Professional Women’s Hockey League

The Professional Women’s Hockey League appears in Planet Money vs. the NBA’s tanking problem as the league that adopted the Gold Plan for draft ordering. The episode uses the PWHL as a live alternative to the [[NationalBasketballAssociation|NBA]] lottery because it rewards eliminated teams for winning rather than losing.

The PWHL case is useful because it shows new leagues can test mechanisms that older, higher-revenue leagues may resist. It also keeps the tradeoff visible: the Gold Plan can improve late-season effort, but it may not guarantee that the weakest team receives the best young talent.

Connections

• Jaina Hefford - PWHL executive interviewed in the source.
• Adam Gold and Gold Plan - designer and mechanism associated with the draft system.
• Sports Draft Incentive Design, Sports Tanking, and Sports Competitive Balance - broader rule-design branch.