With the new PWHL Seattle expansion franchise just two weeks away from being able to sign free agents, they needed someone to do the signings. Now they have her.
The league, which owns all of its teams, has appointed Meghan Turner as PWHL Seattle general manager. Turner, who’s 30, spent the past two seasons as assistant GM with the Boston Fleet. She played in college for Quinnipiac University and professionally in two prior women’s leagues.
Fleet general manager Danielle Marmer predicted this advancement back in 2024, when she named good friend Turner as her second in command. “She’s going to take my job one day,” Marmer said to the New Hampshire Union Leader. “She’s going to be so good at this. I won’t be surprised if she’s the GM of an NHL team at some point in the future.”
Marmer once told Boston Bruins GM Don Sweeney she would trust her life to Turner. “Even through college, we cared about being successful in the classroom, cared about being successful on the ice and cared about being good teammates and good friends. She was always someone I went to for advice in college. When I moved in with her, every day we would talk about everything and I got to watch her work ethic first hand.”
Smart players are often lauded for having “high hockey IQ.” Turner has high IQ, period. She used an MBA from Quinnipiac in her consultant’s role at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
For Turner, moving into a hockey front office meant not only leaving a successful career, but one that paid more, too. “It’s really hard to have (hockey) be a big part of your identity and move on from it,” Turner said. “With everything happening in women’s sports in general, I think it was a tough transition away at first but I knew this (PWHL) league was coming and I was always hopeful that I would be able to have some role in supporting it – whatever that looked like – but I could not have envisioned this role, for sure.”
Jayna Hefford, PWHL executive VP of hockey operations, lauded Turner in a press release as a “big-picture thinker who quickly earned the respect of players and staff alike.”
From Associated Press: “Turner enjoyed a glimpse of Seattle’s support for women’s hockey in the Fleet’s 3-2 shootout win over Montreal on Jan. 5 at Climate Pledge Arena, which will serve as the PWHL team’s home. The game was the PWHL’s first of nine ‘Takeover Tour’ games this season and attracted a crowd of 12,608.”
Her latest challenge is building a new team in a new city from the ground up. And there’s a whole lot to do in the next month. In addition to the June 4 opening window for expansion teams in Seattle and Vancouver to sign free agents, other key dates for Turner are the PWHL Expansion Draft on June 9 and the 2025 PWHL Draft on June 24.