Anna Meixner, most recently a Goldeneye, returns to the SDHL. This was rumoured a while ago, but is now official

Vasko was rumoured earlier, now official + Vespa joins her

Welcome back <3

With phase 4 ending soon, and the draft approaching, here’s a brief explanation of how the next two phases work and how they connect to the draft.

Phase 5

• existing teams can RE-SIGN players.

• I.e. they can sign players who were on their roster last year, there is no movement between teams

• this phase is open the day before the draft, (closes the day of the draft), and open again the day after the draft

• (this is also teams last chance to keep their RFAs by offering them a qualifying offer. Otherwise RFAs become UFAs and can sign anywhere in phase 6)

Phase 6

• starts June 18th (& continues through the off season)

• any team can sign any free agent

• EXCEPTION: expansion teams still cannot sign players from their 20 player ENTL

• includes: players who were in the draft (or a previous draft) but not drafted & players who have been in the PWHL before but didn’t end last year on a roster

• (also at this point there’s essentially no such thing as a RFA/restricted free agent - either they received a qualifying offer and are staying with their team or are now a UFA/unrestricted free agent)

Key points:

• Runs sunday at noon to Monday at 6 (eastern)

• only expansion teams can sign players in this phase

• Expansion teams must get to 10 total players

• That means Hamilton needs to sign four more, Detroit must sign three, and Las Vegas & San Jose each must sign two

• Like phase 2, expansion teams can sign free agents or players under contracts

• Expansion teams CANNOT sign any players who were on their phase 2 twenty player target list (“ENTL”)

• unlike phase 2, there are no EFOs or anything like that to force players to sign with new teams. From here on out, free agents have complete control over their fates

Selection process:

• If any expansion team cannot reach 10 total players, there is a selection process

• Expansion teams essentially get to pick players currently under contract/rights held from existing teams to get to 10 players

• (There was a similar process in phase 2 that did not get triggered)

• also note that existing teams can only lose a total of four contracted players through this whole process, which includes players lost in earlier phases (e.g. Seattle can only lose one more contracted player)

Clarifying (and also correcting myself from earlier (oops))

if Vegas does have a pending EFO out there, the recipient does have until TOMORROW at noon to confirm how many years they’re signing for

So Vegas might actually only need 2 more players, likely through the selection process

Jumping ahead to help give curious people an idea of what we’re in for next. Relatively speaking this phase is much less complicated than phase 2.

Key points

• Aka “preliminary open signing period”

• opens Wednesday at noon (eastern), runs until Friday at 5

• ALL teams are able to sign players during this phase

Expansion teams:

• Expansion teams are aiming to sign 3 players here and they can only sign free agents

• at this point expansion teams are still able to sign players on their phase 2 ENTLs (list of 20 players), but only the ones who are free agents

• this is also their last chance they have to sign any players on their ENTLs

• if an expansion team can’t get 3 signings here, that’s fine, they’ll just get to make that up in later phases

Meanwhile existing teams :

• get to sign/protect 3 more players - same process as phase 1

• note that they can also sign free agents from other teams

Caveat:

• if a player/free agent received & rejected an FPO in phase 2 then they HAVE to sign with a team (ANY team) in phase 3

• this could be a mechanism that forces existing teams to sign players they might not have considered a protection priority but would otherwise lose in this phase if they didn’t sign them

• at this point, we don’t know if any player received and rejected an “FPO”

• I have no idea what the consequences are if the player doesn’t get signed here

Disclaimer: I’m literally just a fan trying my best to understand and explain, if I got something wrong … oops

Yall I don’t know everything but just an FYI from someone who skimmed the rules:

EFOs go out in 24 hour waves

Yesterday, each expansion team submitted a ranked list of four people they want to target

Players ranked first by expansion teams were informed of that at noon today

If a player received only one EFO they have until Monday to decide how many years they want to sign for

If a player received multiple EFOs they have to decide by noon tomorrow

Because at one tomorrow round 2 starts

Which is when , for the teams that were unable to secure their top choice (i.e. the player accepted an EFO from another team) , their second choices are notified that they’ve been offered an EFO

And it continues like that if there’s more duplicates

So every 24 hours there could be a new round of EFOs that go out (until there are no longer teams going for the same players/every team has signed someone on an EFO)