and a maximum of $10,000 with a team salary cap of $100,000, although it was still registered as an amateur league with the Canada Revenue Agency. At the time of the announcement, it made the league the second women's hockey league in North America to pay players after the launch of the rival National Women's Hockey League (NWHL) in the United States in 2015. In 2018, CWHL player Jessica Platt came out as a transgender woman, making her the first transgender woman to come out in North American professional hockey, and second transgender professional player after Harrison Browne came out as a transgender man in the NWHL in 2016. On July 19, 2018, inaugural league commissioner Brenda Andress announced she would be stepping down and Jayna Hefford was named the interim commissioner. The league also consolidated their Chinese teams by ending the membership of the Vanke Rays and rebranding Kunlun Red Star as Shenzhen KRS Vanke Rays. On March 31, 2019, it was announced that the CWHL board of directors had decided that the league would discontinue operations effective May 1, 2019. The league cited that the fragmentation of corporate sponsors between the two women's hockey leagues led to the league becoming financially infeasible, but that the Chinese partnership had kept the league operating during the previous seasons. The board of directors believed it owed its players more than the league could continue to provide, that there is only room from one women's league, and encouraged the players to push any successor leagues to pay a livable wage. The staff of the Toronto Furies and Les Canadiennes announced that their organizations intended to continue operations while the Calgary Inferno stated they would continue to support women's hockey in Alberta. During the season, NWHL commissioner Dani Rylan had been in talks with the CWHL about the possibility of a single league. On April 2, 2019, the NWHL announced the plans to add two expansion franchises in Montreal and Toronto and based on financial support from the National Hockey League and investors in Montreal and Toronto, including people involved with Les Canadiennes de Montreal and the Toronto Furies. Ultimately, the NWHL had its own set of difficulties in the 2019 offseason, including a player boycott following the closing of the CWHL, and did not add Montreal and Toronto for the 2019–20 season. The Shenzhen KRS Vanke Rays was the only former CWHL