Seattle has historically been a hospitable city for women’s sports. The Seattle Storm of the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) has made its home here since 2000, and the Seattle Reign has been a member of the National Women’s Soccer League since its inception in 2012. The Storm winning four championships in their tenure and the Reign winning the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) Shield three times have built a culture of success in the city, drawing big names like Sue Bird, Jewell Loyd, and Megan Rapinoe to its teams.
And excitedly, as of November, there’s a new organization in town. Enter: the Seattle Torrent, one of two teams joining the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) for the 2025-26 season. The PWHL is a relatively new league itself, with this year only being its third in existence. In January, the league hosted a slate of exhibition games in new markets, one of which was in Seattle. That game drew around 12,000 fans attending live, and a few months later, the permanent team was announced.
Just last month, the team name and branding was released. The name Torrent references the waterways that are key to Washington’s geography, while the colors of Shadow Blue, Glacier Blue, Foam, Haze Grey, and Basalt Black also reference elements of the landscape. With a tagline of “Forged by Nature. Unstoppable by Will,” their brand image has created a strong identity from the start and slots perfectly into the existing sphere of Seattle sports. It fits with the theme of water-based names for women’s teams in the city, and they even have a real ferry horn that blasts when they score!
In the expansion draft, Seattle landed a huge win by acquiring Hilary Knight, arguably the most famous women’s hockey player, from the Boston Fleet. She’s now serving as their captain. Their roster also includes notable figures such as alternate captain Alex Carpenter and Canada national team member Jessie Eldridge. Everything seemed to be settling into place for the season opener on November 21st.
Where all of this culminates is the night of November 28th and the Torrent’s first game in Seattle. The city was full of so much excitement to welcome this new franchise that 16,014 fans came to Climate Pledge Arena to watch the home opener. This marked the largest attendance at a professional women’s hockey game in United States history, as well as at any PWHL home arena game (a valuable statistic given that there are teams in Canada, the biggest country for hockey in the world).
Unfortunately, Seattle lost that historic game against the established Minnesota Frost, last season’s champions. But the Torrent followed that up with a win in their following game, bringing them to a current 1-2 record. Although it’s seemingly taking some time for the team to gel and produce results on the ice, their momentum cannot be disputed. Whether it’s signing huge international stars, selling out arenas, or breaking one-day jersey sale records, the Torrent are showing that this is only the beginning of a new era for women’s ice hockey, and maybe for the city of Seattle, too. And I, for one, could not be more excited.