The Storm lost oft-injured guard Nika Muhl, who was selected by the Portland Fire in the second round of the WNBA expansion draft, which ends her hard-luck tenure in Seattle.
After being taken No. 14 overall in the second round of the WNBA draft in 2024 by the Storm, the former Connecticut Huskies star played in 16 games as a rookie and tallied just two points after scoring her only basket in the regular-season finale.
On Oct. 3, 2024 she tore her left anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and meniscus while playing for the Turkish basketball club Besiktas in the FIBA SuperCup and missed the 2025 WNBA season.
After an extensive rehab, Muhl returned to Besiktas and played with her native Croatian national team in the FIBA Women’s EuroBasket Qualifiers when she suffered an ACL injury in her right knee on March 11.
Muhl underwent surgery Tuesday and will miss the upcoming season.
She’s the third Storm player to be selected in an expansion draft following Betty Lennox (2008 to the Atlanta Dream) and Francesca Zara (2006 to the Chicago Sky).
Friday’s expansion draft tips off what’s expected to be a frenzied and shortened free agency period that’s expected to start next week.
More than 100 players are poised to hit the market and vying for contracts potentially exceeding $1M for the first time in league history, including Storm unrestricted free agents Nneka Ogwumike, Skylar Diggins, Ezi Magbegor, Brittney Sykes and Erika Wheeler.
The Storm have just three players on the roster (Dominique Malonga, Jordan Horston and Lexie Brown) and general manager Talisa Rhea and first-year coach Sonia Raman must decide how to spend the team’s roughly $7 million salary cap.
Under the terms of the new collective bargaining agreement, the league’s 15 teams must carry at least 12 players and can add two additional developmental players to the roster.