Behind the Bench: A Look at the League’s Newest Coaches
Every offseason brings change to the PWHL. This year, some of the most important moves are not on the ice at all, but behind the bench.
Going into the 2026-2027 PWHL season, the coaching carousel has been spinning almost as quickly as the league itself. Expansion has brought four new teams into the league, while several established franchises are also entering the season with different voices behind the bench. In total, eight of the PWHL’s twelve teams will have a new head coach this season.
Let’s meet the coaches who will be tasked with shaping the next chapter of the PWHL.
Building from Scratch
Of all the new faces behind the PWHL's benches, few have a more unique challenge ahead of them than Troy Ryan. Ryan spent the first three seasons of the PWHL as head coach of the Toronto Sceptres, where he was named the league's inaugural Coach of the Year in 2024. He also spent six years as head coach of Canada's National Women's Team, leading the team to Olympic gold in 2022 and three IIHF Women's World Championship titles.
Now he’s starting over.
Ryan has been named both the general manager and head coach of PWHL San Jose, making him the first person in PWHL history to hold both positions simultaneously. San Jose is one of four expansion teams joining the league for 2026-2027, alongside Detroit, Hamilton and Las Vegas. Ryan will be at the centre of building San Jose from the ground up, not only assembling the roster but establishing the team's identity and culture. Ryan is no stranger to coaching at the highest levels of women's hockey, but even for him, this is an entirely new challenge.
Josh Sciba is beginning a similar journey, becoming the head coach of PWHL Detroit after spending two seasons as an assistant coach with the New York Sirens. He has also served as an assistant coach with the U.S. Women's National Team since 2022, including at the 2026 Olympic Winter Games, where the Americans won gold.
Sciba is a Michigan native who grew up in Westland, just outside Detroit, making his new role all the more meaningful. He is not only helping launch a brand-new PWHL franchise, but doing so in the place he grew up. For a city with as much hockey history as Detroit, Sciba has a pretty special opportunity to help establish the identity of women's professional hockey in his hometown.
Then comes Kim Weiss, whose journey to the PWHL is unlike almost anyone else's. Before becoming the first head coach of PWHL Las Vegas, Weiss spent two seasons as a full-time assistant coach with the Colorado Eagles of the AHL. She became just the second woman in AHL/NHL history to hold a full-time assistant coaching position at that level.
Weiss has notable experience developing players and working at different levels of the sport, but this will be her first PWHL head-coaching position. She now gets the chance to take everything she learned in men's professional hockey and bring it to a brand-new women's professional team. Las Vegas may be a new franchise, but Weiss has already spent years proving she belongs at the highest levels of the game.
Concluding the expansion teams is Kris Sparre, who is stepping into the role of head coach for PWHL Hamilton. Sparre has taken on a number of coaching roles throughout his career, with his most recent being head coach of the Boston Fleet. In his first season as a PWHL head coach, Sparre led Boston to a 62-point season, an 18-point improvement from the previous year and the largest year-over-year improvement in league history. He was ultimately named the 2026 PWHL Coach of the Year.
Sparre has already shown that he can take a team and turn it into a contender. Now all eyes will be on him to see if he can do it again, this time with a franchise that has never played a PWHL game.
With four expansion teams comes four coaches tasked with creating something new. But while San Jose, Detroit, Las Vegas and Hamilton are all starting from the ground up, the league's established teams are facing a different kind of challenge. Their new coaches are walking into teams with existing identities, established players and, in some cases, very high expectations.
A New Voice in Toronto
Perhaps no coaching change will be watched more closely than the one in Toronto.
After three seasons behind the Sceptres' bench, Troy Ryan is gone. His replacement is Pascal Rhéaume, who spent the previous two seasons as an assistant coach with the AHL's Bridgeport Islanders. Rhéaume brings more than 14 years of coaching and player-development experience, including time in the AHL, ECHL and QMJHL. He also won a Stanley Cup as a player with the New Jersey Devils in 2003.
Rhéaume is walking into a team that already has plenty of talent, but is coming off a disappointing season. Toronto missed the playoffs in 2025-2026 after making the postseason in the league's first two seasons.
Ryan was the only head coach Toronto had ever known. Now Rhéaume has the opportunity to bring a new voice and a new approach to a team that is looking to get back into contention. Toronto does not need to build a team from scratch. It needs to figure out how to get the most out of the one it already has.
Keeping Boston at the Top
Boston is facing almost the opposite problem.
The Fleet are coming off one of the best regular seasons in PWHL history, but the coach responsible for that turnaround is now coaching somewhere else. In his place is François Méthot, who most recently served as the general manager and head coach of the Rochester Jr. Americans of the NAHL.
Méthot brings more than 11 years of coaching and player-development experience to Boston. During his three seasons in Rochester, he led the team to a 110-51-17 record and a division championship, while also working with players who went on to compete at the NCAA, PWHL and NHL levels.
His biggest challenge, may simply be maintaining what Boston built last season. Sparre took the Fleet from missing the playoffs to finishing second in the league. Now Méthot has to prove that Boston's success was about more than one coach and one season.
A Familiar Face in Seattle
Not every coaching change means bringing in someone from outside the organization.
In Seattle, Christine Bumstead has been promoted from assistant coach to head coach after spending the Torrent's inaugural season on the bench. Bumstead already knows the players, the organization, and what the team experienced during its first season. Seattle finished seventh in the standings in 2025-2026, so there is still plenty of work to do, but Bumstead isn't starting from zero.
Rather than completely changing direction, Seattle is trusting someone who already understands the team to take it to the next level. Whether that familiarity becomes an advantage will be one of the more interesting coaching storylines to follow this season.
From the Front Office to the Bench
And then there is Vancouver. After finishing sixth in its inaugural season, the Goldeneyes made the decision to move on from head coach Brian Idalski. The replacement was perhaps the most unexpected of all: Cara Gardner Morey, the team's general manager.
Gardner Morey came to Vancouver after 14 seasons as head coach of Princeton's women's hockey program, where she built one of the most respected programs in NCAA hockey. She initially took the role of general manager in Vancouver, helping construct the organization before the team's inaugural season.
It is an unusual situation, but Gardner Morey has one advantage that few other coaches can claim: she already knows the organization from the inside. She helped build the team, knows the roster and has a clear idea of what she wants Vancouver to become.
And with Vancouver holding the first overall pick in the 2026 PWHL Draft, Gardner Morey has already had a major role in shaping the next version of the Goldeneyes.
A New Season, a New Voice
The PWHL has never had this many coaching changes at once, and there is no single story connecting all of them. Eight new coaches. Eight very different challenges.
The players will ultimately decide what happens on the ice, but these coaches will have a major role in determining how their teams play, develop and grow. And with four new franchises joining the league, the decisions made behind the bench could help shape the PWHL for years to come.
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