there is a focus from the league on putting more teams in the west, joining Vancouver and Seattle. Vancouver’s 4-1 win over the Torrent on Tuesday at the Coliseum made Seattle (7-1-3-16) the first team to be eliminated from playoff contention, and Vancouver coach Brian Idalski recently pointed to travel being an issue, reasoning how “it would be one thing if one of the expansion teams was killing … but we’re both struggling.”
“I think there are logistical things that can be fixed leading into an expansion,” Nurse said. “If they are going to expand, I do hope it’s on the west coast, because I know every time we travel it’s a minimum eight-hour travel day.
“If we could have more teams on the west coast, it would help mitigate that.”
@SteveEwen
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