As Sirens officials review this past PWHL season, they see a lot of progress.
The Sirens averaged 4,019 fans in their 12 games at Prudential Center, a 45 percent increase from the previous season.
They also set a U.S. professional women’s hockey record last month when they drew a sellout crowd of 18,006 fans at Madison Square Garden.
The team has an exciting, young core of back-to-back No. 1 overall picks in Sarah Fillier and Kristýna Kaltounková, as well as 2025-26 Rookie of the Year candidate Casey O’Brien.
All that sounds good, but there’s a palpable sense of frustration with the Sirens, who failed to reach the postseason for the third consecutive year.
The Sirens were finishing up exit interviews last week and preparing for yet another offseason of uncertainty as the Walter Cup playoffs started.
But second-year head coach Greg Fargo would rather have been preparing for semifinal games than mapping out the team’s offseason plans with general manager Pascal Daoust.
“The positives out of this is that we feel really proud of the growth we made this season as an organization and team,” Fargo said. “But at the same time, we recognize there’s room to grow … a real hunger and an appetite for more and to continue to bite off more. We’re going to take the right steps in the offseason here to make sure we’re not in this place again next season.”
It’s been the same story, different font for each of the past three seasons for the Sirens, the only original franchise yet to earn a postseason berth. They routinely start the season strong before hitting a second-half slump that costs them a playoff spot.
“It looks like it’s ‘Groundhog Day,’ going back with a strong start and then, for some reason, a different end — or the same end, different second half,” Daoust said.
And yet, Daoust and Fargo see reasons to be optimistic about the Sirens’ future.
New York entered the Olympic break in February with a 7-0-3-6 record (W-OTW-OTL-L) and in fourth place in the PWHL standings. The Sirens lost five of six games once the season resumed.
Injuries to key players, including Kaltounková and left wing Taylor Girard, played a part in their demise.
The Sirens, who ended in last place in each of the past two seasons, managed to stay in the hunt for a postseason berth until the final days of the regular season, but ultimately finished seventh out of eight teams with a 9-3-3-15 record.
Though the season yielded a familiar outcome for New York, Fargo said this season overall had a “completely different feeling,” which he believes should bode well moving forward.
“I know we’re sitting here in a similar place that we were a year ago and no one’s happy with that, but to be honest with you … it didn’t feel anything like the year prior,” Fargo said. “We all wanted to be in the playoffs, we were all working toward that one common goal, and even I know there were some different pockets of time throughout the schedule that things weren’t going our way, but it wasn’t for a lack of pushing together and pulling together and trying to come up with solutions.”
The PWHL is still finalizing the details of how the offseason will work with expansion (up to four new teams, but possibly fewer), an expansion draft (a report by The Athletic this week indicated there could be a five-phase process of player protections and signing windows in lieu of a traditional expansion draft) and the order for a college draft loaded with potential superstars.
“We’re hearing about different scenarios,” Daoust said last week, “but we’re not in a position at all to even have a plan in place because we need to wait.”
O’Brien is on an expiring contract, but Daoust said re-signing her as a restricted free agent is a top priority. He and Fargo believe the Sirens are establishing themselves as a franchise where players want to play — a change of tune from the inaugural season during which New York didn’t have a true home venue or practice facility.
But the Sirens are in the winning business, and they’ve yet to string together enough success to bring playoff hockey to a deprived fanbase.
“We’re heading in the right direction,” Daoust said. “Data are showing us, except the standings for now, but we’re going to trust the process. We’re going to trust that we have great people, great players in place and yeah, we’re going to keep digging.”
