The San Jose Sharks might have to make room for another professional hockey team inside SAP Center.
San Jose is reportedly one of two cities expected to receive an expansion team in the Professional Women’s Hockey League, with an official announcement coming from the league sometime this month.
The PWHL announced on Wednesday that it was expanding to Detroit, and Ice Warriors magazine reported on Friday that the league is in the process of finalizing Hamilton, Ontario, and San Jose as its next two expansion cities. Las Vegas is also a frontrunner for an expansion team, the magazine reported.
Detroit will enter the PWHL for the 2026-27 season, as would Hamilton, San Jose, and Las Vegas if those deals are finalized. Messages left with a PWHL spokesperson were not immediately returned.
The PWHL had already been preparing to add as many as four teams for next season.
Besides Detroit, the PWHL has teams in eight other cities, with Boston, Minnesota, Montréal, New York, Ottawa, Seattle, Toronto, and Vancouver all part of the league’s single-entity ownership structure under TWG Global, which also owns the Los Angeles Dodgers and Los Angeles Lakers, among other sports entities.
The expectation is that a San Jose-based PHWL franchise, if it comes to fruition, would play at the 17,435-seat SAP Center, although that is not for certain.
A PWHL franchise would give San Jose its third pro hockey team. The Sharks joined the NHL in 1991 and moved to SAP Center in 1993, after playing two seasons at the Cow Palace in Daly City. The Sharks’ AHL affiliate, the Barracuda, was moved to San Jose from Worcester, Mass, before the start of the 2015-16 season. The Barracuda has played its home games at Tech CU Arena in San Jose since 2022.
One former Jr. Sharks youth hockey player, Brooke Bryant, plays for the Seattle Torrent. Bryant is from Linden and grew up playing youth hockey in Northern California. Bryant won the PWHL championship with Minnesota in 2024 and 2025.
The PWHL, now in its third season, expanded to Seattle and Vancouver before the 2025-26 season, and was reportedly seeking to expand its footprint on the West Coast. Los Angeles was initially thought of as an expansion city before San Jose emerged as a favored destination.
The Bay Area gained two other professional women’s sports teams in recent years.
In April 2023, the National Women’s Soccer League expanded to include Bay FC, which played its first season in 2024 and is now in its third year at PayPal Park in San Jose, which hosted last season’s league championship game.
The WNBA granted a franchise to the Bay Area in October 2023, with the San Francisco-based Golden State Valkyries joining the league in 2025.
The Valkyries sold out all 22 regular-season home games during their inaugural season at Chase Center in 2025, and set an WNBA record for average attendance (18,064) and total attendance (397,408). According to CNBC, the Valkyries recently became the WNBA’s first franchise valued at $1 billion.
The PWHL recently eliminated its expansion draft. Per the Associated Press, starting on May 28, PWHL expansion teams can begin reaching out to prospective players before they release a 20-player negotiating list.
Please check back for updates to this story.