pwhl projections

resolve pwhl

Pro Women's Hockey League Walter Cup outlook entering Season 3 (Nov 2026). Team Elo built from 177 games across S1 + S2 (2024 and 2024-25), plus Vancouver Goldeneyes + Seattle Torrent expansion at cold-start. Minnesota Frost defending back-to-back champions.

Walter Cup Outlook 2026-27

8-team table · current Elo + P(playoffs) + P(reach SF/F) + P(WIN Walter Cup). Tight at the top: Montreal 22.5% / Toronto 20.1% / Minnesota 18.8% championship probability.

Team Elo · 10k MC · 8 teams (6 + 2 expansion)

open

how it's built

Data: 177 PWHL games extracted from Wikipedia (S1 + S2). Limited data substrate by design — PWHL is only 2 seasons old.
Team Elo: K=22 regulation, 18 OT/SO, HFA=80 (hockey-typical), cold-start ×1.8 for first 10 matches per team
OT/SO weighting: win in OT/SO = 0.65 vs 1.0 regulation (less Elo movement)
Expansion S3: Vancouver Goldeneyes + Seattle Torrent join at league-mean −25 Elo cold-start
Outlook MC: 10k sims of season + top-4 single-elim playoffs (1v4, 2v3 brackets), expansion teams get +30% noise to reflect roster uncertainty
Caveat: this is a strength-tier projection, not a full schedule MC. Season 3 schedule not yet released.