PWHL announces draft in Ottawa, Casey O'Brien leads top prospects
The 2025 Professional Women's Hockey League draft is heading to Ottawa this summer, the league announced on Tuesday morning.
The PWHL's third annual entry draft will be hosted at Ottawa's new (yet to be opened) Hard Rock Hotel & Casino on Tuesday, June 24, starting at 7 p.m. ET.
It will be the first time the draft is hosted in Ottawa, one of the league's original six markets, and the first time the event will be held in Canada since the inaugural 2023 draft in Toronto, where Taylor Heise was taken first overall by the Minnesota Frost. Last year's draft, along with the PWHL Awards, was hosted in Minneapolis, Minn.
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According to the release, this will be the first event held at the Hard Rock Live theater venue, which is part of the $350 million renovation and expansion project of the local Rideau Carleton Casino.
The draft declaration window will be open until May 8; all prospective players interested in playing in 2025-26 must declare for the draft to be eligible for selection and subsequent free agency.
The PWHL also announced several top players who, as of Monday afternoon, had already made their official declaration. The group is led by 2025 Patty Kazmaier Award winner Casey O'Brien, who led the NCAA in scoring this season with 88 points in 41 games en route to a third national championship with the Wisconsin Badgers; Czech forward Kristýna Kaltounková, one of the top 10 finalists for the Patty Kazmaier after a 26-goal season for Colgate; and U.S. national team defender Haley Winn, who led Clarkson University in scoring over her final two seasons.
Defenders Nicole Gosling, who won gold with Canada at last year's world championship, and Rory Guilday, who won gold with Team USA in 2023, are among the other highlights announced by the league.
Forwards Abby Newhook (Boston College), Anne Cherkowski (Clarkson) and Natálie Mlýnková (Minnesota), as well as goalie Hannah Murphy (Colgate), have also declared.
U.S. forward Abbey Murphy could be the consensus No. 1 pick should she declare for this year's draft. But she still has the option to return to the University of Minnesota for one final season. If Murphy returns to the NCAA, O'Brien would be the top prospect available.
O'Brien is an all-situations center with vision and a solid shot, and was among the best players in the faceoff dot last season. She finished her college career as the all-time points leader in Wisconsin hockey history, with 274 points in 183 career games.
There's a case to be made for Winn in the No. 1 spot, given the premium general managers typically put on defenders. Winn is an offensively gifted right-shot defender who could upgrade any team's blue line and top power play. She has also played against top competition for years as a member of Team USA, and is currently playing in her third straight women's world championship in Czechia.
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Selecting Winn would be the first time a defender went No. 1 at the draft in the PWHL's short history.
Last year, the New York Sirens drafted star forward Sarah Fillier first overall after winning the Gold Plan, the league's innovative approach to determining its draft order. Essentially, in the PWHL, the draft order is determined by how many points a team earns after being eliminated from the playoffs.
No teams have been mathematically eliminated from the 2024-25 season yet, but the Sirens once again sit last in the league standings and could start accumulating draft points soon after the PWHL returns from its international break for women's worlds.
According to the PWHL, the Gold Plan will be used again this season, and the team that accrues the most points after elimination will get the top pick among the league's current six franchises.
It's unclear how potential expansion might impact the draft order.
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(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) Joshua Lens, University of Iowa (THE CONVERSATION) The business of college sports was upended after a federal judge approved a settlement between the NCAA and former college athletes on June 6, 2025. After a lengthy litigation process, the NCAA has agreed to provide US$2.8 billion in back pay to former and current college athletes, while allowing schools to directly pay athletes for the first time. Joshua Lens, whose scholarship centers on the intersection of sports, business and the law, tells the story of this settlement and explains its significance within the rapidly changing world of college sports. What will change for players and schools with this settlement? The terms of the settlement included the following changes: - The NCAA and conferences will distribute approximately $2.8 billion in media rights revenue back pay to thousands of athletes who competed since 2016. - Universities will have the ability to enter name, image and likeness, or NIL, agreements with student-athletes. So schools can now, for example, pay them to appear in ads for the school or for public appearances. - Each university that opts in to the settlement can disburse up to $20.5 million to student-athletes in the 2025-26 academic year, a number that will likely rise in future academic years. Athletes' NIL agreements with certain individuals and entities will be subject to an evaluation that will determine whether the NIL compensation exceeds an acceptable range based on a perceived fair market value, which could result in the athlete having to restructure or forego the deal. - The NCAA's maximum sport program scholarship limits will be replaced with maximum team roster size limits for universities that choose to be part of the settlement. Why did the NCAA agree to settle with, rather than fight, the plaintiffs? In 2020, roughly 14,000 current and former college athletes filed a class action lawsuit, House v. NCAA, seeking damages for past restrictions on their ability to earn money. For decades, college athletics' primary governing body, the NCAA, permitted universities whose athletics programs compete in Division I to provide their athletes with scholarships that would help cover their educational expenses, such as tuition, room and board, fees and books. By focusing only on educational expenses, the NCAA was able to reinforce the notion that collegiate athletes are amateurs who may not receive pay for participating in athletics, despite making money for their schools. A year later, in 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in a separate case, Alston v. NCAA, that the NCAA violated antitrust laws by limiting the amount of education-related benefits, such as laptops, books and musical instruments, that universities could provide to their athletes. The ruling challenged the NCAA's amateurism model while opening the door for future lawsuits tied to athlete compensation. It also burnished the plaintiffs' case in House v. NCAA, compelling college athletics' governing body to take part in settlement talks. What were some of the key changes that took place in college sports after the Supreme Court's decision in Alston v. NCAA? Following Alston, the NCAA permitted universities to dole out several thousand dollars in what's called ' education benefits pay ' to student-athletes. This could include cash bonuses for maintaining a certain GPA or simply satisfying NCAA academic eligibility requirements. But contrary to popular belief, the Supreme Court's Alston decision didn't let college athletes be paid via NIL deals. The NCAA continued to maintain that this would violate its principles of amateurism. However, many states, beginning with California, introduced or passed laws that required universities within their borders to allow their athletes to accept NIL compensation. With over a dozen states looking to pass similar laws, the NCAA folded on June 30, 2021, changing its policy so athletes could accept NIL compensation for the first time. Will colleges and universities be able to weather all of these financial commitments? The settlement will result in a windfall for certain current and former collegiate athletes, with some expected to receive several hundred thousands of dollars. Universities and their athletics departments, on the other hand, will have to reallocate resources or cut spending. Some will cut back on travel expenses for some sports, others have paused facility renovations, while other athletic departments may resort to cutting sports whose revenue does not exceed their expenses. As Texas A&M University athletic director Trev Alberts has explained, however, that college sports does not have a revenue problem – it has a spending problem. Even in the well-resourced Southeastern Conference, for example, many universities' athletics expenses exceed its revenue. Do you see any future conflicts on the horizon? Many observers hope the settlement brings stability to the industry. But there's always a chance that the settlement will be appealed. More potential challenges could involve Title IX, the federal gender equity statute that prohibits discrimination based on sex in schools. What if, for example, a university subject to the statute distributes the vast majority of revenue to male athletes? Such a scenario could violate Title IX. On the other hand, a university that more equitably distributes revenue among male and female athletes could face legal backlash from football athletes who argue that they should be entitled to more revenue, since their games earn the big bucks. And as I pointed out in a recent law review article, an athlete or university may challenge the new enforcement process that will attempt to limit athletes' NIL compensation within an acceptable range that is based on a fair market valuation. The NCAA and the conferences named in the lawsuit have hired the accountancy firm Deloitte to determine whether athletes' compensation from NIL deals fall within an acceptable range based on a fair market valuation, looking to other collegiate and professional athletes to set a benchmark range. If athletes and universities have struck deals that are too generous, both could be penalized, according to the terms of the settlement. Finally, the settlement does not address – let alone solve – issues facing international student-athletes who want to earn money via NIL. Most international student-athletes' visas, and the laws regulating them, heavily limit their ability to accept compensation for work, including NIL pay. Some lawmakers have tried to address this issue in the past, but it hasn't been a priority for the NCAA, as it has lobbied Congress for a federal NIL law.
