A wide range of changes are coming to the WHL for the 2026-27 season.
In a virtual media availability held on Tuesday, the league announced several changes including a one week extension of the regular season schedule, air travel to select out-of-conference road games, a 3-on-3 overtime pilot project to take place during the preseason and the first round of the playoffs being made to be best-of-five.
Commissioner Dan Near spent nearly an hour and a half on a call taking questions from media across the WHL.
With air travel being permissible in the league next season, the decision will allow WHL clubs to fly to one set of road games. The trip must be greater than 10 hours by bus and applies to out-of-conference games only.
It has been a discussion the league has had in the background for years, but Near says it finally made some economic sense when looking at the rising costs of operating a team.
“If you book these trips out in advance commercially, we won’t charter, these would be commercial trips, the economics actually aren’t nearly as difficult as maybe we once thought that they were. When you think about all the costs of doing it via road trip on the bus, and you think of the costs of flying, including the number of days on the road saved, the cost differences don’t vary that much.”
With the regular season being extended by a week, the league has also shifted the first round of the WHL playoffs to be five games in length. There are four possible formats teams can play in including 1-2-1-1, 2-3, 2-2-1, and 1-1-1-1-1.
While the WHL has tried to model itself after the NHL, Near says the change shouldn’t change things too much for the league since a lot of series in recent years have been won in short order by higher seeds.
“If you spend some time looking at the American Hockey League, they have a similar model in this regard. Through the press release, you’ll see we have some flexible scheduling options depending on the types of matchups and the geography that goes on that does give preference to the higher seed in the type of scheduling preference.”
“We did look at a lot of data in and around the number of games that are won by lower seeds. The number of games, the number of series that go to six games or that go to seven games. Believe it or not, in the last 10 years, the eight seed has only won one of those. I think only 10 percent ever go to seven games or maybe less than that. Right now we often are sitting with wasted time at the end of the first round.”
The third major new change coming to the preseason will be a no return three-on-three overtime pilot. Under the pilot rule, once a team has gained the blueline no player can deliberately carry, pass or shoot the puck outside the blueline.
Should that occur, the play will be whistled down (unless the opposing team collects the puck) and the resulting face-off will occur in the defensive zone of the offending team with no ling change permitted.
All preseason games in 2026 regardless of final score will feature a three-on-three overtime to allow all clubs to try the new rule. Following the preseason, WHL general managers will vote on whether to implement the ‘no return’ rule for the 2026-27 campaign.
Near says the pilot project has gotten attention from the NHL as well.
“Our general managers will be watching. Our head coaches who are living it are going to be giving feedback to the general managers to bring to these meetings. We’re also going to consult with the National Hockey League. We’ve advised them that we’re gonna test this. They’re intrigued and they want to know more. They are a great source of information when you talk about rules and game formats and that type of thing, because they’re always doing data statistics and reviewing the types of things that can make the game better or possible trends. We’ll go through all avenues, but what it will come down to is a meeting with the general managers, potentially our governors, around making the recommendation as to whether to proceed for the regular season.”
Other details mentioned by WHL in its release includes record streaming numbers throughout the last season. With the addition of free livestreaming on Victory+, the WHL has witnessed an increase of over 50 percent year-to-year on regular season viewership.
The playoffs saw a 63 percent jump in average viewership with the league stating the audiences generated rival historical linear cable broadcasts.
In terms of in-person attendance, the league saw a four percent increase from the 2024-25 season.
The WHL also announced the regular season schedule on Tuesday.
