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)
The Seattle Torrent will pick second in the upcoming PWHL draft, the league finally announced on Monday – just two days before the event is scheduled to begin.
While expansion has been the primary focus for the league with four new teams joining ahead of next season, the structure of the draft had been left almost entirely up in the air until the last minute.
The Vancouver Goldeneyes won the No. 1 pick through the league's "Gold Plan," which rewards the team that finishes with the most points following their elimination from playoff contention. A key late-season loss to Vancouver in overtime by the Torrent helped the Goldeneyes land the top pick.
Where the Torrent – or the other 10 teams – would pick was then left undecided until the league announced the draft order on Monday.
The Torrent will follow Vancouver with the second overall pick. The four incoming expansion teams – Detroit, San Jose, Las Vegas and Hamilton – will make the next four picks, and the original six franchises will hold the bottom half of the selections with New York, Toronto, Minnesota, Boston, Ottawa, and Walter Cup champion Montreal finishing out the order.
The four expansion teams were placed via a random drawing in the presence of the league's general managers in Detroit. New York and Toronto pick at No. 7 and No. 8 due to their finishes outside the playoffs, and the remaining four are in inverse order of playoff finish.
By picking second, the Torrent are likely to get a very promising prosect early in the draft.
Caroline Harvey won MVP of the Olymptics for Team USA, leading the tournament in scoring with nine points as a defender. The University of Wisconsin prospect is the presumptive first pick in the draft.
But after Harvey, the next two players likely to be chosen were also members of the U.S. Olympics team in Milan.
Winger Abbey Murphy is a University of Minnesota product, who had 66 points on 40 goals and 26 assists in 31 games for the Badgers last season. She also had two goals and five assists in seven games in Italy at the Olympics.
Laila Edwards has played both defense and wing and was the first black woman ever to play for the U.S. women's hockey team. A teammate of Harvey's at Wisconsin, Edwards had 45 points on 12 goals and 33 assists in 28 games for the Badgers, and two goals and six assists in eight games played at the Olympics.
The Source: Information in this story came from the PWHL and FOX 13 Seattle reporting.
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