PWHPA announces details for 2022-23 Dream Gap Tour
The Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association has announced the details of the Dream Gap Tour for the 2022-23 season, featuring a couple of notable changes.
The biggest change is the new roster format for the tour. In previous seasons, the teams were decided based on regions in North America, but this year will see a completely new process. Rosters will now be created based on a new player ranking process, which is evaluated by an extensive panel of women’s hockey experts. The panel contains individuals with NCAA, USports, and international experience and knowledge, and it will evaluate a pool of more than 150 players to be the 100 that will play for the four teams, which will each have a roster of 25 players. This pool of players contains 43 Olympians, more than 75 players with national level experience, and recent top college graduates. The team rosters will be announced in September.
The tour will also have a record number of games played this season. The four teams will stop in five weekend series across North America, as well as a new special event that will be announced later this month. This will all lead to the final weekend event, a championship series to determine the winner of the Secret Cup.
“Coming into our fourth season, we continuously look for ways to increase opportunities for our players to compete as we move towards our ultimate goal of a professional league,” said Jayna Hefford, Operations Consultant for the PWHPA, in a statement. “We also want to continue to provide an exciting product for hockey fans to enjoy, and we’re confident this will be our biggest, most competitive season to date. The depth of talent in women’s hockey increases every year and we’re excited to continue to support our world-class athletes and provide a platform for the best players in the world to perform.”
The PWHPA also mentioned in its announcement that it is continuing to work toward creating a top-tier professional league for some of the sports’ best athletes to compete in. At this moment, they are under non-disclosure agreements with potential partners, so those are the only details we can get at the moment on this potential future for the PWHPA.