Browsing: PWHL

After more than a decade of playing hockey around the globe, Hannah Miller is back home.

Miller signed with the Professional Women’s Hockey League’s new Vancouver expansion team as a free agent in June in a move that has since spurred a number of “full-circle moments.”

The latest came last week when she helped coach an under-13 girls team in North Vancouver, B.C. The skills session took place at the same rink where she played as a kid.

“Itâ€s amazing,” Miller said of returning to her hometown. “Iâ€ve been playing kind of all over the place, overseas and in Toronto. So to come back and be in Vancouver and playing professionally, itâ€s a dream come true.

“I think it hasnâ€t really set in yet. I think thereâ€ll be a lot of emotions on that opening night in the (Pacific) Coliseum.â€

The 29-year-old forward was a standout for the PWHL’s Toronto Sceptres during the 2024-25 campaign, contributing 10 goals and 14 assists over 29 regular-season appearances in her second year with the team.

Choosing to leave was difficult, she said.

“I really enjoyed my time in Toronto. Loved the group there, loved the staff. They drafted me back in the inaugural season, so that means a lot to me,” Miller said.

“But to have the opportunity to come back to Vancouver, where I grew up, where my family is, it just kind of seemed like everything was falling in place and coming full circle. And I think it was an opportunity I just couldnâ€t pass up.â€

A love of hockey has always been part of Miller.

There was no PWHL to work toward when she was first learning the game, but growing up, she dreamt of playing college hockey and playing in the Olympics.

“As soon as I put the skates on and was playing, youâ€re not thinking about anything else,” she said. “I just loved every aspect of it. Loved the team, the camaraderie thatâ€s built there. I think itâ€s the greatest game on Earth.â€

Miller played at St. Lawrence University in Upstate New York, and recorded 123 points in 124 games.

She went on to join the KRS Vanke Rays in Shenzen, China, and helped the team to two Zhenskaya Hockey League titles, and played for awhile in Sweden’s women’s league.

Her time in China allowed Miller to play for the country at the 2022 Beijing Olympics where she scored the host country’s first goal of the Games.

Now, though, Miller wants to once again play for Canada, the country where she grew up and earned back-to-back U-18 women’s hockey championships in 2013 and 2014.

After a stellar run in PWHL play last year, Miller was named to Canada’s roster for the women’s world hockey championship in March. The International Ice Hockey Federation later ruled she was ineligible to play because of its transfer rules.

The athlete and Team Canada have asked the sport’s governing body to reinstate her eligibility for the national squad, and are still awaiting the IIHF’s decision.

“Itâ€s kind of in the back of my mind, I guess. I think this process … itâ€s taken longer than I anticipated, than I thought it was going to be,” Miller said.

While they wait, she continues to train with the Canadian contingent as the country prepares for another world championship in November, followed by the 2026 Milano-Cortina Olympics in February.

Miller went to training blocks in Calgary and Toronto this summer, and will join the team for another in Montreal before returning to Vancouver for PWHL training camp.

No matter what the IIHF decides, the camps are a special opportunity, she said.

“At the end of the day, having the opportunity to go to these camps, get the preparation, get the best-on-best in practice, in training every day, thereâ€s really nowhere Iâ€d rather be,” she said.

“Regardless of what happens, I think itâ€s great preparation for myself leading into the season. Itâ€s been a lot of fun so far to be part of that group and get to know those girls better. Itâ€s pretty special.â€

Some of the faces in the Canada camps are the same ones Miller will soon skate alongside with PWHL Vancouver, including former Sceptres teammate Sarah Nurse and Jenn Gardiner, who spent last season with the Montreal Victoire.

The talent on Vancouver’s new team is part of what motivated Miller to sign a three-year deal.

“Honestly, when the team was getting built after I had signed, I was really happy with what (general manager) Cara (Gardner Morey) was putting together,” she said. “Great hockey players. I think we have an incredible team. But also a really great group of people. So I think itâ€s going to be a really fun team to be a part of.â€

The group will come together for the first time in mid-November before Vancouver hosts fellow expansion side PWHL Seattle for their first-ever game on Nov. 21.

“I think weâ€re going to be a fast, highly offensive team thatâ€s really exciting to watch,” Miller said.

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The PWHL won’t be stopping at just eight teams.

Before the newest expansion teams in Seattle and Vancouver even hit the ice, a new report suggests that the league is looking to expand again.

David Pagnotta, editor-in-chief of The Fourth Period, reports that as many as four new markets could be expected in the next wave of expansion, which could come as soon as the 2026-27 season.

There has reportedly been heavy interest from multiple markets across Canada and the United States, including Calgary, Edmonton, Hamilton, Quebec City, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Denver, Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Some of these cities, such as Detroit and Edmonton, were stops in the PWHL Takeover Tour last year and hosted regular-season PWHL games.

Vancouver and Seattle were also stops along last year’s tour, and the fan response in these markets was part of the reason they were selected as new franchises.

The PWHL began play in 2024 with just six teams. From there, the league has added new elements each year, including nicknames and logos for the 2024-25 season, and two new expansion franchises in the 2025-26 season.

The league held an expansion draft in June that was heavily criticized for the destruction it may have caused to the inaugural teams. Fans have yet to see the newly rearranged squads take the ice and the league has yet to announce its schedule for the upcoming season.

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Erica Howe paid it forward in hockey. She wants to do the same in her cancer journey.

The goaltender who has represented Canada internationally was among the foot soldiers in the movement for a viable, sustainable professional women’s hockey league.

Howe joined the Professional Women’s Hockey Players’ Association after the Canadian Women’s Hockey League folded in 2019 and took her Markham Thunder club with it.

There was a paying women’s hockey league she could have joined, the Premier Hockey League. Howe was among the players who put their faith behind the PWHPA’s vision for four years, even if a dream league arrived too late to benefit them.

“She all along was a strong foundational player in that movement and a voice that people respected a lot,” said Hockey Hall of Famer Jayna Hefford.

Howe was the backup goalie of the Toronto Sceptres in the inaugural season of the Professional Women’s Hockey League in 2023-24. She started three games for a 1-1-0 record.

Howe retired after that season to return to her job as a firefighter in Mississauga, Ont.

She was diagnosed with breast cancer later that summer. She says it was her turn to benefit from those who had come before her.

“When I was first diagnosed and I’m sitting in the office and my oncologist tells me the plan, the plan is so clear because so many people have sat before me and raised money and funds and awareness for this cause, so that when I got there, my plan was so clear and so quickly executed because they knew what the science said and how to handle it,” recalled the 33-year-old from Orleans, Ont.

Howe saw a parallel with hockey. The PWHL opens its third season this fall after expanding from six teams to eight.

“There was another league available, but we knew that if we just all jumped over there to play in that other league, we’d get same results, but if we banded together to sit out and kind of sacrifice what we did, even if some of us wouldn’t get the opportunity to play in it, like many of my friends and teammates didn’t, we knew it would be for kind of the betterment of everyone,” Howe said.

“You see the women who came before us who didn’t have sticks and skates, and they had to pay for everything, and they grinded so we could do better. It’s the least we could do to sit out and band together to make it better for the next wave of players coming through.

“Leaving it better than I found it. I’ve been saying that a lot, just the parallels between hockey and even like being a goalie and just trying to be present, and for my own journey, one step at a time, and then afterwards finding purpose and trying to pay it forward for the next person who has to go through this.”

After surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, Howe says her status is “no evidence of disease”.

The Sceptres and Montreal Victoire played a December game in her honour to raise money for cancer research. The Sceptres also provided a precious service to her during treatment.

“The mental toll of being at home and not feeling well, I knew was going to be one of my biggest barriers,” Howe said.

“I reached out to the Sceptres asking (general manager) Gina Kingsbury, ‘Do you have anything I can do because I know I’m going to need to grasp on to something normal here.’ They were like, ‘Absolutely, come into the rink. You’re part of this team.'”

Howe sharpened skates, cut sticks, handed out apparel, prepared the players’ benches for practice and helped goalie coach Brad Kirkwood with video analysis.

“My wife and I also joke about how it probably saved my life being able to go there and have tasks to do and just feel like these are my normal friends that I normally hang out with,” Howe said.

Sceptres teammate Blayre Turnbull saw Howe tackle cancer with the same strength she demonstrated as a teammate.

“She’s one of the players who had a huge role in creating this league and making sure that it was successful and that we started off on the right foot,” Turnbull said.

“She’s someone who, years from now, I hope is able to look back and think about the last five years of her hockey career and be really proud of everything she stood for and how she showed up during that time.”

Hefford, the PWHL’s executive vice-president of hockey operations, talked with Howe about how the league could help her during treatment, and offered options.

“It was important to us to have her feel the support within our community,” said Hefford. “She chose the team route, which I think was the best one for her because she had that built-in family already in that group.”

Howe, who backstopped Clarkson to an NCAA title in 2014, played for Canadian teams at the 2014 Four Nations Cup and 2016 women’s world championship.

She got the green light this month to ease back into recreational hockey. She’ll play Saturday in the Princess Margaret Road Hockey to Conquer Cancer tournament in Toronto to fundraise for cancer research.

“Princess Margaret is a leader in cancer research and I saw first-hand this year how important that is, so then just being able to kind of pay it forward, to make a better future for other cancer patients or anyone else who hears those words, ‘you have cancer,'” Howe said.

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