DiDia: PWHL Las Vegas intends to hire Kim Weiss as first head coach
While the new team in Sin City hasn’t officially announced a bench boss for its inaugural season, it seems that PWHL Las Vegas is closing in on its top candidate.
When speaking to the media on Tuesday, Las Vegas general manager Dominique DiDia stated that the team intends to hire Kim Weiss as the team’s first head coach.
“Kim and I are very aligned with what we’d like to build in Vegas,” DiDia said. “She’s been aligned from the beginning with me, her and I were teammates at Trinity College, and played hockey together, so we’ve known each other for a really long time, and I couldn’t be more thrilled.”
DiDia added that Las Vegas hasn’t been able to make an official announcement, as Weiss is finishing up her season with the Colorado Eagles, the American Hockey League affiliate of the Colorado Avalanche, where she is an assistant coach. The Eagles were knocked out of the Calder Cup Playoffs on Monday night, falling to the Chicago Wolves in the Western Conference Final.
Weiss has connections with the new team in the desert. She and DiDia were teammates at Trinity College, an NCAA DIII program, for three seasons. She also helped train new signing Hayley Scamurra, while Weiss was also a coach with the Maryland Black Bears of the North American Hockey League. In fact, when Scamurra was looking for an agent, it was Weiss who connected her with DiDia when she was starting off the women’s section of CAA Hockey.
The Maryland native has been coaching high levels of hockey for the last few years. After coaching the Black Bears from 2021 to 202, working as both an assistant coach and associate head coach. In 2023-24, she was hired as an assistant at Trinity College before joining the Eagles as a video coach the following year. She was promoted to assistant coach on Jan. 16.
Weiss will have a solid core of talent at her disposal, especially on the back end. During the second phase of the PWHL Expansion Player Distribution, DiDia signed Scamurra and former Montreal Victoire teammate Erin Ambrose, along with former Minnesota Frost defenders Mae Batherson and Kendall Cooper, all signing multi-year contracts.
Las Vegas also signed former Seattle Torrent captain Hilary Knight to a one-year contract, but she’s expected to be traded to Detroit next week prior to the PWHL Draft.
The team in Sin City can continue to add players to its initial roster once Phase 3 of the expansion process begins on Wednesday.