A day after Marie-Philip Poulin’s playoff heroics, the PWHL got even bigger

Less than 24 hours after out hockey icon and Montreal Victoire forward Marie-Philip Poulin broke a scoreless tie against the Minnesota Frost off an assist from her wife, Laura Stacey to secure a huge PWHL playoff win, executives announced that the league will grow in size once again.

Flanked by city officials, local female hockey players of all ages and members of the Illitch family, the league announced that Detroit, home to multiple record crowds for PWHL games during its annual Takeover Tour, will be the next city to join the PWHL.

“I’m a little emotional,” Amy Scheer, PWHL senior vice president of business operations and longtime out LGBTQ sports business executive, said during the announcement at Little Caesars Arena Wednesday. “Detroit, I think you know that you had us at game one.”

The team currently known as PWHL Detroit until a team name is announced at a later date, will begin play in the 2026-27 season with a black and silver colorway with red as an accent color in a nod to the Detroit Red Wings.

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The league’s commitment to Detroit will extend to offseason festivities as well. Scheer announced that the PWHL entry draft will be held as a ticketed event at the city’s Fox Theatre on June 17. The league later announced that the PWHL Awards ceremony will also he held in the city on June 16.

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Detroit has already attracted a PWHL audience

Adding a team in Detroit comes as no surprise considering the success and fan response the league experienced every time it hosted a neutral site game in the city during its short lifespan. It’s first game in 2024, the first neutral site game in league history, drew nearly 14,000 fans, and that number went up every time the league returned, topping out at just under 16,000 in March 2026.

“On March 16, 2024, we showed up to Little Caesars Arena our first season. We didn’t know what to expect, and on that day [13,786] people showed up right alongside us,” Scheer said. “I think on that day, Detroit, you showed us what was possible. You are literally the mother of the Takeover Tour … each visit, it left us with that same feeling: this market is ready for its own team.”

Detroit will house the PWHL’s third expansion franchise and see the league’s number of teams grow for the second consecutive year. It is a key signature of the growth in popularity the league, currently in its third season, has experienced during the recent boom in women’s sports and attention drawn by the Olympic women’s hockey competition earlier this year.

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It is concurrently a large expansion for LGBTQ presence in professional sports.

It is no secret that women’s sports has historically been a more amicable environment for out LGBTQ athletes to compete openly and authentically, despite the recent renewed centering of demonizing trans women and girls who participate in women’s sports. The PWHL rivals every major women’s sports league, including the WNBA, in the number of out LGBTQ players among its soon-to-be nine teams and hasn’t shied away from celebrating LGBTQ pride at the league and team level throughout its existence.

The addition of new teams such as the one in Detroit only provides more opportunities to LGBTQ players and sports professionals while giving more LGBTQ and allied fans another squad to root for with their full throat in a fan environment that embraces them.

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