Minnesota takes Heise first overall in PWHL draft
If Minnesota regards itself as the State of Hockey, the Twin Cities’ Professional Women’s Hockey League franchise will feature plenty of homegrown players, including Taylor Heise.
The 2022 women’s college hockey player of the year, who played for the Golden Gophers and grew up 75 miles from Minneapolis, is staying home after the yet-to-be-named Minnesota franchise used the No. 1 pick to select Heise in the newly launched league’s inaugural draft on Monday.
“It’s an unreal feeling,” the 23-year-old Heise said. “It’s my home. Everyone I love is there. And it’s the State of Hockey. I’m just honored that I’m going to be able to play and to show little girls that anything is possible if you keep working hard.”
Heise heard her named called by tennis legend Billie Jean King, a member of the league’s board of directors in opening the PWHL’s 15-round draft held in Toronto.
Heise joins a franchise whose general manager, former U.S. national team player Natalie Darwitz, is from Minnesota, and who had already signed fellow Minnesotans Kelly Pannek and Lee Stecklein in the pre-draft free agency period.
Darwitz then dipped into the state’s deep depth of talent by using seven of 15 picks on Minnesotans. She used her final pick, 85th overall, to draft Sydney Brodt, who played for the now-defunct Premier Hockey Federation Minnesota Whitecaps and is related to Whitecaps founder Jack Brodt.
Toronto selected veteran Canadian defender Jocelyne Larocque second, and Boston took Swiss center Alina Muller third. Muller was the only non-North American player picked in the first three rounds. Muller gets to stay in Boston after spending her college career at Northeastern.
New York used the fourth pick to select Canadian national team defender Ella Shelton. Ottawa reached across the border to draft U.S. national team defender Savannah Harmon at No. 5. And Montreal rounded out the first round by choosing Team Canada defender Erin Ambrose.
New York general manager Pascal Daoust consulted with his three signed players — Abby Roque, Alex Carpenter and Micah Zandee-Hart — on who to target in the draft. Their feedback led to him to selecting Shelton and fellow Canadian defender Jaime Bourbonnais.
“(I was) asking them, ‘Who would you like to play with?’ And most importantly, ‘Who you don’t want to play against,'” Daoust said. “I was trying to build something.”
Harmon is from Illinois, but eager to head to Ottawa, where she represented the U.S. in a Rivalry Series game against Canada.
“I’ve been fortunate enough to play a game in a U.S. jersey against Team Canada but the atmosphere was incredible, the rink was incredible, the fans were incredible,” Harmon said.
Overall, 47 Canadians and 28 Americans were chosen, plus two players who hold dual citizenship, which reflects the talent pool of the sport’s two global powers. Five members of the fast-rising Czech Republic national team were also selected.
Sweden, Finland, France and Germany also had players drafted to a league bringing together the world’s top female players and set to begin play in January.
The PWHL is financially backed by Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter, who in late June bought out the rival seven-team PHF to clear the way for one North American women’s league. Walter was brought in by the Professional Women’s Hockey Players’ Association as part of its membership’s vision to establish a league with a sustainable economic model and paid fair wages.
The PWHPA, made up of a majority of U.S. and Canadian national team members, had 25 players drafted, with another 18 already signed in free agency. The PHF had 32 former players selected, led by Czech Republic defender Dominika Laskova going 19th overall to Montreal.
In Boston, GM Danielle Marmer was anticipating Heise to be the No. 1 pick, and was pleased Muller was available at No. 3. Boston followed up by selecting Ohio State’s Sophie Jacques, this season’s Patty Kazmaier Award winner as college hockey’s top female player.
The two join a roster that already features established U.S. national team players Hilary Knight, Megan Keller and Aerin Frankel, who were Boston’s three pre-draft free agent signings.
“We wanted someone who is young, who’s dynamic, who could play in the middle. And the career that she’s had so far is pretty incredible,” Marmer said of Muller. “We wanted to target goal scorers early in this draft, especially natural goal scorers. And I think we did a really good job of that.”
Heise is coming off her fifth and final year at the University of Minnesota, where she was a first-team all-American after leading the NCAA in goals with 30. She was second in points with 67, and tied for third in assists with 37, in 39 games for the Gophers.
At the international level, the 5-foot-9, 160-pound Heise was named best forward and tournament MVP at the 2022 world championships, leading all players in goals with seven and points with 18.
-
Ryan S. Clark
Once again, the New York Rangers are in search of a new head coach with the club announcing Saturday they have fired Peter Laviolette.
Dismissing Laviolette, who had a year remaining on his contract, comes just days after the Rangers completed what became a trying season that ended Thursday with the team failing to make the playoffs despite reaching the Eastern Conference Finals last season.
In addition to moving on from Laviolette, the Rangers also parted ways with associate coach Phil Housley.
This now means the Rangers are searching for their fourth coach since 2021 with Laviolette joining a list of fired bench bosses that includes David Quinn and Gerard Gallant.
“Today I informed Peter Laviolette and Phil Housley that we’re making a coaching change,” Rangers general manager Chris Drury said in a statement. “I want to thank them both and wish them and their families all the best going forward. Peter is first class all the way, both professionally and personally, and I am truly grateful for his passion and dedication to the Rangers in his time as head coach.”
Laviolette, who won a Stanley Cup as head coach of the Carolina Hurricanes back in 2005-06, was hired at the start of the 2023-24 season. He guided the Rangers to a 55-win season that also saw them lead the league with 114 points. They would advance to the Eastern Conference Finals where they lost to the eventual Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers in six games.
Entering this season, the Rangers were once again among those teams that was expected to challenge for a Stanley Cup. They catapulted to a 12-4-1 start only to then lose five straight games, which started them down a path of struggling to find consistency.
By December, the Rangers made it known they were open for business. They traded captain Jacob Trouba, who had one year remaining on his contract, to the Anaheim Ducks. Less than two weeks later, they traded one-time prized prospect forward Kaapo Kakko to the Seattle Kraken in exchange for defenseman Will Borgen.
On Jan. 31, the Rangers signaled their intent for a playoff push when they re-acquired J.T. Miller in a trade with the Vancouver Canucks. The Rangers kept going with their roster reshuffle as the trade deadline drew closer. They traded defenseman Ryan Lindgren to the Colorado Avalanche and forward Reilly Smith back to the Vegas Golden Knights while getting defenseman Carson Soucy from the Canucks.
Even with those changes, the Rangers would lose four straight in early March before having two more stretches of three-game losing streaks which saw them fail to gain any sort of grasp in the Eastern Conference wild-card race.
Sources told ESPN’s Emily Kaplan that the Rangers would like to interview several candidates from outside of the organization, including Mike Sullivan and Rick Tocchet if they are available, Joel Quenneville, John Tortorella, Jay Woodcroft, Jay Leach and David Carle.
The Rangers’ firing Laviolette comes hours after the Ducks announced they had fired Greg Cronin. It now leaves the NHL with five head coaching vacancies with the Boston Bruins, Chicago Blackhawks and Philadelphia Flyers ending the regular season with interim coaches in place.
The PWHL’s first expansion team will be based in Vancouver with an announcement scheduled for next week, a person with knowledge of the decision confirmed to The Associated Press on Friday.
The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because the league has not revealed its plans. The Province newspaper in Vancouver first reported the city being selected for PWHL expansion.
On hold for now is the league announcing a second expansion city, with Seattle being considered, the person said. The league has other candidates for expansion if discussions break down with officials in Seattle, the person added.
The Vancouver expansion announcement is expected to be made Wednesday, with media invited to attend a news conference billed as being an “historic announcement for sport in Vancouver and British Columbia.” The new team is expected to be based out of the Pacific Coliseum, the former home of the NHL Canucks.
The PWHL declined to verify any details by saying: “We’re continuing to finalize decisions related to expansion and look forward to sharing more details soon.”
The six-team league is in the midst of completing its second season and has spent the past six months evaluating more than 20 markets for the potential to expand by as many as two franchises.
The decision to select Vancouver meets several key criteria for the women’s pro league founded by Dodgers owner Mark Walter, who serves as the PWHL’s financial backer, and tennis icon Billie Jean King in June 2023.
Aside from being a large market, the region has a growing girls’ hockey base, which was evident in January, when a PWHL neutral site game in Vancouver drew a sellout crowd of 19,038 — the fourth-largest turnout for a league game.
Geography also plays a factor with the league seeking to broaden its reach across North America. The league currently has five teams — New York, Boston, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto — based in the northeast, and one in St. Paul, Minnesota.
PWHL officials have privately expressed concern of a start-up pro women’s league being launched on the West Coast.
Adding an expansion team in Seattle would make the most sense in part because of its proximity to Vancouver, while also already home to two pro women’s teams, the WNBA Storm and NWSL Reign FC. The PWHL’s neutral site game in Seattle in January drew a crowd of 12,608.
Other potential markets include Denver, Detroit and Quebec City, though it’s more likely the PWHL would desire a second expansion team based in the U.S.
The PWHL’s nine-city Takeover Tour of neutral games this season drew 123,601 fans in helping the league top the 1 million mark in attendance last month.
The PWHL’s regular season resumes next week — with each team having three games left — following a three-week break coinciding with the women’s world championships being held in Czechia (Czech Republic). The four-team playoffs are set to open in the first week of May.
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business3 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway