(From left to right) Jonathan Becher, president of Sharks Sports & Entertainment, Royce Cohen, PWHL Advisory Board Member and Senior Vice President, Amy Scheer, Senior Vice President of Business Operations for the Professional Women’s Hockey League, Kristi Yamaguchi, Olympic gold medalist, and Brandi Chastain, two-time Olympic gold medalist, celebrate during a press conference announcing a San Jose Professional Women’s Hockey League team at SAP Center in San Jose, Calif., on Tuesday, May 19, 2026. (Shae Hammond/Bay Area News Group)
The newly expanded PWHL launches its fourth season with all 12 teams competing during the first weekend of December, including San Jose, which will become the three-year league’s first expansion team to open play at home.
San Jose, one of four expansion franchises — neither of which has an official name yet — plays its first PWHL game at SAP Center against the Minnesota Frost on Saturday, Dec. 5 at 7:30 p.m. PT.
The PWHL’s first night of play will include women’s hockey replacing the NHL on CBC’s iconic “Hockey Night in Canada” broadcast, the league announced on Monday.
The season will begin with three games on Dec. 5, including with the Seattle Torrent traveling to Vancouver to face the Goldeneyes in a repeat of last season’s opener between the PWHL’s two 2025 expansion teams.
The reigning champion Montreal Victoire will launch the PWHL’s new broadcasting agreement with CBC in a prime-time game hosting the yet-to-be-named expansion team in Hamilton.
The remaining six teams will open on Dec. 6, with Ottawa hosting Toronto, New York hosting Boston and an all-expansion matchup featuring Las Vegas hosting Detroit.
The PWHL also released its full schedule of home-openers, with the remainder of the slate to be revealed on Friday. The regular season is set to run through April, though the league has not yet revealed how many games each team will play following the addition of four expansion franchises.
The brodcast agreements come on the heels of the PWHL securing its first season-long U.S. national broadcast deal with Scripps Sports to air games on ION.
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