On Monday, The Professional Women’s Hockey League announced the inaugural training camp roster for the original six franchises.
A total of 185 players have been named to the six team’s training camp rosters. Beginning on November 15th, training camp will be a good time for teams to judge which players will stick around for the regular season.
New York will carry 18 forwards, 12 defenders and four goalies on their first training camp roster. They have invited seven new forwards, seven new defensemen and two new goalies.
It’s not much of a surprise to see many former Metropolitan Riveters being invited to New York’s new team camp. Headlined by forward Madison Packer, captain of the Riveters for the previous four years, she spent eight seasons with the club. Across the eight seasons, she has 129 points in 131 games played.
Another very skilled former Riveter is Kelly Babstock. The forward had 96 points for the Riveters across the 112 games she played in her seven seasons with the club.
Joining Babstock and Packer as other former Riveter invitees are Kendall Cornine, Alexa Gruschow and Haley Lunny. That leaves Bailey Larson and Savannah Norcross to round out the forwards invited by GM Pascal Daoust.
New York has seven new faces coming to try for a spot on the blue line for the club. Headlining are two members of international clubs, Johanna Fällman and Claire Thompson. Fällman is a Team Sweden member, and Thompson is a Team Canada member.
Taylor Baker and Christine Deaudelin are joining these two, who played for the Montréal Force in the PHF last season. New York also invited Emily Curlett, Megan Eady and Carley Olivier. It will be interesting to see who cracks the roster to start the season as the club is only expected to hold seven defensemen of the 12 on the Training Camp roster.
The new goalies are an exciting addition to the roster. Lindsey Post was brought back from overseas as she has played in Sweden the previous few seasons, including an impressive 2022-23 season where she posted a 1.84 goals against average and a .938 save percentage in 21 games for SDE HF in the Swedish Women’s Hockey League.
Post will give expected starter Corinne Schroeder a challenge for playing time during camp. Schroeder was PHF Goalie of the Year last season. The final invitee for this year’s camp is Kassidy Sauvé.
Rosters will have to be cut down to 27 players by November 29th for the first waiver window and then to 23 by December 11th for the second waiver window. The 23-player roster set by December 11th will be all signed to Standard Player Agreements, plus teams will be able to have two Reserve Player Contracts in case of injury.