The new Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) has formally revealed its name, as well as the cities that have been granted teams.

Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa will be the Canadian cities represented in the league, with teams also located in Boston, Minneapolis-St. Paul and New York. Teams will play in a 24-game schedule expected to begin in January. Rosters will be allocated through a free agency period in September covering both Professional Women’s Hockey Players’ Association (PWHPA) members and former members of the recently folded Premier Hockey Federation (PHF). That will be followed by a draft for current college and university players in the U.S. and Canada to round out the rosters.

The then-unnamed PWHL began to take form earlier in the summer when the PHF was bought out by Los Angeles Dodgers chairman Mark Walter, who is part of an ownership group that also includes tennis star Billie Jean King. In July, the PWHPA signed a new collective bargaining agreement with owners of the new league, clearing the way to begin operations.

The PWHPA, created in 2019 after the Canadian Women’s Hockey League folded, had resisted merging with the PHF, as its members didn’t believe it met their standards for what a professional league could look like. Instead, it ran the Dream Gap Tour, a series of weekend events and tournament games held in cities across North America, with the goal of showing the support a women’s league could garner.

The PWHPA Dream Gap Tour counted Secret, Gatorade, Harvey’s, Scotiabank, Adidas and Sonnet Insurance as sponsors. It remains to be seen whether existing commitments will carry through to the new league – many agreements were tied to specific Dream Gap teams, or the tour itself – or if any sponsors intend to sign new deals with the PWHL.

Some PHF players had signed deals worth more than the $80,000 maximum the PWHL will adhere to, though the collective bargaining agreement includes performance bonuses, commercial rights, a retirement plan, housing stipends, health insurance, workers’ compensation, maternity leave and a dependent care assistance program.