How to Bet on PWHL: Picks and Predictions for Every Professional Women’s Hockey League Team

Here's everything you need to know about how to bet on the PWHL, with picks and predictions all six Professional Women's Hockey League teams.

The PWHL is in its very early days, having played its first game as this official iteration just as the calendar flipped to 2024.

However, the league has been off to a flying start. The play has been excellent, and fans and viewers have taken notice. It's resulted in incredibly impressive early returns on interest in the league.

Another way to drive interest in a new league? Being able to bet it! And Caesars Sportsbook (in some states, it should be noted) is offering betting lines for PWHL games right now, and the market seems beatable in its current state.

With that in mind, let’s do a little introduction to each of the six teams in the league – all from a betting perspective, of course.

The season is about 10 weeks into a 15-week regular season, so there’s plenty of season remaining, as well as a postseason that culminates with a best-of-five PWHL Finals in late May.

As of now, it’s really just sides and totals for these games, and you even need to be in the right state to bet it. But that's often how sportsbooks work: They tease out a few light options and see if there’s interest, so hopefully, if the league starts getting bets and bet requests, we’ll have more and more options to bet going forward.

(Bet on the 2024 PWHL season at Caesars with our Caesars Sportsbook promo code!)

How to Bet Every PWHL Team

PWHL Toronto

The first thing you’ll notice is that these teams don’t have official names yet! While some may bristle at the lack of marketing, there are two things to know.

One, this was not done haphazardly. In fact, it was specifically because the league wanted not to rush the process. However, in the meantime, I’ve kind of come around to really liking the simplicity.

In modern sports, the city seems to be second to the player. And that can be great. Player movement has driven leagues like the NBA. However, why not lean in on the incredibly pure connection between the city and its players? In European soccer, the names are as simple as Barcelona Football Club. Let’s just rock and roll with PWHL Toronto!

OK, rant over, and I really should move on because Toronto deserves our full attention. They sold out their entire season ticket package in just two days, and the fans of Toronto haven’t been disappointed so far. Toronto has won 11 of their 16 games so far, and sit in a three-way tie atop the PWHL standings with 30 points.

The PWHL has taken on the long intriguing 3-2-1-0 scoring format that has eluded NHL fans, with three points for a regulation win, two for an overtime win, one for an overtime loss, and zero for a regulation loss. Toronto has gotten those 30 points in just 16 games (compared to 17 for Montreal and Minnesota), and their +9 goal differential is the best in the league.

Sarah Nurse is the big name, but the roster has depth top to bottom, and it’s Natalie Spooner who leads the league in goals, with 12 already – four more than anyone else in the league!

Per Dom Luszczyszyn’s Power Ratings at The Athletic, Toronto has the best offensive rating and second-best defensive rating in the league, and ranks with the best chance of reaching the eventual PWHL Final (though the top three are truly neck and neck).

The best way to frame Toronto is truly to call them complete. They are great at home (six wins to three losses) but just as good on the road (five wins to two losses). They have the second-best power play (22.2%), and they also have an electric penalty-kill unit, having yet to allow an opposing power-play goal.

In Hailey Salvian and Shayna Goldman’s season preview, their question was whether the team had the one offensive star to carry the offense. Spooner has answered that question handily, and now the only real question, in my opinion, is whether Kristen Campbell in goal is going to be enough to collect the first PWHL title.

One underrated factor in their success is that so much of the core of this team is centered around the Canadian National Team, with the coach and GM even matching. That sort of continuity is massive for newly formed teams and leagues.

From a night-to-night perspective – and even looking at futures as a whole – I see Toronto as the best team in the league, even more so than Luszczyszyn’s Power Ratings, or the standings as a whole might make it seem. I’ve bet them several times in the right spots, and will likely lean towards them again this Sunday as they take on Montreal in Pittsburgh. Speaking of which…

Toronto betting angle: Strong option for futures & single-game bets

PWHL Montreal

Wouldn’t it be pretty awesome to see a Montreal vs. Toronto Final for the first season in PWHL history?

It would certainly be epic, but I would caution against counting our chickens before they hatch.

Montreal is indeed one of those teams in a three-way tie atop the PWHL standings right now, but there are a few question marks still. For one, their goal differential sits at just +1, notably worse than the two teams they sit in a tie with. They have given up by far the most goals of any team in that tier, and it leads to a bigger question: What to do in goal?

When they drafted Ann-Renee Desbiens, they had to feel they were locked and loaded for their every-night starter. Desbiens has arguably the best reputation in the world for a goaltender. However, through the first 10 weeks of this season, she has looked human. With a save percentage of .919, she ranks second from the bottom in the league, and maybe even more notably, her goals-against average is nearly a full goal per game higher than her backup, Elaine Chuli.

Chuli has, in fact, been the best goalie in the league by GAA and SAV%, making things a little interesting for a team that couldn’t have imagined they’d have any sort of dilemma in net when they started the season. The team has won five of Chuli’s six starts, and she’s starting to get more and more of a look. I am a big sample size bettor, so I’m not here to suggest that Montreal should move away from the goalie most view as the best in the world, but I do know that having an incumbent who is underperforming compared to the red-hot backup can make things a bit complicated.

All that being said, this team has Marie-Philip Puolin, who is for my money the best player in the league, and certainly the player you would most want in a playoff elimination game. If we get player props come postseason, you know I’ll be betting her to score in those big moments.

Montreal betting angle: Marie-Philip Puolin player props (when available)

PWHL Minnesota

This Minnesota team is the third of the Big Three in the league right now, and arguably the one being slept on a bit. They didn’t come into the season with as big-name of a roster as Toronto or Montreal, but their hyper-local focus (again, lean into the connections with the cities!) has paid off incredibly well so far.

What else has paid off was their big swing of a trade midseason, which saw them ship out Susanna Tapani and Abby Cook. Considering how good Tapani had been, and that Jaques had zero points in seven games with Boston at the time, it looked to be at the very least a bold trade. However, coming to Minnesota has brought Jacques (who has an excellent pedigree) to life, with five points in just eight games in Minnesota so far.

Minnesota currently sports the second-best goal differential in the league with the stingiest defense, by far. Per Luszczyszyn’s Power Ratings, their +3.9 Defensive Rating is miles ahead of Toronto in second at +1.8.

The offense has a few more question marks, but I’m bullish on the potential ceiling for this offense. Top overall pick Taylor Heise has had a relatively pedestrian season so far, especially compared to what was expected of her. Part of that is that she missed five games a little while back with an upper-body injury, but even in the time she has played, she hasn’t quite hit the ceiling most imagine possible from her.

The good news is that Kendall Coyne Schofield and Grace Zumwinkle have very much filled in any needed gaps on the offensive side, so if that duo maintains what they have done to date, and Heise starts to get hot, the ceiling for this team is quite high.

I’ve been loving betting unders on Minnesota games, and I will likely look to do so on Saturday when they take on New York.

Minnesota betting angle: Target game unders

PWHL Ottawa

It’s fitting to go to Ottawa next because they have been the overs team.

Despite having the second-best goals/game offense, the team sits down in fourth place because of the leakiest goal prevention in the league. However, there’s a case to be made that Ottawa is a bit unlucky to be as far out of third as they are, and that they deserve to be the favorites for that fourth and final playoff spot.

Ottawa is 0-5 in overtime games, which is at the extreme end of bad luck, albeit in a tiny sample. There’s also something to be said for a defense as poor as Ottawa’s struggling even more in an overtime setting, but even still, it’s hard to lose five straight semi-coin tosses.

But it’s a bit fitting for this team which I see as the biggest enigma in the league. They really don’t have many big names, and their goaltending is by far the shakiest in the league. However, they’ve managed to get results here and there, and they most recently won on the road in Montreal.

Every bettor has those teams that they just can’t solve. Ottawa is that team for me. I like the overs, so at least that is reliable, but overall I just don’t know how to read this team as a whole.

Ottawa betting angle: Pass for now

PWHL Boston

We’re approaching the bottom of the league, so we don’t need to spend quite as much time here. But bettors know that betting on the dregs of the league can return just as much money as betting on the big names if you can pick your spots and angles.

Boston has the worst goal differential in the league. And for my money, they're indeed the worst team in the league despite being three points ahead of New York right now. The crazy part is that they came into the season as arguably the favorites. Their GM came out of the draft literally saying:

“The team we ended up with was better on paper than any of the mock drafts we did. That’s why I felt so confident at the end of that day like holy … we did this.”

Welp, I guess that’s why they play the games. Hilary Knight has much more looked the aged veteran than Schofield over in Minnesota. And though Tapani and Cook have actually been very solid since arriving from Minnesota in that early-season blockbuster, instantly trading the No. 10 overall pick and reigning Patty Kazmaier Award winner just a month into her career has me with questions for this front office as a whole.

I also have to wonder why Emma Soderberg keeps getting starts in net. Aerin Frankel has a GAA nearly a goal lower and a SAV% notably higher. It can be a little tricky to find starting lineups for PWHL games, but the drop from Frankel to Soderberg is one of the starting differences that I look for when betting on Boston.

Markets still haven’t fully adjusted to this team really not being as good as they were expected to be, and I have thoroughly enjoyed fading them even in recent games.

Boston betting angle: Fade Boston

PWHL New York 

If Ottawa is the weird enigma of the league, New York is the fun enigma. They’re also the opposite of Ottawa in that Ottawa has the biggest split in their Offensive and Defensive Power Ratings while New York joins Toronto as the most balanced team in the league.

Of course, they are not at the Toronto level of actual success, and that’s been especially noticeable of late. They have dropped five straight, and while in other leagues a last place team that is riding a five-game losing skid might seem to be hitting the soft tank (cough, NBA, cough), that certainly won’t be the case in the PWHL.

The league has adopted the incredibly fun setup that many fans of other leagues have been clamoring for: the Gold Rule. For the uninitiated, this is a way to incentivize teams (and let’s be honest, front offices) to keep winning even after they’ve been eliminated from the postseason. The draft order will be set in order of the teams who collect the most points after the time of their official elimination from the postseason.

So very much do not expect New York to go quietly into the night.

Especially if they are playing on the road, where they have been road warriors this season. Their five wins and 14 points on the road are both tied for the most in the league, albeit in a few more games than Montreal and Minnesota. It’s at home where New York has really struggled, so bettors should take note that their home ice has proven anything but a fortress so far, with PWHL not collecting a single regulation win in six home games so far.

New York betting angle: Use caution with New York at home

Concluding Thoughts

We’ll be back for some weekend picks, and if there’s interest, we can hopefully continue this series with more game-by-game picks and predictions.

Perhaps even more sportsbooks will also start to post lines and/or futures for the PWHL.

It’s a great product, and bettors are getting in on the ground floor, betting into what is clearly a very soft market right now. So let’s get some dubs.