Seattle Torrent enter their first offseason with fond memories and uncertain futures as expansion looms

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SEATTLE, UNITED STATES - APRIL 25: the PWHL regular season game between the Montréal Victoire and the Seattle Torrent at the Climate Pledge Arena on April 25, 2026 in Seattle, Washington, United States. (PWHL)

SEATTLE - While the results on the ice didn't match expectations entering their inaugural season, the Seattle Torrent enter their first offseason with fond memories and uncertain futures.

During exit interviews with reporters on Sunday, Torrent players were effusive in their praise of Seattle and their experience playing for the Torrent this season. The group is even renting an Airbnb in the area next week for a final party in the area before heading their separate ways for the offseason.

"Seattle's just blown away every expectation and truly set a new precedent for hockey and fans and the culture here, and it's just been, just been an awesome experience in the most unexpectedly best way," defender Emily Brown said.

Though the group carried lofty projections after landing several household names like Hilary Knight and Alex Carpenter through the expansion draft process, the performance of the group lagged behind. Seattle finished at the bottom of the standings with just 31 points, which was 13 points out of a playoff spot.

Seattle allowed the most goals in the league at 92 for the season (3.06 GAA) while finishing the year with the third-fewest goals scored at 64. The top two seeds in the PWHL playoffs – Montreal (41) and Boston (45) – allowed less than half as many goals over the 30-game season.

"Our defending is somewhere that we have to get much better on, and that's going to be the biggest kind of, for me, the deep dive," head coach Steve O'Rourke said.

"Just chances against, shots against. That's somewhere that this league, the best teams, every league, defense is where it starts. And then you can layer in the offense, layer in the power play in those moments. But defending is where it has to start, and that's where we're going to dig in the most, whether that's schematics, players, player combinations, all those things that will go into what we'll look like next year, as we know there's change coming."

But it will be difficult to implement a plan to improve until they know just how much the roster is going to change for next season. And with expansion looming, that change could be massive.

Amy Scheer, the Senior Vice President of Business Operations for the PWHL, said at an Associated Press Sports Editors conference on Monday that the league is looking to expand by 2–4 teams for next season. 

With active roster sizes at 23 players and more on reserve lists, expansion of that size will require somewhere between 50–120 more players to the talent pool for next season. Like with Seattle and Vancouver last year, expansion drafts would pull players from current teams to help seed the rosters of the incoming franchises.

That makes the future for the Torrent's roster highly uncertain.

"We have a lot of really good players on this team and I think I'd like to keep a lot of them here," general manager Meghan Turner said. "They've done a ton of great work in the community. They clearly showed up on the ice. … We'll take a look at how the expansion rules go, and then I think that's going to drive a lot of our decision-making and discussions."

Knight absolutely wants to be back with the Torrent next season, but knows that expansion is something that she can't control.

"Obviously, we're all at the mercy of this expansion and what those rules look like," Knight said. "Everybody wants to come back, and I think that's going to be the hard part, right, is figuring out what that looks like. But you know, I think for me personally, like, I want to be here in Seattle, and hopefully I can find my way back here. It's something that, you know, is top of mind and has been back of mind for a handful of weeks, as expansion rumors have come out. So yeah, just we'll see what happens."

Teams will be able to protect some of their players from being available, but the exact rules are not yet known, nor is how many teams will be involved.

"I feel like we have such a close team. I want to play with all of them next year again and it's sad that it might not work out that way with expansion," forward Julia Gosling said.

Despite finishing at the bottom of the standings, the Torrent led the PWHL in average attendance at over 12,000 fans a game, including a fully sold-out 17,151 for the season finale against the Montreal Victoire on Saturday night.

"We're going to do our best to come back as best we can, even better, and evolve our games so that we're ready to go when puck drops next year, because this is an incredible city to be a part of, and what a wonderful legacy to be able to be a part of this Seattle Torrent," Knight said.

"We're at the bottom of the standings and we're still selling out Climate Pledge Arena. That just goes to show the level of love and support that the city has for sports and we want to do better, and we want to rise to the top of the standings so that we can reflect what Seattle city sports are all about."

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