PWHL Expansion Draft Predictions: Montréal Victoire

With two new teams joining the PWHL next season, fans should be preparing for a harrowing expansion draft that will see each of the Inaugural Six franchises lose four players.

The more in-depth rules for the draft can be found on the league website, but in brief: each of the Inaugural Six teams will choose three players to protect from expansion. After they lose two players, they will have the chance to protect one more, and then two more will be taken.

While the newly named general managers of PWHL Seattle and PWHL Vancouver plan who they want to take, the staffs of the Inaugural Six teams are deciding who to protect. For Montréal, these decisions are not as difficult logically as they are for some teams, but they may be more painful.

Eligible Players

Players whose contracts expired at the end of the 2024-25 season are not eligible to be taken in the expansion draft. These are the players who have active contracts with the Victoire; how long remains on that contract; and whether they are among the players making at least $80,000 for the remainder of that contract.

Forwards:
Abby Boreen- 2 years
Jennifer Gardiner- 1 year
Dara Greig- Restricted free agent
Amanda Kessel- Restricted free agent
Lina Ljungblom- 2 years
Maureen Murphy- 1 year; $80,000+
Kristin O'Neill- 1 year; $80,000+
Marie-Philip Poulin- 1 year; $80,000+
Laura Stacey- 1 year; $80,000+

Defenders:
Erin Ambrose- 1 year; $80,000+
Cayla Barnes- 2 years
Amanda Boulier- 2 years
Anna Wilgren- Restricted free agent

Goaltenders:
Ann-Renée Desbiens- 1 year; $80,000+

As restricted free agents (RFAs), an expansion team would have the right to negotiate new contracts with Dara Greig, Amanda Kessel, or Anna Wilgren if they were selected.

Initial Three Protected Players

There are two questions facing the Victoire: who would they most hate to lose?; and how can they strategize to retain those players?

Montréal has the best player in the world, and one of if not the best goaltender in the world. It is hard to imagine either of Marie-Philip Poulin or Ann-Renée Desbiens being left exposed for a moment in this expansion draft, for fear that they would be instantly taken. It is nearly as hard to imagine the team willingly exposing Laura Stacey, who was nearly as impactful as Poulin this season.

That would be a very neat answer, and indeed it was my instinctive answer when I first started thinking about the protection lists. But there are other factors at play.

While the Victoire didn’t finish the season the scoring behemoth they were to start, they managed to keep their regular season title by not allowing their opponents to score. Not all of this can be laid at Desbiens’ feet. I would say that the Victoire, as they stood at the end of the season, had the PWHL’s deepest and best defensive squad. That league-low 2.23 Goals Against Per Game doesn’t happen without the contributions of the Victoire’s defenders.

For the last two seasons, Montréal has used their first pick in the PWHL Entry Draft on elite defenders. In 2023, the Victoire selected Erin Ambrose, a lynchpin of Team Canada. In 2024, they took Cayla Barnes, who will be one of the best defenders on Team USA for years to come. Both of these players eat up minutes and deliver both offensively and defensively for the Victoire. They are invaluable to this team, and will also be among those the new teams will target. While it would hurt the Victoire to lose either, it would be crushing to lose both.

How do you strategize around that? Every team in the PWHL is expecting to lose some of their most beloved players, but not every team has such valuable players to lose.

It has been suggested that the Victoire could choose to expose Laura Stacey and protect one of their defenders. Stacey’s salary as one of the Victoire’s Foundational Signings in 2023 is unknown in its specifics, but by the rules of the Collective Bargaining Agreement that governs the league, she must be paid at least $80,000 per year. Each team’s salary structure was built with the expectation of carrying six such contracts. It may be the case that her cost is prohibitive to one of the new teams; that they would prefer to sign others on less expensive contracts and try to build a more well-rounded team that way. It’s also possible that the new teams would prefer other players on similar contracts, and would avoid Stacey’s in order to leave more flexibility in free agency. But considering Stacey’s history and her performance even this season, it would be quite daring to leave her exposed in such a way.

Despite the immense value that Ambrose and Barnes bring to this team, I would be quite surprised to see the Victoire’s initial protection list include anyone aside from Marie-Philip Poulin, Laura Stacey, and Ann-Renée Desbiens.

First Pair of Players Lost

There are a lot of ways this could go. There are different strategies the expansion teams could choose, and within those strategies, they could value players differently from each other, or differently than onlookers. While we might expect the teams to begin by selecting ‘the best player available’– however they define that– they might prefer to begin by taking exclusively forwards, or defenders, or young players, or veterans. They may decide to pick players they’ve already negotiated with, during their five-day exclusive signing window, and those players may not be who we’d expect.

If either or both teams want to begin with defense, then I would expect to see Cayla Barnes taken at this point, if she is not among Montréal’s initial protected players. Barnes is from California and called the prospect of bringing professional hockey to the West Coast a ‘fantastic opportunity.’ While Erin Ambrose has one year left on a contract that pays at least $80,000, Barnes is most likely making less than that as a 2024 draft pick, and is signed for two more seasons. That means that she would not be eligible to negotiate for a raise prior to the 2026-27 season, when all of the $80,000+ contracts signed in 2023 will expire. At that point, salary cap flexibility will be an advantage for teams looking to sign a large class of expansive free agents.

Although she has said she would prefer to stay in Montréal, I would also be unsurprised if Ambrose were taken at this stage. Despite her salary being on the larger side, she has been worth every penny for the Victoire in the last two seasons. The 2024 Defender of the Year is only 31, and could be a cornerstone for a new franchise to build on.

Amanda Boulier, a three-time Defender of the Year nominee in the PHF, could also be a target at this stage. Like Barnes, she has two years remaining on her contract. Also like Barnes, she is a puck-moving defender who can score and be trusted in the defensive zone.

If the expansion teams are looking at forwards at this stage, Abby Boreen and Jennifer Gardiner would be my guesses to go early. On a two-year contract, Boreen has shown that she can play at this level on two different teams. Gardiner is a Rookie of the Year finalist who hails from the greater Vancouver area. Either would be a coup for teams hoping to build a strong top six. 

Fourth Protected Player

My expectation is that a defender will be protected at this point, regardless of what went on before. If the expansion teams took forwards first, or one forward and one defender, then the Victoire will want to protect one of the valuable defenders they have remaining. If they lost two defenders already, they will need to protect the ones they have left.

While the Victoire have a number of impressive forwards on contracts currently, the team has shown a willingness to shuffle the lines and look for chemistry. They will be able to do that again with new draft picks or with free agents who want to play in Montréal. It is a lot harder at this level to find defenders who can play at the level the Victoire have been seeing on their blue line this season.

To put it another way: the Victoire have four defenders to lose in this draft. There is no way they want to risk losing all four.