Canada’s Pro Women’s Soccer League, the Northern Super League (NSL), is kicking off its debut season in just over a week. It’s launching with six teams spreading from coast to coast in Canada, from Vancouver to Halifax. This is the first attempt at professional women’s soccer in Canada in over a decade when the USL W-League shut down in 2015.
Surprisingly, the average age for each roster is pretty similar, ranging from 24 to 26. Most teams have taken similar approaches, with a few older, experienced players and most of the roster being amateurs or coming straight from college.
Unsurprisingly, no full-blown soccer stars in their prime joined the league in its first year. With a $1.6 million salary cap, compared to USD 3.3 million (around CAD 4.6 million) in the NWSL, there was little chance of that.
A consistent theme is the depth players filled out from Canadian and US colleges who weren’t picked up by an NWSL team. Understandably, a new league is seen as a chance to prove yourself, play professional soccer, and attract attention from a more significant league.
I’ve built out the rosters for every team, looked at each player’s history across other leagues, and tried to build a consensus for each team. Here are my rankings of how I expect each team to finish at the end of the season, with some context on their coach and players.
#6 - Halifax Tides FC
I am worried about the Tides.
Their coach, Lewis Page, has coached college soccer in Prince Edward Island for 25 years. It doesn’t appear that UPEI has ever done exceptionally well at that time. Of course, college football is entirely different, so we’ll see how he does in his first pro coaching position!
The players themselves are a mixed bag. Out of their 22-player roster, only seven have deep professional experience, with the rest coming from various North American colleges and amateur sides.
In Goalkeeping, we have Canadian stalwart Erin McLeod, who is coming off an OK season with Stjarnan in Iceland. The only issue is that she’s 42 years old. She’ll be the Tide’s starting goalkeeper wearing #1, while Anika Tóth will be her backup. She’s young for a goalkeeper at 23 but has been playing consistently in League1 Ontario for Woodbridge Strikers and even has a few caps for Slovakia. I suspect that we will see McLeod rotated out to be more of a goalkeeping coach than the starter within a year or two.
The two players that will be the most exciting to watch are Sara Olai and Gunnhildur Yrsa Jónsdóttir. Olai was last at IF Brommapojkarna in Sweden, while Jónsdóttir was at Stjarnan with McLeod.
Canadian striker Saorla Miller is going to want to make an impression. She is 23 years old and spent last season at Keflavík in Iceland, scoring 6 goals across 23 appearances. Throughout her college career at the University of Memphis, she was named to the All-AAC First Team, All-South Region Second Team, and Scholar All-American Second Team.
Christabel Oduro has had a wide-ranging career playing across Turkey, Germany, France, Iceland, Malta, and Sweden. She hasn’t stuck around at any of those teams for over a few years. We’ll see if she continues to be a journeyman player in the NSL or if the Tides become a home for her.
Will those players prove a strong enough core of a team to build around? When one or two of them are injured, it feels like this team will fall apart entirely. I’m pretty confident they will finish dead last in their debut season.
#5 - Montréal Roses FC
The Roses have me only marginally less worried than the Tides.
Picking Robert Rositoiu as a coach can be seen in two different ways: Either they just liked the coach of the largest college in town or someone who had a fantastic time with their time at the semi-pro side A.S. Blainville. They were the champions in 2021 and 2022, won their league cup, and were the interprovincial champions in 2022. A solid resume for semi-pro soccer in Canada!
Their player roster looks marginally less thin than the Tide’s. They have only 19 players on their roster, and seven have significant pro experience. Of those 19, there are three goalkeepers, leaving only 16 outfield players. I have to assume at least a few more signings are coming before the season truly kicks off; otherwise, they’re just a few injuries away from being unable to field a side and make substitutes.
Tanya Boychuk and Julia Leas are leading the way on their exciting pro players. They both spent last season at Vittsjö GIK in Sweden. They finished just outside the relegation zone at 27 points, with the previous relegation play-off spot at 26 points. We’ll have to see if that year together in Sweden helped them build chemistry.
Another Nordic player joining the Roses is Hailey Whitaker from Iceland’s Valur. She had an excellent season at Valur and won the Icelandic 2024 Cup Championship.
They signed Charlotte Bilbault, a French international with 56 caps, to lock down the defense. Bilbault spent the last two seasons at Montpellier, which was solidly mid-table in France’s Première Ligue.
Filling out their depth, there are some players from A.S. Blainville when Rositoiu was their coach (one, Mégane Sauvé) and McGill University last season while he was there (two, Stephanie Hill and Mara Bouchard).
The fundamentals seem way more solid at the Roses, with a coach with a good mix of experience and a diversified starting 11—even if at least three of their starters will be getting their first pro experience. If they can keep their core players fit for the year and flush out their depth a bit more, they should at least be able to beat the Tides and finish second last this season. Now, if they fill out their roster, add 3 or 4 more experienced senior players? I could see them pushing for the top this season.
#4 - Ottawa Rapid FC
Brand new leagues always have a great chance of a coaching redemption story, and it looks like Ottawa’s Katrine Pedersen is another coach on the same path. She had an incredible playing career, with 210 caps for Denmark, becoming an assistant captain for the Denmark Women’s team. She then spent 2021-2022 with AGF Fodbold in Denmark’s top-division Elitedivisionen, where they avoided relegation by just one point.
The team has an impressive 11 players with professional experience from almost as many different leagues! The United State’s NWSL, Norway’s Toppserien, Sweden’s Damallsvenskan, South Korea’s WK League, Iceland’s Besta deild kvenna, Spain’s Liga F, France’s Première Ligue, Portugal’s Liga BPI. Impressive work by the scouting department finding players in all those leagues worldwide!
Canadian Desiree Scott is the flagship of the Ottawa project. She has played with various NWSL teams for the last decade, most recently with the Kansas City Current. She has 187 caps for the Canadian team and was a major part of their Olympic runs in 2012 and 2016. She’s turning 38 later this year, which is definitely on the older side for a midfielder, and she only played 136 minutes for the Current last year. We’ll have to see what impact she can have in the NSL.
The Rapid are one of the teams taking advantage of an NWSL loan, with Jyllissa Harris coming from the Houston Dash. She’s lacked playtime with the Dash over the last 2 years but had a prolific college beforehand. She set countless records at the University of South Carolina, including all-time minutes, starters, and games played. She wants to make an impact in the NSL this year and is hoping to return to the Dash next year as a starter.
Across the midfield and forward positions, there are a variety of players in Nordic countries who want to make an impact. Ellen Gibson is arriving from Sweden, Johanne Fridlund from Norway, and Delaney Baie Pridham from Sweden (but is originally an American). All of them have been consistent players for their teams but haven’t put up awe-inspiring numbers.
This team has two international call-ups this window, with Choo Hyo-Joo for South Korea and Kayla Adamek for Poland. Hyo-joo has been getting consistent starts with South Korea, starting all six matches in 2024. No details are readily available on her time with her previous club, the Hyundai Steel Red Angels, so it’s hard to make more of a judgment on how she will fit with this team. Conversely, Adamek has started 4 of the 6 Euro Qualifiers that Poland has had so far this year. She only had six starts across the last season at her previous club, Reims.
It’s a huge mix of different colleges and amateur sides when you get down into their depth positions. None of the depth players look like standouts at first glance, so it will be essential to see how they perform once the NSL kicks off this week.
The Rapid feels like they have the bones of a successful squad, but it’s hard to know how effective the recruitment has been. Will they all gel well together, or will this be a mess?
#3 - AFC Toronto
A very similar coaching pick to the Roses is Marko Milanović, who has a mix of semi-pro experience with the North Toronto Nitros and college experience with TMU Bold. The founding group of AFC Toronto is also heavily involved with the North Toronto Nitros, making Milanović an unsurprising choice for them. The Nitros have been pretty OK the last few years, with Milanović in charge, finishing 4th, 10th, and 4th in the league in the previous three seasons.
It’s another roster looking very thin on experience and deep on college and semi-pro talent. Nine of their 22 players have pro experience, but those pros mostly come from the NWSL rather than lower-quality leagues, as it is on most other teams.
Part of Toronto’s roster strategy is one that I was surprised more teams in the NSL aren’t taking - loaned players from the NWSL! Being our geographic neighbors and a top 3 Women’s soccer league, they have lots of talent that need some time (and some minutes) to grow or don’t fit the squad’s needs.
The three Toronto loanees are Victoria Pickett from the North Carolina Courage, Mya Jones from the San Diego Wave, and Amanda West from the Houston Dash. All three played some decent minutes in 2024 for their teams but weren’t locked in as starters. The three of them will make a massive impact in the NSL by playing as midfielders and strikers.
Two wildcards on the Toronto side could bump them up to 2nd or higher: Hong Hye-ji and Esther Okoronkwo. Both take international slots on the roster, with Hye-ji from South Korea and Okoronkwo from Nigeria. They both play for their respective National teams and seem to be capped relatively consistently. The issue is that the leagues they’ve spent the last few years playing in are not well-tracked by popular Football databases, so we have almost no metrics on their performance!
I am sure one up-and-coming Canadian player was being chased by the Vancouver Rise & Calgary Wild signed with Toronto: Kaylee Hunter. She’s only 17 years old and has spent the last 2 years with the Whitecaps FC Girls Elite, with 12 goals out of 20 appearances last year. She has also been appearing for the Canada U20 team, scoring five goals in a 22-0 victory over Dominica in February 2025. We’ll have to wait to see if she is a starter or will be given time to grow, but I am sure she will significantly impact the NSL.
The team has three call-ups for this international window, but only one senior call up in Canadian Emma Regan. She’s had 7 caps for Canada previously and spent the last two years at HB Køge in Denmark’s top-flight league.
Given Milanović’s work with the North Toronto Nitros, it’s unsurprising that four of their players came over to play for AFC Toronto and take up some depth roles across the squad. Having that core that knows each other well is excellent, but the issue is that they’ve never been an elite side. If these were players consistently winning in League1 Ontario, I’d feel much more optimistic about their chances.
Will Toronto be able to make the most of their loaned NWSL players? Or will they be held back by their reliance on North Toronto Nitro players?
#2 - Calgary Wild FC
Being able to attract Lydia Bedford as their coach almost pushes the Wild to 1st or 2nd, all on its own. No other coach in the NSL has the depth of experience that she has. Worked across the England U15, U16, and U17 women’s teams before coaching Leicester City Women in England’s top division, the WSL, before getting sacked after a string of six consecutive losses. Spent some time as an assistant across the WSL, including with Arsenal Women as an assistant and with Brentford’s U18 side. It seems she is on a bit of a redemption project for her career, but her experience alone sets her apart from all the other managers.
Bedford has a solid squad to back this up, too! There are 13 players with professional experience from a variety of leagues, including the NWSL, A-League, and the Irish Premiere Division.
The start signing is undoubtedly Meggie Dougherty Howard, who spent the last eight years playing at a variety of teams across the NWSL. She’s performed well in the NWSL the last few years, and I am sure she will tear it up in the NSL.
I’m not sure what the connection is between the Wild and Treaty United FC in Ireland, but four players for the team have arrived from there! Caleigh Boeckx, Danielle Steer, Mijke Roelfsema, and Talia White are going to bring a core of a team that already knows each other and how to play with each other, which I am sure will bring Calgary some instant chemistry.
There’s also a duo of players arriving from Western United F.C. in the Australian A-League, Jaclyn Sawicki and Kahli Johnson. Both were consistent players in the A-League, putting in solid minutes and respectable numbers.
Calgary has a high potential with a very diverse group of players. Will they be able to make it click in their first game against the Rise this week?
#1 - Vancouver Rise FC
I’ll get the bias out of the way from the start: I’m a season ticket holder for the Vancouver Rise, and their new jersey just arrived in the mail last week. Despite all of that, I think the Rise deserve the top pick.
Anja Heiner-Møller is a natural choice for Vancouver. She was a professional player in her youth before moving to managing. She has experience with the Whitecaps FC Girls Elite Academy, being the head coach there in 2018-2020. She has had vast experience since then, including being the head coach for BSF in Denmark’s Elitedivisionen and working with Denmark’s U16 and U19 sides. The Rise seems like a natural next step in her career.
I was expecting Katie Collar to get the nod for head coach, who led the Whitecaps FC Girls Elite to back-to-back Canadian Championships and made it into the group stage of the CONCACAF W Champions Cup. I was thrilled to see her named Assistant Coach, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see her step into the head coach role in the next few years.
They have fourteen total players that have professional experience and 5 of them are getting international callups this window. This is the highest number in either category across the entire NSL.
Quinn is getting called back up for the Canadian team after being left out for a few camps, and Holly Ward is getting her first call-up after being a regular with the U-20 side. Jessika Cowart is called up for the Philippines, where she has been a regular starter. Josie Longhurst is getting her first call-up to Wales after playing for their U17 and U19 sides.
Outside of Quinn, two other players from the NWSL are joining: Jasmyne Spencer and Nikki Stanton. Both have been very consistent in their careers, even though they’re entering their older years.
Another player from Vittsjö GIK is joining the NSL, alongside Rose’s two players, and Shannon Woeller is joining the Rise. She has been playing every game across her last 3 seasons of European soccer and looks to be heading up their defense. She started her career with the Whitecaps in 2008 and grew up locally, so this is a return home for Woeller!
The Rise ownership group, which also owns the Vancouver Whitecaps, is the most experienced in the NSL, and their commitment to this league is showing. They will be very disappointed if they don’t win their first season in the NSL.
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