PWHL Vancouver name Cara Gardner Morey as team’s first GM

We are just weeks away from the first opportunity for PWHL Vancouver to sign players to their inaugural roster, and now the team has found the woman who will lead the way.

On Friday, the club officially announced that Cara Gardner Morey will be named the first General Manager in PWHL Vancouver history. The hiring was first reported by Daily Faceoff’s Jeff Marek earlier in the morning.

The announcement comes after PWHL Seattle named Meghan Turner as their GM earlier this week. Both the new executives will now have their work cut out for them from the jump, with some key dates fast approaching.

On June 4, an exclusive four-day free agency window opens up for Vancouver and Seattle to sign up to five unprotected players (each existing team can protect three, initially). The full expansion draft will then be held on June 9 at 5:30 pm PST, with the exact order still to be announced. Learn more about how PWHL Vancouver will select their initial 12-player roster here.

Gardner Morey has been the head coach of the Princeton Tigers women’s ice hockey team since the 2017-18 season, working her way up to the position after starting as an associate head coach in 2011. In the 2019-20 season, she led the group to a program-best 26 wins, winning the ECAC D1 championship tournament for the first time in the school’s history. Unfortunately, their chance to continue their success in the NCAA tournament was cut short after it was cancelled due to COVID-19. Gardner Morey attended Brown University, where she played both ice and field hockey and later played in the National Women’s Hockey League.

In her time with Princeton, she coached several now-PWHLers, including Claire Thompson of the Minnesota Frost, Maggie Connors of the Toronto Sceptres, and defender Mariah Keopple from the Montreal Victoire, who is set to become an unrestricted free agent this summer. She may have her eyes on one or more of these skaters in the upcoming expansion draft, as all could potentially be left exposed by their respective groups. Rising superstar Sarah Fillier played under Gardner Morey for four years at Princeton, but will all but certainly be protected by the New York Sirens.

With deep rosters across the league and the inaugural six teams only able to protect a handful of players, Gardner Morey has a unique opportunity to build a strong roster with a chance to be competitive right from Day 1.