Professional women’s hockey is coming to the Bay Area, with the PWHL set to announce Tuesday that San Jose will enter the league for the 2026-27 season.

The move finalizes the PWHL’s ambitious expansion path, which has seen the three-year-old league grow from eight to 12 teams, starting with the additions of teams in Detroit, Las Vegas, and Hamilton, Ontario, earlier this month. The PWHL expanded from six to eight teams before this past season, with Seattle and Vancouver joining the league.

The PWHL’s original six franchises are Boston, New York, Minnesota, Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto.

San Jose’s team colors could also be unveiled Tuesday, as they were when the Las Vegas and Hamilton expansion franchises were announced last week. A team nickname, the front office, the coaching staff, and the roster will all be finalized in the coming weeks and months.

The San Jose team is expected to play most, if not all, of its home games at SAP Center, the site of Tuesday’s announcement.

The now 33-year-old building’s primary tenant is the NHL’s San Jose Sharks, who will play 42 home games from September to April next season. Expansion teams in Detroit and Las Vegas are also playing in NHL arenas, with Hamilton playing home games at 18,000-seat TD Coliseum.

Of the 12 PWHL teams, San Jose will be the second American market in the league to also have an NHL and AHL team in the area, with Las Vegas being the other. With the addition of San Jose, there will be seven teams in the United States and five in Canada.

Here are five other things to know about the PWHL:

CENTRAL OWNERSHIP: Unlike most professional sports leagues, the PWHL has one owner, TWG Global. The group’s founder, Mark Walter, financially backed the league’s creation. The PWHL championship trophy is named after Walter.

The league then chooses the team’s general managers. Last week, the PWHL announced that Manon Rheaume, a former goalie who became the first woman to appear in an NHL exhibition game, would be the GM of the Detroit expansion team, and that women’s player agent Dominique DiDia would be the GM of the Las Vegas team.

As of this season, each team carried up to 23 players on the active roster and three reserves. Each team played 30 games, 15 at home and 15 on the road, with the top four teams advancing to the Walter Cup playoffs.

BODYCHECKING IS ALLOWED: For years, in international women’s hockey competitions such as the Olympic Games and World Championships, bodychecking was not allowed, a stark difference from men’s leagues.

But since its inception in 2024, the PWHL, responding to player feedback, has allowed a form of bodychecking to separate an opponent from the puck, mainly along the boards when players are moving in the same direction in a parallel check or when making a play on the puck. Open-ice hits and direct collisions without the puck are prohibited.

Even at this year’s Winter Olympics in Milan, body contact in the women’s tournament was more apparent than ever, with referees allowing more checking to occur.

OTHER RULE DIFFERENCES: The PWHL has some different rules from the NHL.

The jailbreak rule states that if a team that’s killing a minor penalty scores a shorthanded goal, its player may leave the penalty box, and play reverts to 5-on-5. In the NHL, teams still have to kill off the rest of the penalty even if they score shorthanded.

The no-escape rule says that after a penalty is called and play stops, the remaining players on the offending team cannot change. They have to stay on the ice until the next faceoff.

PWHL overtime rules are the same as the NHL, but shootouts are slightly different. Instead of three shooters per team, the PWHL, like international hockey, has five. If the teams have the same number of goals after five rounds, it moves to sudden death, and teams can allow one player to take all of their shots for as long as the shootout continues.

POINTS SYSTEM: In the NHL, teams get two points for a win, one point for an overtime or shootout loss, and zero points for a regulation time loss. The structure makes it difficult for teams that start a season slowly to re-enter the playoff picture.

In the PWHL, teams earn three points for a regulation-time victory, two for an overtime or shootout win, and one for an overtime or shootout loss. Like the NHL, teams do not get a point if they lose in regulation time. This is designed to allow for more movement in the standings from week to week.

PLAYOFF DIFFERENCES: Right now, after the four playoff teams are decided, the team that finishes at the top of the standings gets to pick between the third and fourth place teams for its semifinal opponent.

Teams out of the playoff picture at some point enter what’s called the gold plan. After a team is officially eliminated from playoff contention, they begin to accumulate draft order points by winning games or losing in overtime or a shootout. The team with the most draft order points earns the higher draft pick.