The Down Low
Long before the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) arrived, elite women’s hockey players were accustomed to sacrifice. Used to the perpetually spinning plates of the league, the second job, the family, the breaking even. As this league has grown and breathed a new life into professional women’s hockey the league’s success may ultimately be measured by how much of that sacrifice is still required.
The lights have never been brighter for a league trying to prove that women’s professional hockey can flourish financially instead of wilting beneath impossible expectations.
The PWHL is now the first of the three major North American women’s sports leagues to publicly disclose individual player salaries. The WNBA does not make this information public and the NWSL has only reported salaries for a handful of top players.
Now that the base pay for all active PWHL players from the 2025-26 season have been made public, the conversation has sprung up regarding how much these top level, best in the world athletes make. The average across the league is $58,349.50. The PWHL’s league minimum, ratified in their 2023 CBA, is $37,131.50. No more than nine members of each team can earn league minimum, while no team exceeds this number when considering the many contracts that are listed at $37,132, I am curious to know if this 50 cent bump is a way to circumvent this maximum.
While there is no individual salary maximum, at least six players per team must earn $80,000 or more. There is also not a traditional salary cap that National Hockey League (NHL) fans would be familiar with. Each team’s average salary must meet a minimum threshold — $58,349.50 in 2025–26, rising to $60,099.99 in 2026–27. Minimum and average salaries also increase by 3% each season so next season’s minimum will be $38,245.45.
While the newly released salary guide reveals some of the picture, it is not all of it. The league MVP earns a $5,000 bonus while top positional performers and Rookie of the Year each earn $4,000. The CBA also provides players a $1,500 per month housing stipend in year one, increasing by $100 each year of the agreement, making it approximately $1,900 per month in 2025-26, or roughly $22,800 annually. Players also receive an $81 per day meal per diem when traveling, relocation reimbursements of up to $2,500 for newly acquired players, and $500 per week during preseason training camp. The CBA also includes health and disability insurance, workers’ compensation, and a 401(k) retirement plan with employer contributions beginning in January 2025.
Why release this information now?
The Hockey News published salaries from the 2024-25 season, citing sources “involved in the PWHL,” despite the union voting to make that information available only to players and agents.
PWHLPA president Laura Stacey addressed the situation directly: “It is amazing for the players that our salaries are public so that one another can help each other, especially in terms of expansion and signing new contracts and free agency. With that being said, we voted on it to be public for our eyes and for our agent’s eyes only, so I think that was a bit of a shock for us.”
In January 1990, NHL players voted to implement salary disclosure, with the Montreal Gazette publishing all wages that month — a move widely credited with creating a competitive market and driving up pay. The PWHL is three years old. It is already further along on this particular timeline than many expected.
As Stacey put it: “Arenas are selling out, the growth of this game is incredible, and I think as players we want to keep that momentum moving forward.”
“We Don’t Have to Have Side Jobs Anymore”
Before the PWHL, this conversation was entirely different. Most professional women’s hockey players had to work second jobs just to make ends meet and maintain health insurance – critical in a high-contact sport. The PWHL’s CBA changed that, guaranteeing a living wage and health benefits for the first time in North American women’s hockey history.
The health insurance, the housing stipend, their meals paid for, relocation stipends, performance bonuses. These are the things women’s hockey players spent years fighting to have, and the PWHL provided them starting in year one.
As Stacey said: “This is incredible that we’ve reached this level, that we’re already at a level that people are able to play for a living, where we don’t have to have side jobs anymore. But it does open some of our eyes to say, we gotta continue to push for more.”
The numbers are now public. Everyone can see them now – the salaries, the structure, the gap between players. When the NHL opened its books in 1990, transparency helped create a true competitive market, one that pushed player salaries upward for the next generation. The PWHL may be approaching its own version of that inflection point, and the players understand exactly what is at stake.
So the question lingers: are players being paid fairly?
It is not an easy question to answer. For many people, seeing salaries around $37,000 sparks immediate disbelief. You look at the number and wonder how a professional athlete – someone competing at the highest level of her sport – could possibly live on that salary, especially in the cities where these teams operate. The instinctive reaction is simple: how are these players making it work?
But the reality is more complicated than outrage alone.
There are really two truths existing at the same time. Some players are earning salaries that would be difficult for anyone to comfortably survive on, and they deserve to be paid more. At the same time, the league itself is still in its infancy, operating without profitability while trying to build something sustainable for the long term.
That tension sits at the center of the conversation surrounding PWHL salaries. The league and its players agreed to a collective bargaining agreement that runs through 2031, with the expectation that revenue, investment, and visibility will continue to grow in the years ahead. The hope – both from the league and the players – is that profitability eventually follows, creating a future where the salaries finally match the talent on the ice.
The game is working and the money is growing. The housing stipend, the retirement plan, the health insurance – all of that matters. Those are real gains, tangible improvements that players in previous generations often never had access to at all. Compared to where professional women’s hockey stood even five years ago, the PWHL represents stability, investment, and legitimacy on a scale the sport has never seen before.
But the second truth remains just as unavoidable.
The player who led the entire league in both goals and points earned $84,872 this season. The league’s assists leader made $51,000 before housing benefits kicked in. Some players are earning salaries that still require roommates, offseason jobs, national team stipends, or financial support systems outside of hockey simply to make life workable. That reality exists even while those same players are performing at the absolute highest level of their sport, helping sell out arenas, and establish the foundation of a league that is clearly growing.
That is why the salary conversation feels so emotionally charged: both sides of the argument are true at the same time.
The outrage people feel when they see these salaries is understandable because, on a human level, many of these players are underpaid relative to their talent, visibility, and value. But the league’s position is understandable too. The PWHL is still building its business model in real time. It is funding expansion, infrastructure, travel, staffing, marketing, and long-term sustainability while operating in a space that historically has not had the financial backing necessary to survive. Overspending too early could jeopardize the very thing players fought to create: a stable professional league that lasts.
So the debate is not really about whether players deserve more money. They do. The debate is about timing, growth, and how quickly the economics of the sport can catch up to the quality of the product on the ice.
That tension is what defines this moment for the PWHL. The league has already won the fight for legitimacy. Fans care. Markets are responding. Investors are buying in. Expansion is happening faster than almost anyone expected. The question now is whether the financial growth of the league can accelerate quickly enough that the players who built this era are able to fully benefit from it while they are still playing in it.
Because sustainability cannot only mean the survival of the league itself. Eventually, it has to mean a version of professional women’s hockey where the best players in the world can devote their lives to the sport without financial compromise – not years after the league succeeds, but alongside its success.
And maybe that is what makes this moment feel so significant. It is not just about salaries on a spreadsheet or a league trying to find its footing. It is about athletes building something in real time, something bigger than they individually get to cash in on today, but something that will outlast them, shaped by the work they are doing right now, shift by shift, night after night, as they push the sport forward for the next group that will get to dream a little bigger because they did.
We live in a reality where the founding figures of this sport are, unfortunately, not paid what they deserve, but the young girl behind the glass that’s telling her parents she’s going to be a professional hockey player someday will.
Leave a Reply