Sunday November 23, 2025

Written by Laura Everett

Edited by Abbi Holt

Welcome to the Boston Women’s Sports 2025-2026 preview of the Boston Fleet as they kick off their season with a home opener Sunday, November 23, at 1pm in Lowell against the Montreal Victoire.  (complete with free sailors hats for the first 3500 fleet fans to sail into the arena). The three big themes are: change, change, and more change. Though the General Manager Danielle Marmer has built her team around a core of returning veterans, much is changing in the Fleet coaching staff, lockerroom, league, system and even where games are played. Read on for 10 things to look out for as we head into the 2025-2026 season:

1. New Coaching Staff: This is the biggest change for the third season of the Fleet, with the departure of Coach Courtney Kessel who has gone to Princeton.  As far as I can tell, in his nine years of coaching hockey, head coach Kris Sparre has never coached women and never served as a head coach. He most recently served three seasons as an assistant coach with the San Diego Gulls in the American Hockey League (AHL), the top affiliate of the Anaheim Ducks. To be clear, Sparre would not be in this position if he weren’t a great hockey coach. And across every professional women’s league, we are seeing male coaches get opportunities to “cross over” to women’s leagues with zero experience in coaching women. Imagine a female coach with nine years of coaching in the WNBA feeder system getting a head coaching job in the NBA? You can’t, because the WNBA doesn’t yet have a G-League, and female coaches don’t get the chance male coaches do. Women’s Pro Leagues aren’t stepping stones to pro men’s leagues. I hope Sparre succeeds for the sake of the Fleet. And I hope for a system where there are more women coaching women in professional women’s sports leagues. 
2. The Departure of Hillary Knight: The Hillary Knight Fleet jerseys are officially on sale. After the end of last season, Boston left former Captain Hillary Knight unprotected in expansion and as expected, Seattle snagged our former star forward. Knight, a stalwart of the US Women’s National Hockey Team lives on the west coast and while she was a fixture of the Boston Fleet, she also took a while to find her footing on her club team. So now that Captain American has left for the Seattle Torrent, will Boston have what it needs for its offensive lines? 
3. Lots of New Players: The Fleet’s expanded 23-player active roster includes 13 forwards, seven defenders, and three goaltenders.  Three additional players start the season as reserves. Of the 26 total players, there are 14 returning members from the 2024-25 season alongside 12 new players. General Manager Danielle Marmer has built this year’s team around core three: Goaltender Aerin Frankel, Defender Megan Keller, and Forward Alina Müller, who all received contract extensions this year.  Keep your eyes on Shay Maloney– with 2 year contract, Finnish national Susanna Tapani on a 1 year contract and local fav, and former Pride player, Loren Gabel on reserves. My big question- is this enough firepower with our forwards?
4. New Teams in the League:  More change came this year at the league level. In year three of the Professional Women’s Hockey League, the league expanded from original six, up to eight teams. For the first two years of the PWHL, we had six teams: Boston, New York, Montreal, Minnesota, Ottawa, Toronto. Now we add: Seattle Torrent and Vancouver Goldeneyes. There’s always been enough talented athletes to field more teams and bigger rosters. What will having two new teams do to rivalries, travel schedules, and binational American/Canadian dynamics? 
5. New Captains: 2024 PWHL Defender of the Year Megan Keller is taking over duties as captain. Captain Keller is an Olympic medalist with Team USA- Gold in 2018 and Silver in 2022, and a four year alumna of Boston College. A 2022 Gold Medalist with Team Canada, Jamie Lee Rattray, is one of Fleet’s Alternate Captains. Northeastern’s all time leading scorer Forward Alina Müller has been named an alternate captain for the first time. (Alina Müller is the younger sister of professional hockey player Mirco Müller, a former member of the New Jersey Devils and the San Jose Sharks of the National Hockey League.⁾ Hockey can be seen as a very homogenous sport, and there is lots of work to do in diversifying both the fans, staff and players, but with Rattray as an indigenous, queer player and Müller as an international player, team leadership is looking more like the future of the game.
6. More Games at Agganis Finally, a team called the “Boston Fleet” will be playing four home games at Boston University’s Agganis Arena in Boston, up from two last season. The eight remaining home games will be played at UMass Lowell’s Tsongas Center in Lowell. Fans regularly complain about the feasibility of making mid-week games in Lowell with our famous Boston traffic.  Is this a trial balloon for a more Boston-centric team or just spreading out the love?
7. Broad Broadcast strategy: The PWHL continues with their free viewing on YouTube and on league website, in addition to NESN locally. Unlike other leagues who spread their viewing across multiple subscription only platforms, PWHL is opting for a strategy of access and breadths.
8. More Takeover Tour:  Very interesting business model for a league that is testing out possible expansion cities for a second season of a “Takeover Tour” when established PWHL teams play at a neutral site. In 2025-2026, 16 games will be contested in 11 different locations in the United States and Canada. PWHL games will be played at seven new cities, including Calgary, Chicago, Dallas, Halifax, Hamilton, Washington, D.C. and Winnipeg, and teams will return to Denver, Detroit, Edmonton and Québec City. 
9. New Refs: In every league, everyone loves to complain about refereeing. PWHL has expanded with more referees. For 2025-2026,the league has hired 30 referees and 29 linespersons from across North America. The roster of 59 officials, which includes 37 women and 22 men, for  a total of 52 returnees and seven new linespersons, including local referees Kelly Cooke (West Roxbury, MA) #29 and Laura Schmidlein (Quincy, MA) #23, and linespersons Jenny Cameron (Northborough, MA) #71 and Heidi Niskanen (Natick, MA) #58. Yet questions remain: Has the league invested enough with referee pay, preparation, and training?  
10. New Rules: The league handbook includes new rule updates, including that the teams have to carry a minimum of three Goaltenders on the active 23 player roster, up from two in 2024-2025. This is fundamentally good for player safety and wellbeing. Also significantly, a team can no longer initiate a “Coach’s Challenge” for a goal review; a goal review can only be initiated by an On-Ice Official, and can now be done for the additional following reasons:

o    Missed Game Stoppage Event in the Offensive Zone Leading to a Goal.

o    Scoring Plays Involving Potential “Interference on the Goalkeeper”.

o    Penalty Situations for “Delaying the game – puck over the glass”.

This rule change should both speed up and clarify goal challenges. 

The Boston Fleet are looking in good shape for a promising run this season. Questions remain about how the new coaching staff will work in this new league, the solidity of the defensive line, how well new lines will play together. And, it is good to see Fleet management and the League investing in questions about referring, rules, and expansion that needed answers from the 2024-2025 season. 

Join us on Sunday November 23, at 1pm in the Tsongas Center at UMass Lowell when the Fleet take on the Montreal Victoire for their home opener, and the ship sets sail. 

2025-26 Boston Fleet Roster:   

*Denotes returning players 

Forwards (13):   

Hannah Brandt* 

Ella Huber 

Laura Kluge 

Shay Maloney* 

Olivia Mobley 

Alina Müller* 

Abby Newhook 

Jamie Lee Rattray* 

Jill Saulnier* 

Theresa Schafzahl* 

Liz Schepers 

Sophie Shirley* 

Susanna Tapani* 

Defenders (7):   

Zoe Boyd 

Riley Brengman 

Hadley Hartmetz* 

Megan Keller* 

Rylind MacKinnon 

Daniela Pejšová* 

Haley Winn 

Goaltenders (3):  

Aerin Frankel* 

Abbey Levy 

Amanda Thiele 

Reserves (3):  

Mia Biotti 

Loren Gabel* (well known from Boston Pride and Fleet)

Olivia Zafuto* 

Twelve Home Games– four at Agganis Arena in Boston, eight at Tsongas center in Lowell

1. Sunday, Nov. 23 vs. Montréal at 1 p.m. ET (Tsongas Center)
2. Wednesday, Dec. 3 vs. Vancouver at 7 p.m. ET (Agganis Arena)
3. Sunday, Dec. 7 vs Minnesota at 3 p.m. ET (Agganis Arena)
4. Wednesday, Jan. 7 vs. Seattle at 7 p.m. ET (Agganis Arena)
5. Wednesday, Jan. 14 vs. Toronto at 7 p.m. ET (Tsongas Center)
6. Wednesday, Jan. 28 vs. New York at 7 p.m. ET (Tsongas Center)
7. Tuesday, March 17 vs. Toronto at 7 p.m. ET (Agganis Arena)
8. Saturday, Mar. 21 vs. Seattle at 7 p.m. ET (Tsongas Center)
9. Tuesday, Mar. 24 vs. Vancouver at 7 p.m. ET (Tsongas Center)
10. Wednesday, Apr. 15 vs. Minnesota at 7 p.m. ET (Tsongas Center)
11. Wednesday, Apr. 22 vs. Ottawa at 7 p.m. ET (Tsongas Center)
12. Saturday, Apr. 25 vs. New York TBD (Tsongas Center)