With new season on the horizon, PWHL evaluating more than 25 expansion proposals

The PWHL has received more than 25 proposals for expansion, as the league looks at the possibility of adding two teams as early as next season.

The six-team league is in the process of issuing requests for proposals, both for markets the league has targeted and others where groups have approached the PWHL to express interest in having a team, according to the PWHL's senior vice president of business operations, Amy Scheer.

The level of interest since the league opened to expansion proposals less than a month ago has kept Scheer busy booking meetings with interested groups.

"We need to do a lot of learning about the markets and how we would be supported there, and what does the model look like," she said in an interview with CBC Sports. "Our fact-finding mission is fun, and we'll continue until we feel we've got all the information we need."

The PWHL will launch its second season on Saturday with the Toronto Sceptres hosting the Boston Fleet at 2 p.m. ET at Coca-Cola Coliseum. The game will be streamed on CBCSports.ca, CBC Gem, and CBC Sports App.

Media, youth hockey systems, geography and economic opportunity are among some of the factors the PWHL is considering when evaluating potential expansion markets. (PWHL)

It will be the first of 90 games this season, including 17 Saturday games that will be broadcast by CBC Sports.

In addition to Toronto and Boston, the league also has teams in Ottawa, Montreal, Minnesota and the New York area, all of which are owned by the Walter Group, led by Los Angeles Dodgers co-owner, Mark Walter.

But the possibility of buying into the league has come up often in the conversations Scheer has been having.

"They've all asked, will you get to that point where we can buy the team or we can invest in the league?" Scheer said. "That's for the Walter Group to decide. For now, our marching orders are to go and explore what expansion could look like. I don't know what the future holds."

Talent pool deep enough for more teams

The first season saw the league break attendance records in both Canada and the U.S., en route to handing out the first Walter Cup championship trophy to the Minnesota Frost in May.

At the same time, interest in women's sport across the globe has soared, as have valuations of professional women's sport franchises in North America.

That, combined with a belief that there is enough talent on the ice to support an extra two teams, convinced the league to look at the possibility of expansion. When rosters are finalized later this week, there will be lots of talented players without a spot. They'll have limited options in North America, since the PWHL doesn't have a development league.

While expansion seems certain at some point, next season isn't set in stone at this point.

"We just don't know until we have the conversation and really learn more about the markets that are interested," Jayna Hefford, the league's senior vice president of hockey operations, told CBC Sports.

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Host Anastasia Bucsis is joined by women's hockey insider Karissa Donkin to preview the 2nd season of the Professional Women's Hockey League.

The league will play nine games in neutral sites across North America this season, all of which could be test runs for the viability and interest in women's hockey in those cities.

In Canada, stops on the "PWHL Takeover Tour" include Vancouver, Edmonton and Quebec City. Six American NHL markets will also host games, including Buffalo, Seattle, Raleigh, N.C., Denver, St. Louis and Detroit, which also hosted a PWHL game last season.

The league has built a weighted evaluation model for expansion with a checklist of seven to 10 items, ranging from economic opportunity to youth hockey, demographics, geography and media size, to consider when evaluating each potential expansion city's proposal.

There are NHL markets vying for a team, but Scheer said the league isn't limiting itself to cities that already have an NHL team.

"We don't want to put any guardrails on where we may or may not go," she said. "I think it's important to listen to the merits of each market and how they might meet some of the criteria that we have. Who knows? You could be pleasantly surprised, so why put a wall up?"

Demand for merchandise 'underestimated'

Since she started in her job almost exactly a year ago, Scheer feels like she hasn't stopped sprinting.

One of the first things she did was press pause on adopting team names and logos. Scheer felt they weren't ready to settle on branding yet.

The league ultimately hired a New York-based company to help develop brands for each of the six teams, and unveiled the new team names and logos in September.

"You can't just come out and say here's the name of the team with none of those supporting materials," Scheer said. "You just need to do things the right way."

The PWHL unveiled new jerseys from Bauer earlier this month. (Bauer/PWHL)

When the league launched team merchandise branded simply with city names last year, Scheer admitted they had no idea what to expect. Jerseys were sold out for some teams online throughout the season, and lines to get merchandise in arenas could be long.

"We 100 per cent underestimated the demand," Scheer said.

When they launched the new names and logos in September, merchandise sales broke records from the last season. Those records were broken again when the league launched new Bauer jerseys earlier this month.

Now, Scheer's job is to make sure the league doesn't encounter the same hiccups with availability as last season. 

"There's the potential, if the pace continues, that we could sell out of our jerseys by March," Scheer said. "That's something that we're looking at now: how do we start planning to not be sold out by March? Can we get them in from overseas?"

U.K. firm hired to shop international broadcast rights

The league is also looking at the possibility of an outdoor game in the future, and staging games in Europe, where the league feels its popularity is growing.

According to Scheer, people from 88 different countries outside Canada and the United States watched PWHL games on YouTube last season.

One of the goals of the league was to attract the best talent from across the world, and the PWHL will have more European players this season than last. With that in mind, the league hired a U.K.-based agency to shop its international broadcast rights.

"We think there's absolutely the ability to play games abroad and to grow abroad," Scheer said.

After preseason action last week in Toronto and Montreal, all six teams in the PWHL are in the process of finalizing their rosters. Waivers open on Tuesday at 5 p.m. ET, and teams must have their rosters set on Wednesday by 5 p.m. ET, ahead of Saturday's regular-season opener.