(WXYZ) — Ilitch Sports + Entertainment and the Professional Women's Hockey League are expected to announce that Detroit is getting a PWHL team on Wednesday.
Both the Ilitch organization and the PWHL have said there will be a 10 a.m. announcement, but have not said the two are related. Watch the announcement live here at 10 a.m.
There have been reports over the past few weeks that Detroit was a frontrunner to get a PWHL team – one of potentially four expansion teams. It comes on the heels of two successful Takeover Tour games in January and March at Little Caesars Arena.
The game set a new Little Caesars Arena record for the PWHL with 15,938 fans attending the game between the Montreal Victoire and New York Sirens. That game was also the first nationally televised PWHL game, airing on ION, which is owned by WXYZ's parent company, E.W. Scripps. It was also sponsored by Ally Financial, which is based in Detroit.
Also, during that game, there was a segment where fans showed off their signs, all of which expressed the passion and desire of fans to bring women's hockey to Hockeytown.
In 2025, Detroit set a U.S. attendance record for a professional women's hockey game. In total, nearly 54,000 fans have attended PWHL games at Little Caesars Arena over the past three years.
The league, which now consists of eight teams, expanded last season to the West Coast by adding teams in Seattle and Vancouver. The league now has teams in Boston, Minnesota, Montreal, New York, Ottawa, Toronto, Seattle and Vancouver.
When the PWHL announced the new teams last April, they only announced the cities and team colors, saying the teams would operate as PWHL Seattle and PWHL Vancouver. It wasn't until November that the team's names were revealed.
The PWHL season began in November 2025 and each team plays 30 regular-season games. The Walter Cup. The Walter Cup Playoffs began in April and feature two playoff rounds – the semifinals and the finals. Each series is a five-game series.
This season, the Minneosta Frost and Montreal Victoire are in one semifinal series and the Ottawa Charge and Boston Fleet are in the other.
