The Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) is in the process of expanding from eight teams to twelve.

On Wednesday, the league announced that Detroit was going to be the next city to have a team, and on Wednesday this week, Hamilton and Las Vegas were named the most recent additions. The extension to Hamilton is Ontario’s third team in the PWHL.

Edmonton would be a city that would make a lot of sense for a PWHL expansion team.

At the February 2025 Takeover Tour, Edmonton had 17,518 fans in attendance, the third-highest ticket sales on the tour. In December’s match, Rogers Place saw 10,264 fans in attendance and another 10,764 in April during the last round.

Unfortunately, due to scheduling conflicts causing a lack of facilities, it seems unlikely that Edmonton will get a professional women’s team at this time. Rogers Place already hosts the Edmonton Oilers and Edmonton Oil Kings, who combine for 75 home games throughout the hockey season that spans more than 210 days.

While taking concerts and other events that the arena hosts into account, it would be difficult to fit in the 15 home games required for the PWHL, especially as the league has expanded its season’s length every year. Some weeks, both the Oilers and Oil Kings are on extended home stands simultaneously, so the venue would have a lot on their hands to fit in a third team on their schedule.

Another hurdle would be ownership of the team.

The PWHL does not extend team ownership to specific groups as the league owns all of its teams collectively. This means that the venue’s controller, Oilers Entertainment Group (OEG), would have to agree to host a team not owned by their organization at Rogers Place.

According to Ice Warriors Media Group, the PWHL and OEG had conversations about bringing professional women’s hockey to Edmonton, but were unable to come to an agreement at this time.

Currently, the PWHL has four teams that share their rink with their cities’ NHL squad: the Minnesota Frost, Seattle Torrent, and the newly announced PWHL Detroit and PWHL Vegas share their NHL counterparts’ arenas, respectively.

As for the other teams, they play in arenas with capacities high enough to host a professional hockey team’s fanbase. This squashes the potentiality of the Downtown Community Arena being a candidate for the team, as its capacity is only 1,000.

Boston Fleet: Tsongas Center at UMass Lowell (UMass Lowell River Hawks – NCAA)

Minnesota Frost: Grand Casino Arena (Minnesota Wild – NHL)

Montreal Victoire: Place Bell in Laval (Laval Rocket – AHL)

Ottawa Charge: TD Place Arena (Ottawa 67’s – OHL)

PWHL Detroit: Little Caesars Arena (Detroit Red Wings – NHL)

PWHL Hamilton: TD Coliseum (Toronto Rock and Hamilton’s new AHL team – New York Islanders’ affiliate)

PWHL Vegas: T-Mobile Arena (Vegas Golden Knights – NHL)

Seattle Torrent: Climate Pledge Arena (Seattle Kraken – NHL)

Toronto Sceptres: Coca-Cola Coliseum (Toronto Marlies – AHL)

Vancouver Goldeneyes: Pacific Coliseum (Former arena of the Canucks)