PWHL

Top-level and professional women's hockey in North America has developed in starts and stops since the late twentieth century. The National Women's Hockey League (NWHL) launched in 1999, featuring teams mainly in Ontario and Quebec. Some teams from Western Canada competed intermittently, but a Western Women's Hockey League was formed in 2004. The Canadian Women's Hockey League (CWHL) effectively replaced the NWHL and ran for twelve seasons, from 2007 to 2019, with teams competing for the Clarkson Cup. The CWHL, which operated on a non-profit basis, did not pay player salaries, but it did at times offer stipends and bonuses as it aspired to become a professional league. However, the league lacked financial stability and it abruptly folded in 2019. A new National Women's Hockey League—later re-named the Premier Hockey Federation—which did offer player salaries, was established in the United States in 2015, before expanding into Canada in 2020. However, after the dissolution of the CWHL, hundreds of prominent women's players, including Canadian and American Olympians, founded the Professional Women's Hockey Players' Association (PWHPA) and opted to boycott existing leagues in pursuit of a unified, financially stable professional league. In the meantime, the PWHPA attracted partnerships with corporate sponsors and National Hockey League teams, organizing exhibition tournaments to generate support for their goal.

In 2022, the PWHPA entered a partnership with the Mark Walter Group and BJK Enterprises—led by Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter and Billie Jean King, respectively—with the intent to launch a new professional league. In 2023, the two business partners purchased the assets of the Premier Hockey Federation, and the PHF ceased operations. The PWHPA negotiated a collective bargaining agreement ahead of the launch of the new professional league the union had been working towards.

The establishment of the Professional Women's Hockey League was announced by Mark Walter Group in August 2023, along with the location of its six charter franchises: Boston, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Montreal, New York City, Ottawa, and Toronto. Teams began constructing their rosters that summer, with an initial ten-day free agency period to sign three players. Emily Clark, Brianne Jenner, and Emerance Maschmeyer became the league's first players when they signed with Ottawa. The inaugural draft took place in September at the Canadian Broadcasting Centre in Toronto, where Minnesota chose Taylor Heise as the first pick in a fifteen-round, ninety-player draft from a pool of 286 eligible players. The league announced that, due to time constraints, the teams would not be given nicknames until after the inaugural season, and would wear jerseys featuring the name of the teams' locales in a diagonal wordmark.

Prior to the start of the inaugural season, all six teams congregated at the Utica University Nexus Center in early December for a five day evaluation camp, including scrimmages used to experiment with new rules. The first game took place on January 1, 2024, when Toronto hosted New York at the Mattamy Athletic Centre. New York's Ella Shelton scored the league's first goal en route to a 4–0 win. The game's Canadian television audience of 2.9 million viewers was the largest for a sports or entertainment broadcast that day, beating the 2024 NHL Winter Classic. The attendance record for a professional women's ice hockey match would be set multiple times during the ensuing season: 8,318 at Ottawa's first home game at TD Place Arena on January 2; 13,316 at Minnesota's first home game at the Xcel Energy Center on January 6; 19,285 at the inaugural "Battle on Bay Street" match at Scotiabank Arena on February 16; and 21,105 at the "Duel at the Top" match at the Bell Centre on April 20. The latter two drew the largest ever crowds for women's ice hockey, surpassing the 18,013 that watched Canada play Finland at the 2013 Women's World Championship.

Toronto finished atop the standings at the end of the inaugural season—they chose to play fourth place Minnesota in the first round of the playoffs, leaving Montréal and Boston to play the other series. Minnesota defeated Toronto in a five-game series, while Boston defeated Montréal in three straight games, with every decision coming in overtime. In the final, Minnesota defeated Boston in a five game series to capture the first Walter Cup championship. Natalie Spooner was the league's first scoring champion and the inaugural winner of the league's Bill Jean King Most Valuable Player award, while Taylor Heise led the playoffs in scoring and was given postseason MVP honours.