Pat Laprade

Pat Laprade covers women's professional hockey with a roster-focused lens on the Professional Women's Hockey League, paying particular attention to its Montreal club and the wider Canadian pro scene. He works as a reporter for The Hockey News' Women's Hockey Roundtable, writing in both English and French about women's hockey and maintaining a regular presence on the outlet's women's vertical. Alongside his written work, he extends his analysis across media as a women's hockey commentator, author and podcast co-host.

PWHL Montreal, Injuries and Contract Decisions

Laprade's most regular beat centres on PWHL Montreal, where he follows how injuries, contracts and offseason decisions shape the roster. In a piece outlining “Five Players PWHL Montreal Needs To Sign,” he isolates specific members of the team he believes must be re-signed before they reach free agency, underscoring his focus on retention, timing and cap implications for one club.

His coverage of Victoire's forward group in “Victoire Likely Without Jade Downie-Landry To Start Season” shows him moving quickly on injury news, reporting that the forward will start the season on long-term injured reserve after an off-ice training injury. That report was cited elsewhere as the first public confirmation of Downie-Landry's LTIR status, signalling Laprade's role in breaking news on PWHL Montreal's lineup. In his work on Marie-Philip Poulin and Laura Stacey facing major decisions in the offseason, he treats star players’ contract and career choices as central storylines, tying individual decisions to the future of the franchise.

Taken together, these pieces show a reporter who treats PWHL Montreal's roster as an evolving project, tracking both short-term availability and long-term contractual strategy.

Expansion, Governance and Labour in the PWHL

Laprade devotes substantial attention to how the PWHL grows and governs itself, especially around expansion and labour issues. In “PWHL Teams Being Kept In The Dark About Potential Expansion,” he reports on clubs lacking clarity about where and when new teams will enter the league, highlighting communication gaps between the league office and existing franchises.

His opinion piece on the PWHL players' association, “Shifting Away From A Traditional Expansion Draft Will Be A Major Win For Players In The PWHL,” argues that an alternative expansion mechanism would better protect players, showing his interest in how structural decisions impact careers rather than just markets. On social platforms, he references his reporting on salaries for PWHL general managers and other employees, linking that piece to subsequent developments such as the posting of a head coach position, which underscores his focus on pay scales and job conditions behind the bench and in front offices. He also amplifies coverage of Vancouver as a first expansion destination, tying market selection to league growth and fan engagement.

This cluster of work marks Laprade as one of the writers connecting day-to-day hockey news to underlying questions of governance, equity and the business of building a sustainable women's pro league.

Drafts, Team-Building and Competitive Windows

Laprade uses draft retrospectives and marquee matchups to explore how teams build and sustain competitive windows in women's hockey. In “Two Years Later: Redrafting The Inaugural 2023 PWHL Draft,” he and colleague Ian Kennedy sit down to re-draft the league's first class, revisiting selections after two seasons. A follow-up feature, “Two Years Later: Redrafting The 2024 PWHL Draft,” applies the same approach to the second PWHL entry class, establishing a recurring format that reassesses player value and team decisions with more information.

His international work includes the pointedly titled “Did Team Canada Just Select A Silver Medal Roster?”, in which he questions whether the national team’s chosen lineup is built to win, reflecting his habit of scrutinizing roster construction at the highest level. In a feature framed around Montreal and Ottawa delivering the pro hockey title fans have been waiting for, he positions PWHL matchups as culmination points for Canadian pro ambitions, tying individual games to broader stakes for women's hockey in the country.

Across these pieces, Laprade applies a draft-and-roster analysis mindset to both league and national team contexts, emphasizing how selection decisions translate into competitive outcomes.

Women’s Hockey Commentary and Cross-Sport Perspective

Laprade's author page describes him as a reporter who has spent the past three years writing in English and French about women's hockey, underlining his ability to cover the sport for multiple audiences. His social bio presents him as a women's hockey columnist and the author of five books, signalling a long-running commitment to sports storytelling beyond day-to-day news. Broadcast profiles portray him as a near-encyclopedic observer of professional wrestling who also follows hockey history closely, and they note that he wrote the biography of legendary defenseman Émile “Butch” Bouchard. He co-hosts a French-language podcast with former players Ann-Sophie Bettez and Kim Deschênes, adding a conversational, player-facing dimension to his coverage that complements his reporting at The Hockey News. This combination of multilingual writing, historical work, and cross-sport commentary gives Laprade a distinctive vantage point: he approaches women's hockey not only as a beat reporter, but as someone attuned to how sports history, labour dynamics and storytelling intersect.