Summer 2023 was a groundbreaking time for women’s ice hockey.
“I’ve always had this dream. Always want to know what I kind of wanted to do, but when I was younger it wasn’t like hockey could really be my career” said Haley Winn, former captain of the Clarkson University women’s ice hockey team and potential top three pick in the upcoming Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) draft.
For years, the world’s top women’s ice hockey players played in separate, poorly organized leagues that offered little pay. However, the establishment of the PWHL with the help of the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association (PWHPA), and support from the Mark Walter Group and the leadership of Billie Jean King, the PWHL unified these separate, unstable early efforts.
The new league promised greater stability, equity, and growth for the sport. Since the launch in 2023 and the first season in 2024, the women’s game has surged in the past two years, with many milestones achieved. However, the sport’s growth has taken much longer than the 618 days from the league’s launch to May 8, 2025.
(See Timeline Below)
During the 2024-25 PWHL opening weekend in late November, College Hockey Inc. reported that out of 159 players on the rosters, 143 had played in college, representing 90% of the league. Notably, the Minnesota Frost is entirely comprised of NCAA alumni.
Thirty-four of the 44 schools sponsoring NCAA Division I women’s ice hockey are represented in the PWHL, with the most alumni coming from The Ohio State University and the University of Wisconsin.
The long-standing hockey powerhouses have dominated the national stage for years. The Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA) has won 21 out of 24 national titles since the NCAA started sponsoring a national tournament in the 2000-01 season.
The other three? The Clarkson Golden Knights of ECAC Hockey won in 2014, 2017, and 2018.
ECAC Hockey is one of five conferences in NCAA Division I women’s ice hockey and is the only conference with the exact same schools in both the men’s and women’s hockey competitions. It is known for being home to some of the most prestigious universities in the country, including six Ivy League schools: Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. In addition to the Ivies, Colgate, Clarkson, Quinnipiac, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, St. Lawrence, and Union also call ECAC Hockey home.
ECAC Hockey Commissioner Doug Christiansen, appointed at the start of the 2023-24 season, has overseen significant growth of the women’s game on the collegiate level within the league during his brief tenure as the commissioner. He talks about the exceptional and prestigious nature of the league, especially on the women’s side:
Photo Credit: Hockey Commissioners Association
Colgate is ranked 5th, followed by Cornell at 6th, St. Lawrence at 7th, Clarkson at 9th, Quinnipiac at 10th, and Princeton at 13th. Outside of the top fifteen, Yale received 17 votes, and Brown received two votes in the “Others receiving votes” category, totaling eight ECAC Hockey teams in the top 20
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ECAC Hockey alumni from the first round: Sarah Fillier (Princeton), Danielle Serdachny (Colgate), Claire Thompson (Princeton), and Julia Gosling (St. Lawrence).
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The elite players and spectators of the sport, including the current Quinnipiac play-by-play announcer Phil Giubileo, were among the early broadcasters as the professional women’s game was growing in the 2010s and a few years in the 2020s before the PWHL launch in 2023. He called the first three Isobel Cup finals the championship for the Professional Hockey Federation (PHF), the league that was succeeded and bought out by the PWHL.
“For a lot of [the players], it was to create the foundation for what you see today with the PWHL. A lot of those players knew that,” said Giubileo, “it wasn’t gonna lead to a lot for them personally, like they weren’t going to get rich off it, they weren’t going to become super famous, but they were building the blocks for the PWHL, which has been a big success. And I think they take a lot of pride in that.”
The growth of women’s sports surged to new levels in 2023 and 2024, as Caitlin Clark became the talk of women’s sports. Clark, a former guard for the Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball team, was the National Player of the Year for two straight seasons and the all-time points leader in the NCAA.
Her dominance on the court caught the eyes of many online and in the media, leading to a surge of interest in women’s sports.
Caitlin Clark’s appeal has rewritten the record books at both collegiate and professional levels. The 2024 women’s NCAA national championship game averaged 18.7 million viewers, up 89 percent from 9.9 million for the 2023 title game. In her firdst season in the league the WNBA regular-season average climbed to 1.19 million per game, a 170 percent surge over 2023. Her arrival has delivered the WNBA’s most-watched telecasts in more than two decades.
The PWHL and its launch only added to that continued interest, and Christiansen wants to capitalize on it.
Christiansen explains the conversion from people following NCAA Women’s Basketball and then the WNBA once Clark graduated from Iowa and brought all those eyeballs, and says that it is so important as a sport to try and replicate that since it was so successful.
“I think for us on the college side, we see it as a real opportunity for us, because our players move on and become, you know, key players in the Olympics on national teams, and then the PWHL. As that visibility grows, people draw a direct line between, you know, Sarah Fillier, and Team Canada at the Olympics and her time at Princeton and in the ECAC, and the greater that improves and the more visibility that has, the better off we’re gonna be.”
The question lies for many, ‘Who is the Caitlin Clark of women’s ice hockey?’
“Haley Winn,” Christiansen said confidently.
Winn, a Clarkson University senior who declared for the 2025 PWHL Draft in June, finished her last season with the Golden Knights, winning ECAC Hockey defender and player of the year.
“Wow,” Winn’s reaction was after being told Christiansen’s comparison, “I mean, that’s a crazy comment to even be like compared to her. So I mean, that’s definitely an honor.”
Photo Credit: Andrew Reynolds
According to EliteProspects.com, the former Clarkson captain is projected as the third overall pick in the upcoming draft, something she did not expect to be, even considering when she started her collegiate career at the small school in Potsdam, New York.
“Hearing that, like the [PWHL], obviously becoming such a big thing, and like a sustainable career for women’s hockey is just so cool “she said, “you can get to college and know that there is more after that, and that might even grow the college game, because girls are just continuing to get better, knowing that there is another level after that.”
Coaches nationwide are excited to help guide and shift the new landscape of women’s hockey that did not exist even three years ago.
“We’ve always centered, you know, our program for the past 10 years here, it’s been about development, has been at the center of what we’re doing,” Colgate Women’s Ice Hockey Head Coach Stefan Decosse said “For us, we’re really comfortable in this space, and it’s exciting. It’s incredibly exciting.”
Decosse, a former Division III forward at SUNY-Geneseo, had served as an assistant coach at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, since the 2015-16 season. Before the 2024-25 season, he was promoted to head coach, marking his first year in the role after spending several seasons as an assistant.
His predecessor, Greg Fargo, had been in charge of the Raiders program since the 2016-17 season, but left the NCAA to take the head coaching job with the PWHL’s New York Sirens. Colgate also had its top player last season, Danielle Serdachny, go number two overall, resulting in a lot of eyes on the program due to its clear pipeline to the professional ranks.
“We’re hanging out in the lounge on Saturday, and we got a game on before our game, and the girls are huddled in, and they’re fired up, and they want to play there, that’s where they want to play, and that’s where they should want to play,” Decosse said with a smile. “What’s so exciting is now their development runway has been elongated…they can play into their thirties, like that possibility exists…and it’s our job and responsibility as coaches to provide the platform for their development and their individualized development.”
While the strengths of the pro game and the overall success of women’s ice hockey have had their strengths over these past few years, there is still negative stigma towards women’s sports.
“I think there’s a big stigma around the women’s game still that they’re not as talented. And it’s a different ruleset, sure,” Casey Ditzel, broadcaster for the Clarkson Women’s Hockey team says. “It’s probably a little bit slower just because of the physical strength. But there’s certainly a ton of skill, a lot of role models out there. And I think with that growth, there’s going to be a shift in that narrative.”
Despite his worries, Ditzel continues to be a proud supporter of the women’s game, especially the spot the game is in because of ECAC Hockey alums who are top performers in the PWHL
“It’s so young in becoming an X-Factor sport. There’s going to be star talent to come with young kids just getting into it” Ditzel praises. “Now young girls want to be the next Haley Winn, the next Danielle Serdachny.”
Currency, Sarah Fillier is second in the PWHL in points this season, as a rookie. Hannah Miller, a St. Lawrence alum, is also in the top five in points.
Looking ahead, The Hockey News has published its pre-draft rankings. Notably, two of the top three, three of the top five, five of the top ten, and seven of the top fifteen players are alumni of ECAC Hockey institutions, suggesting a strong presence of ECAC Hockey alumni in the professional landscape of women’s ice hockey as the PWHL develops, now wrapping its second season.