Torrent losing Olympic hero Hilary Knight to expansion Detroit

"Captain America" is off to her next city.

Hilary Knight's tenure as captain of the Seattle Torrent lasted only one season, as The Associated Press reported Monday that she is headed to the Professional Women's Hockey League expansion team in Detroit as part of a sign-and-trade deal. Knight will reportedly first sign a foundational contract with Las Vegas as part of Phase 2 of the league's expansion signing process.

Las Vegas then agreed to trade Knight to Detroit in exchange for the team's first-round pick in the draft next week. Vancouver owns the top overall pick, but the rest of the draft order hasn't been released.

AP cited an anonymous source. The deal won't become official until the PWHL's trade freeze lifts June 16.

Knight is the fourth player to depart the second-year franchise in less than a week. She's certainly the most famous after captaining Team USA to a gold medal in the 2026 Winter Games.

Knight, 36, contributed five goals and nine assists through 22 Torrent games. She missed time after February's Olympic gold-medal game, which she tied and sent to overtime. She revealed later she had been playing on a torn MCL.

Knight previously said her U.S. record-setting fifth Olympic appearance would be her last, but she planned on continuing her PWHL career.

The Boston Fleet shocked the league by leaving Knight, their captain, unprotected last season for newest expansion team Seattle to claim. So it came as a significant but lesser surprise when the Torrent left her available to the four PWHL expansion teams this summer.

Hilary is a pro in all respects, and it was a very professional conversation," Torrent general manager Meghan Turner said last week. "I have a ton of respect for her as a player and a person and a leader."

The Torrent re-signed goals leader Alex Carpenter, 32, who is an obvious candidate to replace Knight as captain unless the Torrent manage to lure a bigger name. Carpenter automatically became one of the three players Seattle protected in Phase 2, alongside goaltender Hannah Murphy and defender Anna Wilgren.

Phase 2 was a costly one for the Torrent, who lost three major players Friday alone - defender Cayla Barnes, forward Hannah Bilka and top goalie Corinne Schroeder. The Torrent quickly reached the cap of three players under contract who could be claimed by other teams while several existing PWHL teams remained untouched.

While the league stated that player preference was prioritized this summer, new rules allowed expansion teams to pluck players from their existing teams under special circumstances. Unlike last year, there is no conventional expansion draft.

"This process is difficult. It's long. Last year was a little bit, I guess, more straightforward," Turner said. "Like you had the protections, and then you had the draft. There's more variables at play (now), and I think those were real factors in the decision-making here, including … the contract landscape across the board.

Knight, who was in Seattle on a one-year deal, will be among friends, as Team USA teammates Barnes and Bilka also landed in Detroit. Schroeder went to PWHL San Jose.

Knight was linked to Detroit soon after Barnes and Bilka signed, but it seemingly took a convoluted solution to get the veteran to her expansion team of choice.

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This story was originally published June 9, 2026 at 7:31 AM.