Latest / Raising the Game: Covering WNBA, NWSL, PWHL & More / Episode 19 | PWHL Playoffs Chaos, Detroit Expansion, WNBA Season 30 Opens, NWSL Week 7

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Episode 19 | PWHL Playoffs Chaos, Detroit Expansion, WNBA Season 30 Opens, NWSL Week 7 · Raising the Game: Covering WNBA, NWSL, PWHL & More

• 0:00
  I mean, we're talking about a team that won nine games in the.
• 0:03
  Regular season. To Boston 16.
• 0:06
  They almost doubled them up and wins.
• 0:14
  Hi, I'm Caitlin. Hi, I'm Alex.
• 0:17
  And this is Raising the Game, a women's sports podcast covering
• 0:20
  primetime performers, the business behind the athletes in
• 0:23
  the leagues, and what the growth of women's sports means for the
• 0:26
  next generation of women's athletes.
• 0:29
  We're back episode 19. We have a lot of developments in
• 0:34
  the PWHL to talk about. Yes.
• 0:37
  We have. Many things.
• 0:38
  A rundown of NWSL week seven. Yeah.
• 0:41
  Match Week 7. And our first weekend of WNBA is
• 0:45
  over and we've got some results to talk about.
• 0:48
  Yeah, it's interesting right now being in full swing.
• 0:52
  Well, not full swing, but at with the overlap between the
• 0:55
  three major leagues here in the States, right, And just all the
• 1:02
  moving pieces, it's yeah, there's a lot.
• 1:06
  There's a lot going on. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 1:08
  I think the other hard part is that our men's teams are also in
• 1:11
  the playoffs and it's just like non-stop sports every single
• 1:15
  night here so. I'm going to try to not ask
• 1:17
  questions about why Wemby didn't get fined.
• 1:21
  Yeah, we'll, we'll not talk about that here.
• 1:24
  We'll, we'll step off that, but we can.
• 1:27
  We have talked about other suspensions and potential
• 1:30
  suspensions in the other leagues we watch.
• 1:31
  So before we get into headlines, you want to do a favorite?
• 1:36
  Thing. Let's do it.
• 1:37
  I was just going to say, and I had to pause myself until we
• 1:41
  teed up. Favorite thing here, But I think
• 1:43
  given all that's going on, Alex and I were able to get away this
• 1:48
  past weekend. We went up to the North Shore in
• 1:52
  past Duluth in Minnesota, and one of the nights we were like
• 1:58
  sitting around a fire. We had two iPads up watching the
• 2:02
  WHL playoffs. We're going.
• 2:03
  To save you time on favorite thing 'cause that's what I had
• 2:05
  as my favorite. Thing too, and it was just it
• 2:07
  was really fun just to be able to like enjoy that but also be
• 2:13
  away with each other outside, Yeah.
• 2:17
  And it was great hockey. Yeah, it was awesome hockey it.
• 2:20
  Was great hockey and then the next night we were like skipping
• 2:23
  around the cabin because the frost had to play 2.
• 2:26
  Games in a row? That's right.
• 2:29
  So we'll get into all of that, but that was that was probably.
• 2:31
  My, that was my favorite thing too.
• 2:33
  That and then all the Mother's Day stuff was so cute.
• 2:36
  I was crying that little videos of all the mom tributes are so
• 2:41
  special. Shout out to Alex Morgan who
• 2:44
  announced her pregnancy with her third baby.
• 2:48
  And then Gigi's mom just needs to stop putting Gigi on the
• 2:52
  social medias 'cause I, I just love her so.
• 2:55
  And she scores every time. So she does score.
• 2:58
  I'm yeah, I'm repping the Portland Thorns scare tonight.
• 3:02
  Kind of has like a Stranger Things.
• 3:03
  You do, you get a little bit of a stranger thing.
• 3:05
  That's vibe going on here. Portland Thorns PDX baby.
• 3:09
  All right, should we jump into these headlines?
• 3:11
  Oh man, let's do it. All right, kind of breaking news
• 3:14
  this afternoon. PWHL playoff Game 5 has been
• 3:17
  postponed due to illness on the Montreal Victoire.
• 3:21
  Yeah, this was this. So we were supposed to play.
• 3:24
  We thought we were going to kind of be watching.
• 3:26
  The end of. That or potentially watching it
• 3:28
  while we were filming this and yeah, three 3:00 Central time
• 3:34
  learned that there's some illness outbreak.
• 3:37
  They've assured everyone that it's.
• 3:38
  Not antivirus, antivirus. So that's good.
• 3:41
  That's good. But sounds like maybe some
• 3:44
  norovirus or something 'cause it clearly had to have.
• 3:46
  Affected a lot of the the. Locker room, so more on that.
• 3:51
  More on that later. Ottawa charge, eliminate Boston
• 3:54
  Fleet and we'll play the winner of the Montreal Minnesota game
• 3:57
  when they have that in the Walter Cup final.
• 3:59
  Yeah, we'll, we'll talk more about this here in a couple
• 4:01
  minutes. All right.
• 4:03
  Big day in Hockeytown, USA, otherwise known as Detroit with
• 4:06
  PWHL Detroit announced. Also going to hit more on that.
• 4:10
  So Detroit, not only did they get the new team, which was kind
• 4:15
  of top of our list from a prediction perspective, but they
• 4:17
  also will host the entry draft on June 17th.
• 4:21
  So they're kind of bringing the fanfare you mentioned in last
• 4:24
  week's episode, like the PWHL is starting to capitalize on like,
• 4:28
  what are the things outside of the actual hockey?
• 4:31
  Games and keep it going all your.
• 4:32
  Time, yeah, we can create some momentum around and then as we
• 4:36
  know other announcements are imminent, we'll talk about that
• 4:40
  in our. We'll talk about who's here.
• 4:42
  WNBA Season 30 gets underway, featuring some gritty games,
• 4:45
  impressive rookie performances, and some surprise outcomes.
• 4:49
  Yeah, we'll talk about this too. I For me it was like the Aces in
• 4:54
  game one getting blown out by. Over 30 points.
• 4:57
  Was surprising. The Mystics were surprising.
• 5:01
  You had Olivia Miles dropping 20 plus points for the link.
• 5:05
  So talk about that, Talk about all of that, but good start to
• 5:08
  the season. Portland Fire set inaugural game
• 5:11
  of attendance record with 19,000 plus.
• 5:14
  I also wore this hat because Portland is just doing it
• 5:17
  upright for sports. So their new basketball team,
• 5:21
  this was also the second largest home opener in history.
• 5:25
  Like didn't matter if it was an inaugural season game, it was
• 5:28
  like second largest of all time. They got the fans there.
• 5:31
  They got the fans. W announced its historic multi
• 5:34
  year agreement with Bell Media, making the Canadian media
• 5:37
  company the official partner of the Toronto Tempo.
• 5:40
  Yeah, and I think I was reading they'll broadcast other regular
• 5:43
  season games too, so not just tempo games, just some like
• 5:46
  marquee matchups and things like that.
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  Plus they'll do the All Star Game, playoffs and the draft
• 5:52
  last year in Canada because Canada knows what's up.
• 5:55
  Right, they do they. Do those broadcast?
• 5:57
  Deals right away Upshot League, a start up women's basketball
• 6:02
  product, announces it's already raised $40 million.
• 6:05
  OK, I got to confess. I meant to look up what the hell
• 6:09
  this means. I don't know what this is.
• 6:12
  I'm assuming and we'll come back.
• 6:14
  We will follow up on. We'll follow.
• 6:16
  Up, but this is backed by some basketball legends, Tamika
• 6:21
  Catching, Cheryl Miller and Myers Drysdale.
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  And so I assume it's going to be another kind of format of a
• 6:30
  league. So think unrivaled, think
• 6:33
  Athletes Unlimited, Project B, things like that.
• 6:36
  But we have some research to do. Yes, we do.
• 6:39
  Where we. Can confidently.
• 6:40
  It'd be fun if it was like a street ball type of thing or
• 6:43
  something like. Well, it apparently like kicks
• 6:45
  off in nine days, so I'm not quite sure what it is.
• 6:49
  All right, NWSL Match Week 7 delivers excitement and plenty
• 6:53
  of table movement, with KC surging behind Temwa Shawinga's
• 6:57
  hat trick, Portland's loss and Utah's absolute inability to
• 7:00
  allow a goal. I wrote that one like a little.
• 7:03
  Tony and. Cheek 'cause they just they like
• 7:05
  can't let them like no one can. No one can score on.
• 7:08
  Them we've got some stats later, but it'll be fun.
• 7:11
  And then I also like also Boston has had points in their last
• 7:15
  three games, I think. And then you had Washington win
• 7:18
  again, although Trenton may have left with a little bit of a
• 7:23
  knock. So we'll be watching that.
• 7:24
  She's. OK, New York City Mayor Zaran
• 7:27
  Mandani partnered with Gotham FC to provide affordable $5 tickets
• 7:32
  to the team's weekend matchup against Boston Legacy.
• 7:35
  Yeah, they ended up with over 11,000 fans there.
• 7:39
  Zoran was talking about like how football, soccer is like the
• 7:44
  working person's game, right? And it's unfortunate that people
• 7:49
  get priced out. I mean, we're seeing this big
• 7:51
  time with World Cup ticket sales right now on the men's side.
• 7:55
  And so he wanted to kind of bring back that accessibility,
• 7:59
  which he's doing with a lot of his policies.
• 8:01
  It actually kind of reminds me of sitting at the London Stadium
• 8:04
  when we saw West Ham play. Literally the working class
• 8:07
  folks are behind us like complaining about the prices
• 8:09
  like. Price of the beers.
• 8:10
  Yeah. It was also cute.
• 8:13
  Emma Hayes has been doing this like NWSL tour, like an Emma on
• 8:18
  the road. And she finished her tour in New
• 8:21
  Jersey at this game. And she had a little photo op
• 8:24
  and kind of combo with Zoran. And then I also noted to that
• 8:30
  Gotham is set to potentially break their single game
• 8:36
  attendance record coming up here.
• 8:39
  We had highlighted this game a while back when it was
• 8:41
  announced, but they're going to play at the Mets stadium against
• 8:44
  the Spirit in mid-july. And so we're going to be
• 8:47
  watching for that. But they've announced this
• 8:49
  weekend already sold 16,000 tickets so that it's like about
• 8:53
  a 40,000 capacity stadium. It's.
• 8:59
  Run on that one too. Yeah.
• 9:00
  Yeah, exactly. In NCAA women's soccer, the
• 9:04
  University of Georgia announced its women's soccer team will
• 9:06
  play a match in the football stadium.
• 9:08
  Yes, so Sanford Stadium, they are hoping to break the all time
• 9:15
  NCAA soccer game attendance record, men's or women.
• 9:20
  So the women's was set back in 1999.
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  They had 14,000 or a little over 14,000 and then the men's was
• 9:29
  about 22,000 1/2 set in 1980. Geez, I'm kind of like.
• 9:35
  What? What?
• 9:36
  Happened then because I soccer has really grown here so I'm
• 9:41
  just. Confused free beer?
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  Or something. There's something going on.
• 9:45
  There's probably something very significant that we are not
• 9:49
  thinking about, but that'll be really interesting.
• 9:52
  It's one of the first times that soccer is being moved at the
• 9:56
  NCAA level to a larger venue. We saw this happen couple years
• 10:01
  back with the Nebraska volleyball team.
• 10:03
  They played in the home stadium of the Nebraska court, the
• 10:08
  football team. And then obviously Caitlin Clark
• 10:12
  played a game in Kinnick Stadium in Iowa.
• 10:17
  I should know that siblings went there.
• 10:21
  I am a badger, just to be clear. Speaking of volleyball,
• 10:24
  volleyball is on the rise. LOVB sets records in second
• 10:28
  season with 7.5 million viewers watching the USA Network Match
• 10:32
  of the Week and a quarter of a million tuning in for the
• 10:35
  championship match between Austin and Salt Lake.
• 10:37
  And so overall, this was about 113% increase in viewership on
• 10:42
  the season from 2025 S just in one year they had that, saw that
• 10:48
  growth. And then I was also reading here
• 10:50
  something we haven't covered in detail, but something we do like
• 10:53
  to talk about is expansion. So LOVB will expand next season
• 10:58
  from six teams to 9 teams. I do believe that we are the
• 11:02
  lucky recipients in Minneapolis here of a LOVB volleyball team.
• 11:09
  In NCAA women's volleyball news, the Big 10 Conference announces
• 11:12
  it will play its first ever conference tournament in
• 11:14
  November. This will be hosted in Indiana.
• 11:17
  Excuse me. I was unaware that there were
• 11:22
  not conference tournaments for volleyball.
• 11:25
  So that was a little bit of a surprise when I saw this, but
• 11:28
  really cool. The winner of the tournament
• 11:30
  will get an automatic bid to the overall NCAA tournament.
• 11:34
  And our next headline is also about volleyball.
• 11:37
  And I think that this kind of puts that point of emphasis on
• 11:40
  something we said a couple weeks ago that women's volleyball is
• 11:44
  is going to be the next thing to like really pop in the in the
• 11:47
  states here at least. And Nebraska as SMU, Penn State
• 11:53
  and Florida now as they'll compete in a tournament in AT&T
• 11:55
  Stadium in Dallas for a chance to win $1 million in August.
• 12:00
  Like we said, just more opportunity I think for fans to
• 12:03
  go watch these incredible athletes play and and we I do
• 12:08
  think that this sport is going to be the next thing to really
• 12:11
  take over. We haven't talked much about it,
• 12:13
  but there's another league, Major League Volleyball, that I
• 12:16
  think is towards the end of their.
• 12:17
  Season right now their. Season, so it's definitely
• 12:21
  something we need to spend a little bit more time learning.
• 12:22
  About for sure. Kwanzaa Jones set to become ML
• 12:26
  BS first black female majority owner with $3.9 billion Padres
• 12:31
  deal. Yeah.
• 12:33
  So the vote on this purchase amongst the MLB Board of
• 12:38
  Governors or whoever runs that comes in June.
• 12:41
  So they have to approve by a certain margin.
• 12:44
  So it's not set in stone, but but this would both be
• 12:50
  incredible from representation perspective and kind of that
• 12:53
  achievement, but also this would be the highest sale of a MLB
• 12:59
  franchise ever. Yeah, it's crazy.
• 13:01
  So. Maria Luis ETA makes history as
• 13:05
  the first woman to win a match as manager of a men's team in
• 13:08
  one of Europe's top five leagues, with a 31V for her
• 13:12
  Union Berlin club in the Bundesliga.
• 13:14
  This is so cool. That's awesome.
• 13:17
  She took over like mid-april for Union Berlin and I think she's
• 13:23
  had four points in her last four games.
• 13:26
  So that's like a win and a draw and a couple losses, right?
• 13:29
  But but they're on A2 game unbeaten streak, so she and then
• 13:35
  getting this result as a woman in that role in one of these
• 13:41
  leagues like you just kind of wonder she's the first.
• 13:45
  I don't think she'll. Be the last.
• 13:47
  I think we'll see. More here shortly.
• 13:49
  And then I've got one more I threw in here at the end.
• 13:51
  I think we actually may have reposted something about this on
• 13:54
  our socials over the course of the week 'cause it was so
• 13:57
  incredible. But Rachel Entrekin won the Coco
• 14:02
  Dona 250, which is a 250 plus like ultra marathon thing.
• 14:08
  She ran it in 56 hours. That's crazy.
• 14:15
  Sorry, I have to pause and just just admire that for a second.
• 14:20
  Beating the field outright. So she won.
• 14:23
  It's men and women race and she set a record all time.
• 14:27
  Yeah. So claps for you, Rachel.
• 14:33
  What an incredible feat of endurance.
• 14:37
  And just women can do anything. Yeah, that's awesome.
• 14:41
  You're not going to get me near that race.
• 14:42
  No, no. I'd be lucky if I can get you to
• 14:45
  go 200. And 50 meters.
• 14:46
  Yeah, exactly. All right.
• 14:48
  Like we said, we've got a lot going on in the PWHL.
• 14:53
  Well, I think we're going to kick it off here with kind of
• 14:55
  playoff results to date. Oh man.
• 14:58
  So we'll start with the Ottawa Boston series.
• 15:03
  That one's wrapped up and ended on Sunday.
• 15:06
  So yesterday, yeah, Ottawa won Game 4IN double overtime.
• 15:17
  This series was so like gritty and physical and Ottawa just
• 15:25
  made it this like knock down drag out like they did not let
• 15:30
  Boston play the kind of hockey that they wanted to play.
• 15:34
  It was very evident, especially in the game we watched
• 15:36
  yesterday. And I think two things for me
• 15:40
  before I want to hear your thoughts is 1.
• 15:45
  I called it that if Ottawa won a game in Boston, they would.
• 15:51
  Win the series 100%. Because they they just like if
• 15:55
  they could sneak a win on their home ice, I just felt if they
• 15:59
  could bring it back to Canadian Tire Center and play in front of
• 16:02
  their home crowd that that was going that was going to be their
• 16:05
  series. And they did that now.
• 16:08
  Boston pushed them, they challenged them, right?
• 16:10
  And it was a close it was a close, close games, both of them
• 16:14
  there, but really incredible to to see.
• 16:18
  I mean, we're talking about a team that won nine games in the
• 16:21
  regular season to Boston 16. They almost doubled them up and
• 16:26
  wins. And Boston, to their credit,
• 16:29
  looked so good all season long, like they were so, so good.
• 16:34
  And I honestly think that their loss in this series comes down
• 16:38
  to a couple of like the mistake by Aaron Franklin game three to
• 16:44
  allow that goal. The what?
• 16:47
  The game tying goal. I think it was at that point or
• 16:52
  game. No, it was game.
• 16:53
  Winning with 30 seconds left. Yeah, sorry, I'm all the goals
• 16:57
  are blending together. They're just.
• 16:59
  Minor like puck luck, things that didn't go their way.
• 17:03
  And then again, I think like Ottawa just imposed their style
• 17:07
  more on Boston than Boston could impose their style.
• 17:10
  And then my second thing I Gwyneth Phillips I.
• 17:14
  Was going to say, you got to talk about Gwyneth Phillips.
• 17:16
  Here is so good. Here's Here's the stat that I
• 17:20
  have Boston outshot Ottawa 142 to 94 and double digits in every
• 17:27
  game. That's fifty more shots yeah and
• 17:32
  Gwyneth Phillips saved most most of that basically a granite that
• 17:38
  both game all the games were close right.
• 17:40
  But she really likes just she stands on her head and just like
• 17:46
  the real estate time. I can use that phrase and I
• 17:49
  remember watching her against the frost in the championship
• 17:53
  like series last year. We're not she won MVP, by the
• 17:56
  way, folks of the Walter Cup like finals last year because
• 18:00
  she was so good and she just she seems better right now if she's
• 18:06
  just seeing the puck really, really well.
• 18:08
  So I think it's a a shout out to the fleet.
• 18:12
  I think they put together a really, really good regular
• 18:14
  season, but like, doesn't matter.
• 18:17
  Yeah, you can't. You got to.
• 18:18
  Clear it up. You can't pull it through in the
• 18:20
  in the playoffs, but they have a good team.
• 18:24
  It'll be interesting if that team's still intact.
• 18:26
  Yeah, yeah. We'll talk a little bit about
• 18:28
  that. I think the other, the other
• 18:29
  interesting thing here is that this is I think this will be the
• 18:33
  5th semi final game. It's playoff series.
• 18:36
  It's been completed. Yeah.
• 18:38
  The low seed has won every time, every time, every single time.
• 18:43
  Every time. No matter what like it's that's
• 18:46
  just and if. If Minnesota wins against
• 18:47
  Montreal, it'll be 6 out of 6 below.
• 18:50
  Seeds always win. And I think to to me as a fan
• 18:55
  who like who likes to watch the sport, this is also, in my view,
• 19:00
  a little bit of an argument for expansion.
• 19:03
  Is that like the parody with only really six teams because
• 19:08
  it's the same teams that are making it into the playoffs?
• 19:11
  But like we you need the expansion, but you need those
• 19:15
  teams to also be good and you need some of this rotation.
• 19:19
  Like I can take, I can understand.
• 19:23
  I don't agree with, but I can understand the frustration of
• 19:27
  fans who don't want Minnesota to the three peat, right, who like
• 19:33
  I can understand that as a Frost fan, I want them to three peat,
• 19:37
  of course, right. But I can, I can appreciate like
• 19:41
  the fact that we do have kind of this consolidation of teams that
• 19:45
  keep rotating through and that any of those four teams can win
• 19:50
  on any given night. It's like a good thing and a bad
• 19:53
  thing. The The expansion will do and
• 19:55
  we'll talk about it here shortly, but the expansion will
• 19:57
  do well to, and I'm not saying this in a bad way, like the
• 20:00
  talent is bad, but like dilute the talent pool a little bit to
• 20:04
  kind of distribute it and average it out a little bit
• 20:07
  more. You get kind of the same mixture
• 20:09
  around the lake and get a little bit more parody.
• 20:12
  Yeah. So I think I was just looking at
• 20:17
  my notes here for the to to be fair, we call that Gwyneth
• 20:21
  Phillips. Aaron Frankel was also
• 20:22
  incredible. Didn't face as many shots as
• 20:25
  Phillips did, but made really, really big saves.
• 20:29
  Had a couple of just moments right.
• 20:33
  And then I also wrote down here, I, Anika Miller, is going to
• 20:40
  have nightmares about the open, open.
• 20:44
  Open net right there and it just slides right across.
• 20:47
  The back of the crease back, the crease behind Phillips like
• 20:51
  between the goaltender and the goal like.
• 20:53
  I think anyone looking at this net would think this is easy for
• 20:57
  non professional. You probably could shoot her in
• 20:59
  there and it just slid right across like I think the entire
• 21:03
  stadium thought that was the end of the game for.
• 21:06
  Sure, for sure. So Ottawa now gets to rest.
• 21:09
  They are the low seed no matter who they play.
• 21:12
  So they'll be going on the road to start the next series, which
• 21:16
  we assume is going to start at the end of the week.
• 21:19
  Moving over to the Minnesota Montreal series.
• 21:24
  Why don't you you want to open with your thoughts on this?
• 21:29
  Well, I'm, I'm kind of still hung up on just the whole like
• 21:34
  illness tonight and the game being postponed.
• 21:39
  There's been a lot of, it's really sad.
• 21:40
  There's been a lot of people on threads that are like, hey, you
• 21:42
  got a, they just got a forfeit. Like they can't play the game.
• 21:45
  They got a forfeit. But Minnesota's already so
• 21:48
  hated. I don't want them to be more
• 21:50
  hated because they got in a, you know, in a technicality.
• 21:56
  But yeah, I thought, I thought both games were, were really
• 21:58
  they were. They were both fun.
• 22:01
  I thought it was funny. I have this vision of us dancing
• 22:03
  around in the cabin we were in on Saturday, Saturday night. 1.
• 22:07
  Game 4 so. Sidney Moran Moran, She's
• 22:12
  captain clutch for us. Yes, she is.
• 22:14
  She has scored like so. So Sidney Moran is our one of
• 22:18
  our defenders. She's scored four goals so far
• 22:21
  in the playoffs here, and prior to that she had scored four
• 22:26
  goals her entire professional career.
• 22:29
  I think I think the other thing about this series is something
• 22:32
  we talked about earlier tonight was that it it kind of deserved
• 22:34
  better. And I mean, so like we said, we
• 22:37
  have all these great moments throughout the series.
• 22:41
  Like you said, Sid Marin doing that just just everything the
• 22:45
  Stacey hat trick, just things like that were really great.
• 22:48
  But then we have the back-to-back games, which is not
• 22:52
  necessary on the PWHL necessarily.
• 22:54
  There's some trouble there with NHL and who got to play where,
• 22:58
  but it it's like a it's a further thing to think about as
• 23:02
  they expand. A lot of these teams will play
• 23:05
  in NHL arenas and they are going to get second choice on schedule
• 23:09
  every single time. And so like the the back-to-back
• 23:12
  nights and then three days later while Otto and Boston had this
• 23:16
  six day. Break 6 day break in.
• 23:18
  Between games, I think 2:00 and 3:00 or 1:00 and 2:00, something
• 23:22
  like that. I just think these teams
• 23:25
  deserved a little bit better. Yeah, well, it was crazy too,
• 23:28
  cause not only was the back where the back-to-back game
• 23:32
  scheduled for Montreal and Minnesota, they played Thursday
• 23:35
  and Friday night, right, But they also played Tuesday night.
• 23:39
  So they already were saying you're going to play three games
• 23:41
  in four days. Yeah.
• 23:43
  Then Tuesday night's game went to triple overtime.
• 23:46
  So they basically played an entire another game.
• 23:50
  Yeah, right. So essentially you've got
• 23:51
  players who are playing a game a day, right?
• 23:55
  You have travel mixed in there because they had to travel back
• 23:58
  to Minnesota after the Game 2 in Montreal.
• 24:01
  And so I, I definitely go to like, I get that the NHL has
• 24:08
  primacy. They're often the primary tenant
• 24:11
  in the venues. They might own the venues that
• 24:13
  they play in. But like player safety has to be
• 24:18
  at the top of the list, even if it means that we've got to
• 24:23
  stretch or extend or whatever. Like they they're just, there
• 24:28
  has to be more consideration for that because we're very
• 24:31
  fortunate that we're not sitting here talking about a really
• 24:35
  serious. Injury.
• 24:37
  To a player because they were tired.
• 24:40
  I I kind of imagine some PHPWHLXX might have been shaking
• 24:45
  a little bit on on Friday night thinking what if this goes to
• 24:49
  triple overtime too and then they've got to turn around and
• 24:52
  play 20 hours later, 18 hours later, like you can't recover.
• 24:57
  From that in a, in a weird way, the postponement tonight is a
• 25:00
  little bit of like obviously sucks for Montreal, but like a
• 25:04
  little bit of a blessing in disguise for the frost because
• 25:07
  they do get they're going to get an extra 24 hours essentially to
• 25:10
  rest the legs, like stay kind of in that mode and fired up.
• 25:16
  But that scheduling to me is something that I do think, you
• 25:21
  know, when they start to talk about CBA in a few years and
• 25:24
  things like that, they'll point back to this and be like, hey,
• 25:28
  we've got to do better. The NHLPWHL secondary tenant
• 25:35
  thing is also a big part of some of the expansion team decisions.
• 25:40
  We'll talk about that in just a minute here.
• 25:42
  But it it made me think of it when you brought it up.
• 25:46
  OK. The other thing I want to talk
• 25:49
  about with this series is we have also talked about
• 25:55
  discipline on this. Podcast, I know where we're
• 25:58
  going here. And how when you are playing any
• 26:03
  game, but especially in these games where the stakes are high,
• 26:06
  right, you have to stay disciplined.
• 26:11
  And we saw in game one, right? Yeah, it was game one, one of
• 26:17
  the four Frost forwards, Britta Carl Slammy was not disciplined
• 26:23
  and did a dirty hit on a player, got suspended for Game 2, right?
• 26:29
  Rightfully so. She probably should have been
• 26:30
  suspended for more games in our view.
• 26:33
  But she left her team hanging in that Game 2IN that triple
• 26:36
  overtime game down a forward. So now you're having to rotate
• 26:39
  players through even more. So speaking about tired legs,
• 26:43
  OK, so that happened Game 4. I really have enjoyed watching
• 26:51
  Laura Stacy play in this series. Actually, this whole season.
• 26:55
  I think she's an incredible leader, incredible player.
• 26:59
  She lost a moment of discipline when she went after Curl, after
• 27:05
  the whiskey, and this was just right after Curl had kind of
• 27:09
  gotten into it, not kind of had gotten into it with rock.
• 27:15
  Who those two? Don't.
• 27:17
  Like each? Other.
• 27:19
  I'm pretty sure Abby Rock's black guy is from Berta Curl.
• 27:23
  And you just like you, you can't let that get into your head.
• 27:31
  Because then that created a power play that then created a
• 27:34
  goal for the Frost that then they ended up ultimately
• 27:36
  winning. And so it, it just, it's a
• 27:40
  little example of one of those things where like there's such a
• 27:45
  fine line between like leadership and emotion and
• 27:50
  passion being a really positive force in sport and then it being
• 27:54
  like a really problematic force. There's a lot of things she
• 27:58
  could have done after the whistle blew to rough up, curl
• 28:02
  or do whatever to show her team like I've got your back.
• 28:05
  She didn't have to do it that way.
• 28:07
  Honestly, in hockey she could have just gone up and like did
• 28:11
  one of her. She's like known for her like
• 28:13
  quote UN quote headlocks, like just wrap her head up, put her
• 28:16
  put your nasty glove in her face and like smell my glove, right?
• 28:21
  But she popped her and like almost threw her into the boards
• 28:24
  while she wasn't paying attention, which is like, it's
• 28:27
  really unsafe and like, I get it.
• 28:30
  I know I also am not a fan of Britta Carl Salami but she.
• 28:39
  She's instigating you on purpose.
• 28:41
  She wants you to. Figured out how to leverage her,
• 28:44
  the dislike of her to create benefit for her team and and
• 28:50
  like, that's kind of smart. As a leader, you have to know
• 28:53
  that that is what's happening. Right now, yeah.
• 28:55
  And you should be going and telling your teammates she's
• 28:58
  doing that on purpose. We need to, like, leave it
• 29:00
  alone, right? Or hit her legally.
• 29:03
  Yeah, yeah. Like hit her in the run of play.
• 29:06
  You can still pop her, yeah. 100.
• 29:09
  Percent just don't board her and don't do it after the whistle.
• 29:12
  So I think that'll be interesting.
• 29:15
  Actually an interesting thread to watch in this Game 5, right?
• 29:19
  Like you now have this like weird kind of shift in
• 29:22
  circumstance. You're still back in Montreal,
• 29:25
  right? So foster away, but it like just
• 29:30
  watching for that discipline piece.
• 29:32
  Yeah. Should we talk?
• 29:33
  Want to talk expansion here? Yeah, the last I do want to say
• 29:36
  I just want this game to be like, not.
• 29:40
  Not triple overtime. I don't want it to be close.
• 29:43
  I want it to be a very clear victory.
• 29:48
  I I can't handle it. Before I saw the news today, I
• 29:51
  was like, oh God, tonight's going to be one of those nights
• 29:53
  where I'm just a wreck, so. So we'll be back next week and
• 29:59
  maybe won't even be over the fact that whatever the outcome
• 30:02
  is tomorrow night, maybe we'll live stream us watching.
• 30:06
  Oh God, that would be a mess. Getting on socials?
• 30:09
  All right, let's talk expansion news.
• 30:12
  So we mentioned Detroit has been named as the ninth team.
• 30:17
  We are expecting three more to be announced.
• 30:20
  So it's it's pretty the reporting so far is not
• 30:24
  concrete, but it's solid enough to make us think that they are
• 30:28
  going to go with this four team expansion.
• 30:31
  The speculation is right now around Las Vegas, which was kind
• 30:36
  of a surprise to us a couple weeks back, but seems more and
• 30:39
  more like makes sense I guess Hamilton in Canada, which adds
• 30:46
  another Eastern Time next. To like Buffalo and Toronto,
• 30:50
  right over there. So and then San Jose.
• 30:57
  I mean they have an NHL teams I guess.
• 30:59
  Yeah, and I, we need the West Coast.
• 31:03
  We knew that we had talked about San Diego because that had been
• 31:07
  thrown around, but it it the reporting that I'm reading right
• 31:10
  now is showing like San Jose is, is the one one of the reasons
• 31:15
  why I think they might have chose this is the Bay Area loves
• 31:20
  their women's sports. So we'll talk about the
• 31:22
  Valkyries in the WNBA section, but they had like, I don't know,
• 31:27
  15,000 people show up to their home opener.
• 31:31
  We talked about a couple. Was it just last week?
• 31:34
  They were just valued at 108. 150. $850 million.
• 31:39
  They might be one of the the first women's franchises to
• 31:44
  Crest a billion dollars in valuation.
• 31:47
  And then Bay FC just started, you know, three seasons ago now
• 31:52
  in the NWSL. But they are regularly having
• 31:55
  sellouts and things like that. So I think I think they probably
• 31:59
  looked at it and said this is a really strong market for women's
• 32:01
  sports in particular. Plus, you've got a lot of, you
• 32:06
  know, men's teams around that area, too.
• 32:08
  I think one of the other cities we called out was Washington, DC
• 32:13
  and I think I saw something today the where it's the NHL
• 32:17
  owners there wanted something different that the PWHL wasn't
• 32:21
  offering. I think they didn't want, they
• 32:24
  wanted some sort of steak versus kind of how the PWHL is like,
• 32:27
  no, this is like a we're all in one type of an organization or
• 32:31
  something like that. So I thought it was really
• 32:32
  interesting to see why they might not choose Washington DC
• 32:36
  yet. Yeah, I think that was the
• 32:37
  contention in Denver as well. So some of the challenges that
• 32:42
  they've run into, we talked a little bit about this before,
• 32:45
  but just as a refresher, as they've looked at expansion,
• 32:49
  Alex mentioned before that they have to look at markets where
• 32:53
  there's already infrastructure. So that typically we would think
• 32:57
  of that as being in terms of an end of NHL team is already
• 33:01
  there, like the the Frost, for example, share a venue with the
• 33:06
  Minnesota Wild, right? Or there needs to be some other
• 33:10
  venue that's appropriate for the attendance sizes that they're
• 33:13
  looking at or looking for, I should say, in the area.
• 33:17
  So going to Boston, Boston plays at the Sanga Center, which seats
• 33:21
  about 6000 people. And then, you know, they have
• 33:25
  the opportunity to play at TD Garden like they did the some of
• 33:32
  the NHL owner groups are saying, I either want a slice of the
• 33:36
  pie, right? Or they're frankly kind of
• 33:42
  giving shit deals on scheduling is what I what I understood of
• 33:46
  it. And so that created limiting
• 33:48
  factors for some of these cities.
• 33:51
  What I did read is that right now, we talked about this
• 33:56
  before, but the Walter group like wants to maintain full
• 33:59
  ownership of the league. They may not relinquish that,
• 34:04
  like this may become, they just might grow it and they it
• 34:08
  becomes a really nice asset for them.
• 34:11
  I also read that they could create a system of like, what do
• 34:16
  they call it? Like investor owners where like
• 34:19
  you don't or like investors. I don't know what it was.
• 34:23
  You don't own the team, but you get people to like invest and be
• 34:27
  on like a board of directors for the team operations and things
• 34:30
  or whatever it might be. One other limiting factor that I
• 34:34
  read about as far as expansion goes is the capacity for direct
• 34:39
  flights. So PWHLI think this will be no
• 34:43
  surprise to anybody flights commercial economy.
• 34:47
  And so they, they, they look to where can I get a direct flight
• 34:53
  from where the existing teams are?
• 34:56
  And so that also kind of limits the scope a little bit.
• 34:59
  Yeah, that's, that's an interesting thought.
• 35:01
  I never thought about it that way.
• 35:03
  On the flights, yeah, yeah, yeah, 'cause you want to.
• 35:05
  You don't want professional athletes.
• 35:09
  Having to go from. Get to my layover.
• 35:11
  From Denver to Chicago to Minnesota or wherever it might
• 35:16
  be. Exactly.
• 35:17
  So we shall see. I think I had read that there's
• 35:22
  an announcement pending Wednesday.
• 35:25
  Again, I partially wonder if we're just not going to get one
• 35:29
  every Wednesday. Wednesday.
• 35:31
  Until they've announced all four, it would.
• 35:33
  Line up nicely with the draft. So and it would bring us right
• 35:35
  up to the end of the playoffs as well, right?
• 35:38
  And Alex mentioned this last week, but again, I think the
• 35:43
  PWHL is recognizing like we can create noise.
• 35:47
  Kind of. Outside of the hockey, which is
• 35:51
  pretty cool. All right, let's talk about this
• 35:53
  mock expansion process we did here.
• 35:55
  We have attempted to protect the three players for each team.
• 36:01
  If you don't remember how this all works, it's a lot.
• 36:04
  Go back, listen to last week. You get to protect three players
• 36:07
  per team and then each expansion team gives a twenty person
• 36:12
  exclusive negotiation target list.
• 36:14
  So we've kind of started that process in our imaginary PWHL
• 36:18
  league that we have on paper here.
• 36:20
  Yeah. So we are going to kind of phase
• 36:24
  this out. So that'll be kind of fun.
• 36:26
  And we knew we could go through and do protected players like
• 36:30
  Alex said, which is Phase 1. So each team will get to protect
• 36:34
  three players from the existing teams.
• 36:37
  And just since those are top of mind right now as the season has
• 36:41
  just wound down and then you have the playoffs, Most of these
• 36:44
  will be names that you are probably hearing if you're
• 36:47
  watching these games. And they're definitely something
• 36:50
  we're willing to put out into the ether as the folks we think
• 36:54
  we'll get protected. We'll talk a little bit about
• 36:58
  our rationale as we go through this.
• 37:00
  And then in subsequent episodes we may delve deeper into further
• 37:04
  phases of the expansion process as we feel comfortable.
• 37:10
  There's a lot of people out there.
• 37:11
  We started looking at the rosters.
• 37:12
  We're like, we don't know if we know a lot of these.
• 37:15
  People, or as much as we watch. Yeah, we're as much as we watch,
• 37:18
  so we're going to go in reverse order.
• 37:22
  So starting with Vancouver, we said that Vancouver would
• 37:28
  protect Sarah Nurse, Ashton Bell and Claire Thompson.
• 37:35
  So Bell, Thompson and Nurse are all part of their captain corps.
• 37:41
  That was something that we felt like maintaining a level of
• 37:45
  leadership and experience within these teams as you're protecting
• 37:50
  is going to be important. I was just going to say
• 37:54
  experience in the PWHL, not necessarily picking the older
• 38:03
  players. And no offense to them, they're
• 38:05
  great, but I do think the PWHL needs to have an eye on what's
• 38:11
  the next wave, right? And players like Hillary Knight
• 38:17
  and Natalie Spooner and Kendall Coinsco feel like are are just
• 38:24
  going to be players that I don't know that teams are going to be
• 38:26
  willing to protect with these. Now, they might hope they can
• 38:29
  keep them in subsequent rounds. But yeah, that was kind of the
• 38:33
  thing. For sure.
• 38:35
  All right, Seattle. We had Carpenter, Bilka and
• 38:39
  Barnes. Yeah, so that's Alex Carpenter,
• 38:42
  Hannah Bilka and Caleb Barnes, all Team USA Olympians, gold
• 38:47
  medalists moving to New York, Sarah Filier, Micah Zanderhart
• 38:55
  and Casey O'Brien. To be honest, it was also really
• 39:00
  interesting looking at the different rosters, these teams
• 39:02
  and being like, oh, I recognize those names from the Olympics.
• 39:06
  And then there were some teams like, frankly, New York, that I
• 39:10
  was like, I know Filier. And that was kind of it.
• 39:17
  So again, going to what we talked about before of like
• 39:22
  needing to distribute that talent pool a little bit more so
• 39:25
  that you have a little bit more balanced competition across all
• 39:30
  the teams, not just the original 6, right, is going to be
• 39:34
  important. Then we had Toronto.
• 39:36
  We had fast. Malte.
• 39:39
  Malte and Watts. Yeah, So these are this is a
• 39:42
  bunch of Canadian Olympian. So we're not a Fast Emma Malte
• 39:48
  and Darrell Watts again kind of airing more on you got some
• 39:53
  leadership. I think Fast is an assistant
• 39:55
  captain for them right now and then a little bit more
• 39:59
  experience, but you. Yes, we when we look, I think
• 40:03
  when we looked at these, we saw a lot of 3637 year olds that we
• 40:06
  were like they're great, but probably.
• 40:09
  Not, but they're still playing. We want the the next greatest.
• 40:12
  That's 3032 ish to have that leadership.
• 40:16
  But some youth do. And again, I want to emphasize,
• 40:20
  we're not saying that the older players are done playing.
• 40:25
  We're just saying that they are not likely to get protected in
• 40:28
  this first round by the teams that they're currently on
• 40:32
  because we think these teams want to remember too that these
• 40:38
  they can now sign these longer contracts, right?
• 40:41
  There's four years on the table if they're re signing with their
• 40:45
  current team, right. So moving to Ottawa, first time
• 40:51
  we we put attendee on the list. We put a couple attendees, but
• 40:54
  this one was the first one. Gwyneth Phillips, Emily Clark,
• 40:59
  and Oh my gosh no, I'm totally blanking on the pronunciation
• 41:04
  was Nevich. Was Nevich.
• 41:06
  Who actually has had an incredible rookie season.
• 41:09
  She's been in like really good scoring form.
• 41:13
  This one was actually hard. There were a lot of players that
• 41:16
  I thought they could have gone with, but those are going to be
• 41:19
  names you're going to hear if you watch the final series here.
• 41:24
  All right, Minnesota. Taylor Heisey Kelly panic
• 41:29
  blanking on the person. Kendall Cooper.
• 41:31
  Yeah, so we went with Heisey and Panic kind of seem like locks
• 41:35
  again. You've got some of the
• 41:38
  leadership scoring the defensive forward, but then Kendall Cooper
• 41:45
  is a rookie this year. She's a defender, so younger
• 41:48
  player. She's played really, really
• 41:50
  well. I think she LED all defenders in
• 41:52
  scoring or some. She set some records along those
• 41:54
  lines. And so that felt like a really
• 41:57
  good place for them to be like starting to build a longer term
• 42:00
  defensive core around. You know, I love Leafs decline
• 42:05
  as not just the next Cross fan, but again, she's kind of a
• 42:09
  little bit on the. Yeah, there's a, there's a lot
• 42:11
  of good players on the on a little bit of the older side on
• 42:13
  our on our team. For Boston, we have another
• 42:17
  Tendee protected here. So Aaron Frankel, arguably the
• 42:22
  best goaltender in the PWHL despite some of the hiccups we
• 42:27
  saw in the play offs here. Megan Keller is they've, I mean,
• 42:33
  her coach has already come out and said like, she's not going
• 42:35
  anywhere, protect that woman at all costs.
• 42:38
  And then Anika Mueller, she's LED them in scoring I think for
• 42:43
  the last couple seasons, so. Yeah, I think in Montreal here,
• 42:48
  I think your best goaltender would probably have some more to
• 42:52
  say with you here with DBN we we protected DBN Stacy and our
• 42:58
  third was. We so we were a little torn on
• 43:03
  Montreal. So Montreal actually is one of
• 43:07
  the older teams on paper, Yeah. So obviously you've got Laura
• 43:11
  Stacy and Marie Felipoulan. I don't see them protecting MPP
• 43:19
  she's had. A state.
• 43:20
  Of injuries this year, she's Ancient 35.
• 43:25
  Oh my gosh. But I just, I see her being more
• 43:32
  towards the end of her, her career, her playing career.
• 43:36
  And so like, again, I just don't think Montreal is going to
• 43:39
  protect her. Now, what's difficult about that
• 43:42
  is that Laura Stacy, the assistant captain to MP PS
• 43:47
  captaincy in Montreal, is also MP PS wife.
• 43:50
  And so I feel like that could create some.
• 43:52
  There might be like a well, if you're going to protect me, you
• 43:54
  have to protect. Your package or a package deal,
• 43:58
  but they've got some options. Haley Skamura is on that team.
• 44:04
  They they have a couple other folks who I looked at and was
• 44:07
  Abby Rock could be 1 if you like one kind of that enforcer vibe,
• 44:11
  right? Katie Tabin on the defensive
• 44:15
  line. So Montreal to me was like the
• 44:18
  trickiest one to just pick 3 Cat Dubois.
• 44:25
  I could totally see them protecting her like.
• 44:27
  Montreal and Minnesota are the hardest ones to really put a
• 44:30
  finger on right now, yeah. Agree.
• 44:32
  So those are our protected players.
• 44:36
  You have it recorded. It is locked in here.
• 44:40
  Either be really right or extremely wrong.
• 44:42
  Probably the latter. And then like we said, we're,
• 44:47
  we're going to spend some time in, in future episodes maybe
• 44:50
  talking through the like exclusive negotiation target
• 44:54
  list, maybe talking about which players do we think are going to
• 44:57
  receive those, you know, top tier offers that are, you know,
• 45:03
  you have to accept or you could be a foundational player, that
• 45:07
  sort of thing. So we're looking forward to all
• 45:10
  of that, but right now we are mostly looking forward to Game
• 45:15
  5, which was rescheduled to tomorrow night. 6:00 PM.
• 45:20
  Central, still in Montreal against Minnesota.
• 45:26
  Winner take all to play Ottawa, Yeah.
• 45:29
  That'll be a good one. That'll be a good one.
• 45:31
  All right, enough PWHL for now. Moving on to NWSL Week 7
• 45:37
  results. OK, man, so many things.
• 45:44
  So Portland lost, which seemed like a like something that
• 45:47
  wasn't going to happen to Racing Louisville of all teams.
• 45:51
  Came in on 2 losses. Came right before.
• 45:55
  Came in on more than that I. Think maybe 2 losses in a row.
• 45:58
  OK, maybe they had a draw in there.
• 46:00
  I don't think they've won very many.
• 46:01
  So they lost 3 to 1. Sophia Wilson did score a genius
• 46:06
  goal on a wicked service from Olivia Moultrie.
• 46:11
  Washington wins again. We mentioned that this was a
• 46:14
  close game. Claudia Martinez, the Paraguayan
• 46:18
  international, scored for the second game in a row to win that
• 46:21
  Game 1 to 0. 4th win in five, right?
• 46:27
  Yes, and I think I saw that they outscored opponents 14 to 6 in
• 46:30
  that stretch. Yes, they have been doing quite
• 46:33
  well. This was the first game in a
• 46:36
  long while where Trend did not have a goal.
• 46:39
  Conjugation. But that was also probably
• 46:42
  mostly due to the fact that she left the game, really.
• 46:46
  So like we said, we'll be watching out for that injury
• 46:49
  report. It did appear to be like some
• 46:51
  kind of weird, just like I twisted my ankle wrong.
• 46:54
  Not her back and not her knee, which is what she was out with
• 46:58
  last season. Kansas City, who remember I
• 47:04
  sounded the alarm on this three weeks ago or two weeks ago.
• 47:08
  They are now in 6th on the table.
• 47:10
  So maybe things are clicking? Things are starting to click.
• 47:13
  I also noticed that they are undefeated at home and they have
• 47:17
  4 losses on the road so they just don't like to play away
• 47:21
  from all is really what happened.
• 47:24
  Alex already mentioned this game was big.
• 47:26
  Tim was Swinga who won the Golden Boot the last two years,
• 47:30
  scored a hat trick, which is the first hat trick in Kansas City
• 47:35
  current history and they won three to zero.
• 47:38
  That's great over Chicago. The.
• 47:42
  Just it's kind of like, I'm sorry, Chicago, but you're kind
• 47:46
  of a guaranteed win on the schedule.
• 47:47
  What what was who was their coaching?
• 47:49
  Chris Armis. Yeah.
• 47:51
  So I think he we were watching like two or three weeks ago, we
• 47:54
  were watching the game, a different game.
• 47:56
  And they were like, I think he's kind of maybe sweating over
• 47:59
  there that he might they lose their next game and he might
• 48:01
  lose his job. Oh yeah, he said that.
• 48:03
  That was me that. Was you?
• 48:04
  That was me. It wasn't the TV.
• 48:07
  TV and it's. Like the same thing I say.
• 48:09
  I say what they say like 30 seconds before they say it.
• 48:12
  So anyway, the Dash are dropping on the table.
• 48:17
  They've had a couple consecutive losses and they most recently
• 48:21
  just tied to Utah. I saw they had three first half
• 48:27
  goals all season so far. Oh, that's not good.
• 48:32
  You got to learn how to score early.
• 48:35
  We had another result for Boston.
• 48:37
  I mentioned this in headlines, but they drew Gotham in that
• 48:40
  game in New Jersey. So one one that's they're coming
• 48:44
  off of a win right in their last game, so good for them.
• 48:49
  Barbara Banda, I think you're going to.
• 48:51
  Talk about her, but. She is running at a goal a game
• 48:55
  clip right now, looking in fine form coming off of season ending
• 48:58
  injury last year. San Diego steals a result from
• 49:02
  Angel City in the LA Ish area. Darby SoCal Darby, it was
• 49:10
  actually a beautiful goal. We saw that happen late in the
• 49:14
  game. And then Utah.
• 49:16
  Utah has not allowed a goal in six consecutive games.
• 49:20
  I have, I think 465 minutes. Yeah, it's it's crazy and I
• 49:26
  don't really know how like why, like I don't.
• 49:30
  I think they're just really disciplined, frankly.
• 49:33
  The other thing that's interesting about Utah is that
• 49:35
  they do have a couple of Japanese international players
• 49:39
  in their midfield all. Right, that might be the.
• 49:41
  And you know how I feel about those disciplined, technical
• 49:46
  Japanese international women. All right, we got, we got.
• 49:51
  That's our rundown. We got US women's national team
• 49:55
  coming out here, the camp roster coming out in the next few
• 49:57
  weeks. Yeah.
• 49:58
  So I think we we just finished match week 7.
• 50:02
  I think we have about 3 more weeks to go until we break and
• 50:09
  the break is extended. Normally there'd be an
• 50:12
  international break at the beginning of June, but there is
• 50:14
  an extended break because of the Men's World Cup being played
• 50:18
  here and venues being used. For the MWC.
• 50:21
  The MWC? Yes, the MWC.
• 50:25
  So NWSL will be on a pause from June 1st to June 28th.
• 50:30
  We anticipate that in the next 3 or 4 weeks here for NWSL play.
• 50:35
  We will also be getting the camp camp roster announcement from
• 50:40
  Emma Hayes. Reminder that the US women's
• 50:43
  national team will be playing Brazil in Brazil in two
• 50:46
  friendlies at the start of June. So they play I think like the
• 50:51
  3rd, 6th and 9th I believe are the dates.
• 50:55
  And then there's actually following that international
• 50:59
  window and there's quite a few Brazilian internationals who
• 51:02
  play in the NWSL as well. So they'll obviously be there
• 51:06
  and other teams will be doing their thing.
• 51:08
  There's actually ACBA mandated player break from June 8th to
• 51:13
  the 14th. So like you're not allowed to
• 51:15
  use facilities. Like, you have to like, take a
• 51:17
  break, go away. I need ACBA mandated.
• 51:21
  I know, right. Wouldn't that be good unionized,
• 51:24
  you have to unionize and then that window extends right, for
• 51:30
  another two weeks past that mandated break for the the World
• 51:34
  Cup. So we'll have a little bit of a
• 51:35
  break in there, but it makes me think, one, it's going to be
• 51:40
  really interesting to see how some of those national team
• 51:43
  players are looking in these next few weeks, right?
• 51:47
  Because as we've seen, Emma is starting to like really narrow
• 51:50
  down her player pool and we are getting ever closer to that end
• 51:56
  of November qualifying game against El Salvador.
• 51:59
  And she now that's another interesting wrinkle is like she
• 52:02
  now knows who that opponent is. She didn't know who that was
• 52:06
  before. And so it's it'll be interesting
• 52:08
  to see if that changes any decision making.
• 52:11
  How much experimenting is she going to be doing at this point?
• 52:14
  I don't, I don't know that she's going to be doing a lot of
• 52:16
  experimenting, but it is possible that the way that she
• 52:19
  decides to deploy players or if there are injuries or things
• 52:24
  like that, that that may can have an impact on the types of
• 52:28
  players she brings into that camp to play that game.
• 52:32
  Not World Cup, right, 'cause she's not locked in to like say
• 52:36
  I'm picking my team now in November for who I'm bringing in
• 52:39
  next year. The flip side is the NWSL season
• 52:45
  has to take a break for a month. And so this is a weird like
• 52:49
  testing almost of what we talked about with the schedule flip
• 52:54
  where, yeah, where you take a break like in the winter time to
• 52:58
  sort of see like what happens with momentum.
• 53:01
  And I'm, I'm curious to watch both.
• 53:03
  Like how are teams looking heading into this break?
• 53:07
  But how does the NWSL handle that break?
• 53:10
  What is their marketing look like?
• 53:12
  How do they keep fans engaged? Like what are the ways that they
• 53:15
  keep tapping into, you know, player personas or whatever it
• 53:21
  might be? Maybe there's some other way
• 53:23
  that they there are games or or tournaments or whatever going
• 53:26
  on, but that's going to be something that I'm curious to.
• 53:29
  See, I wonder when? Obviously no one from the NWSL
• 53:33
  would be involved in this, but I wonder when the TST games.
• 53:35
  Are I know, I was just thinking that too.
• 53:37
  It's like a TST is like A7 on 7 almost like they'll bring in
• 53:41
  former players and celebrities to to play these games.
• 53:43
  So it's. Like pick up league but with
• 53:46
  really good people and for millions of dollars.
• 53:51
  All right, Yeah. So what I wanted to bring to
• 53:54
  tonight is can Barbara Banda alone keep Orlando in the
• 53:59
  discussion here? Like you said, she is on pace.
• 54:03
  A goal a game. She's got 8 of Orlando's twelve
• 54:07
  goals. She not this last game, but the
• 54:09
  two games before that, she had a brace in each game.
• 54:14
  My question, There's many questions I have, actually.
• 54:18
  One is how does a coach elevate the others around a player like
• 54:20
  this to stay in the conversation?
• 54:23
  Is this roster, is it coaching, something else?
• 54:27
  Kind of feels like she came in to help carry this team, but
• 54:31
  really what she's doing is kind of holding it all all together,
• 54:35
  yeah. Yeah, those are good.
• 54:38
  Those are good questions, right. And I think like, what's
• 54:40
  interesting is Banda is always going to find the goal, right?
• 54:48
  Because right now she's proven so far to be kind of their sole
• 54:54
  threat, which I think is the point.
• 54:55
  You're kind of making teams know that so they can game plan for
• 54:58
  that. But she scores anyway.
• 55:00
  So she's like, she's that girl. She's she's her, right?
• 55:03
  She's that good. I meant good.
• 55:05
  Not a girl. She's not a girl.
• 55:06
  She's a woman. And so I think what what you
• 55:14
  have to be thinking about as a coach is like, how do how do I
• 55:18
  now exploit that knowing that they're going to cover, knowing
• 55:21
  that they're going to cover and she's still going to get chances
• 55:25
  that more than likely are going to go in, right?
• 55:29
  What, what attention does that detract from other spaces on the
• 55:33
  field? And then how do you talk to
• 55:34
  those players about how their role might shift and how they
• 55:38
  need to be ready for their moment right now?
• 55:41
  You have some level of certainty in what Banda has been showing,
• 55:46
  right? And so how do you allow other
• 55:48
  players to kind of step into those open spaces due to the
• 55:52
  attention that she she attracts? I haven't watched Orlando enough
• 55:58
  yet this season. Their games, every time their
• 56:00
  games are on, they seem to be rained out or stormed out until
• 56:03
  like they're delayed and I don't get to watch them.
• 56:06
  But I would be interested to watch and see how do teams game
• 56:11
  plan against Banda? And then what does that group
• 56:15
  around her look like? And maybe, you know, pinpoint a
• 56:18
  few players that I feel like could be the ones to take more
• 56:22
  advantage of the space left by the attention she she attracts.
• 56:27
  Yeah, for sure. The other thing I wonder in a,
• 56:29
  you know, she's scoring one or two goals a game.
• 56:32
  So like you're getting some level of offense.
• 56:36
  I'd be examining my defense, right?
• 56:39
  What is going on that we are giving up more than more goals
• 56:44
  than we're scoring? And are we comfortable being the
• 56:49
  team that regularly allows two goals, Right.
• 56:53
  And is that because of a goalkeeper issue?
• 56:57
  Is that because of a, you know, personnel in the back issue?
• 57:01
  Is it because of a, like, execution of that personnel or
• 57:04
  like the actual skill set? So that would be another
• 57:06
  question I'd ask as a coach, yeah.
• 57:08
  Yeah. I mean, those are my questions.
• 57:09
  I think this is going to be one of those raising the game
• 57:13
  reverse hexes. The team is going to start
• 57:15
  playing around her after this moment.
• 57:17
  That's right, we'll see what happens.
• 57:19
  You heard it, Pride. Get out there.
• 57:21
  Go back to the last episode if you if you're wondering about
• 57:23
  these reverse hexes. I, I'll add to that, like, in a
• 57:26
  weird way, I'm also thinking about like, bandas come out hot
• 57:30
  and like, you always wonder when a player's streak is going to
• 57:35
  end, right? And so far, hers has been.
• 57:37
  Pretty. I mean, it could be like kind of
• 57:38
  like you were saying, it could be like when we talked few
• 57:41
  weeks, many weeks back about Trinity Rodman is she might be
• 57:44
  not be doing much. Trinity wasn't doing much
• 57:46
  potentially because she was bringing the attention.
• 57:49
  Whereas you might see Banda start to to drop off and that's
• 57:52
  when the the rest of the team has to pick it up.
• 57:54
  Yeah. Exactly.
• 57:56
  I, I, I also watch, you know, for Ted Mushwinga, she's been
• 58:01
  relatively quiet so far this season, but she's been hurt or
• 58:05
  she's been. Yeah, I think there's been some
• 58:07
  some like nagging injuries and stuff.
• 58:09
  But she's another player that does allow for creation on
• 58:14
  Kansas City just by being on the pitch, right?
• 58:19
  But now she just had that hat trick.
• 58:21
  Like, I'm kind of curious if this opens the floodgates a
• 58:23
  little bit for her, like build that confidence.
• 58:27
  All right, that was NWSL. Let's talk about this WNBA
• 58:32
  opening weekend. All.
• 58:34
  Sorts of things. The drama already is.
• 58:39
  It's crazy. It's really.
• 58:42
  It's don't don't go on WNBA threads.
• 58:43
  No, don't do it. No, don't recommend.
• 58:46
  At all I Nateesha Heideman are links for a linksie forever.
• 58:52
  She was like calling out the fans being like y'all are mean.
• 58:56
  Y'all are bad with you. I would not recommend it, it
• 59:01
  makes you feel a little bit crazy.
• 59:04
  Also, if you go on there you either hate Caitlin Clark or you
• 59:07
  love Caitlin Clark. There is no middle ground on
• 59:10
  threads. Just like PWHL threads, you
• 59:12
  either hate Minnesota or you love Minnesota.
• 59:15
  No in between. All right, so doing a little bit
• 59:18
  of a, a round up here. Some teams have played two games
• 59:22
  at this stage, some have only played one.
• 59:25
  There's another round of games tomorrow night Alex will
• 59:28
  probably talk about. Yeah, well, not tomorrow night,
• 59:31
  it'll be. Many of the things it.
• 59:32
  Will be tomorrow night's games, which when you're listening to
• 59:35
  this was last night's games, so they haven't yet happened, but
• 59:38
  will have also happened. Schrodinger's games, basically.
• 59:42
  Get that, You following? OK, over the weekend, the
• 59:45
  Liberty and the Valkyrie were the only two teams to come out
• 59:48
  with two wins. They they were, I would say the
• 59:54
  Valkyrie actually had stronger wins.
• 59:55
  The Liberty ended up going to overtime against the Mystics,
• 59:58
  which I'll talk about in a second.
• 1:00:00
  Chicago, Atlanta and Dallas each start with a win apiece.
• 1:00:05
  Paige looks great. I just have to say, I just saw a
• 1:00:09
  thing today that was saying she put on like 15 lbs of muscle in
• 1:00:13
  the offseason. And she I don't love like
• 1:00:19
  commenting on bodies, generally speaking, but she seems to be
• 1:00:25
  able to use that to her advantage, you know, and I
• 1:00:28
  really think like she's going to be a force to be reckoned with
• 1:00:31
  this year. I also noticed, just like we,
• 1:00:35
  the Lynx played the dream Atlanta, we blew a 19 point lead
• 1:00:40
  against them, ended up losing by one.
• 1:00:43
  But Angel Reese's impact in that game, we were watching kind of
• 1:00:48
  in the in the spotty self-service of the North Shore.
• 1:00:52
  And she had a couple moments where like just pulled the
• 1:00:56
  momentum of the game towards her.
• 1:00:58
  So maybe a sign of things to come for the Dream Split results
• 1:01:03
  over the weekend for the Las Vegas Aces, the Phoenix Mercury,
• 1:01:06
  the Washington Mystics in the Seattle Storm.
• 1:01:09
  I think the biggest surprise by far was the Aces lost.
• 1:01:13
  To Phoenix. Apparently that was on their
• 1:01:17
  ring night too. They were getting their their
• 1:01:19
  rings. They lost by 33.
• 1:01:23
  And they got owned by some European talent from I, I, I'm
• 1:01:28
  not going to remember her name and I apologize.
• 1:01:30
  I, I should have written that down.
• 1:01:32
  But that was a blow out for the defending champs to come back.
• 1:01:38
  I think we saw Chelsea Gray, the point God did not have her best
• 1:01:43
  game. And then the Mystics lost.
• 1:01:46
  So the Mystics won a game and then they lost a game.
• 1:01:49
  Their loss was an OT to the Liberty.
• 1:01:52
  So I'm like, OK, maybe these young guns, like they got it in
• 1:01:58
  there. They're they're like, I think I
• 1:02:03
  said this in a previous episode, but they're like a sneaky like
• 1:02:07
  if their youth can pretend like they're a little more
• 1:02:12
  experienced or like show up that way.
• 1:02:15
  They have a lot of talent on that video.
• 1:02:18
  It's just a matter of like, can you kind of deploy it?
• 1:02:21
  So anyway, and then Lynx fever, Tempo, Fire and sparks all drop
• 1:02:28
  their first and only game. Miles Olivia Miles looked
• 1:02:33
  fantastic for the Lynx. I am so excited to watch her
• 1:02:37
  play. And then the Connecticut Sun
• 1:02:41
  start O and two. So the only team with two
• 1:02:45
  losses, no wins they're. Kind of a little bit of a
• 1:02:48
  rebuild, kind of. Aren't they?
• 1:02:49
  Like they're in a weird. Yeah, Britney Griner sign there.
• 1:02:54
  They're in like a weird space too, right, 'cause they're
• 1:02:56
  moving and like I just, I got to feel like I got to imagine, like
• 1:03:00
  the vibes over there. Not great.
• 1:03:02
  It's got to be. Awesome, just like fans who
• 1:03:05
  probably are like, you know, boycotting 'cause they're
• 1:03:09
  moving, but then also ones who are like, this is the last year
• 1:03:12
  and it's just like sad every time.
• 1:03:14
  So I don't know. So that was, you know, quick
• 1:03:19
  rundown of the week's weekend's action, more games kind of
• 1:03:25
  midweek this week and then more on the weekend as well.
• 1:03:29
  I wanted to like talk a little bit about this GM survey that
• 1:03:33
  came out. So every year at the start of
• 1:03:36
  the season, the GMs are asked a series of questions about
• 1:03:41
  different players and teams and whatnot, whatnot.
• 1:03:44
  And so this year, the starting question was which player would
• 1:03:50
  you pick if you were starting a franchise?
• 1:03:54
  And the overwhelming answer to that question is page wreckers.
• 1:04:00
  And I got to say I agree. It's kind of interesting because
• 1:04:05
  I think if Paige is not in the conversation, I would say Fee.
• 1:04:09
  And it's so funny that they came from the same system, like the
• 1:04:12
  same college. System.
• 1:04:13
  Like they are both so well spoken.
• 1:04:16
  Like first of all, they play, they're phenomenal players, and
• 1:04:19
  then they come off the court and they are so well spoken like
• 1:04:22
  this. They are like the perfect
• 1:04:25
  athlete. Like it's insane.
• 1:04:26
  And so yeah, IA 100%. Agree with that.
• 1:04:29
  I agree too, following Paige in, they kind of have these ranked
• 1:04:34
  by percentage of votes. So I didn't write down the
• 1:04:37
  percentages, but you can kind of get the gist through Caitlin
• 1:04:39
  Clark. So she's still someone that GMs
• 1:04:42
  I think see as a valuable kind of asset and a franchise.
• 1:04:47
  Asia Wilson and then Dominique Malonga, which I was a little
• 1:04:51
  surprised about, but we'll see how Malonga does.
• 1:04:56
  I think this is her second or third season now she's out at in
• 1:04:59
  Seattle. They did a little bit of a shake
• 1:05:02
  up on their roster, like maybe, maybe that's going to be good
• 1:05:05
  for her. Who do you think's going to win
• 1:05:08
  overwhelmingly? GM's chose the Aces, followed by
• 1:05:12
  the Liberty and the Dream. Who do you think's going to get
• 1:05:15
  MVP? Asia Wilson.
• 1:05:18
  This would make it like an Uber record 'cause she'd be five
• 1:05:21
  times in a row, followed by Stewie, which is kind of
• 1:05:27
  interesting. Stewie is coming off of really
• 1:05:30
  successful. They won unrivaled.
• 1:05:32
  Yeah, I think she had a pretty good stat line too on that one
• 1:05:35
  of those nights. Yeah, the one game.
• 1:05:37
  Yeah, so, and she's a great leader, too.
• 1:05:40
  Also comes from UConn. Yeah, look at that.
• 1:05:43
  And so that'll be it. It was interesting that like
• 1:05:47
  this was just two players that had significant votes, Which
• 1:05:51
  player forces coaching adjustments.
• 1:05:56
  This was also overwhelmingly Asia Wilson and I hope that you
• 1:06:00
  are going to get used to me saying that is the first answer
• 1:06:03
  because that's the answer to all of these.
• 1:06:05
  Also, Alyssa Thomas of Phoenix Mercury, which I agree with
• 1:06:09
  because she is just a bad ass. Best point guard.
• 1:06:16
  Chelsea Gray, the point guard, followed by Caitlin Clark and
• 1:06:20
  Paige Becker's shooting. Best shooting guard Jackie
• 1:06:24
  Young, followed by Page Beckers. I'm like, is she a point guard?
• 1:06:28
  Is she a shooting guard? She's doing it all.
• 1:06:30
  Kelsey Mitchell, Sabrina Yanesku and Alicia Gray tied for third
• 1:06:36
  in voting there, which is pretty interesting.
• 1:06:39
  I would take any of these players.
• 1:06:41
  Best forward Asia Wilson, followed by Thieve and then
• 1:06:47
  Stewie. It's pretty good company.
• 1:06:49
  And then best center Asia Wilson, she also plays multiple
• 1:06:53
  positions apparently Jonquil Jones, Aaliyah Boston and
• 1:06:56
  Brianna Jones. So I think my takeaways from
• 1:07:02
  this is there does seem to be a tilt in the table even from AGM
• 1:07:07
  perspective that Las Vegas is just it, right.
• 1:07:12
  And so I think what what this indicates to me is like as we
• 1:07:16
  watch through the season, what are kind of the chinks in the
• 1:07:19
  armor for the aces? And as we expose some of those,
• 1:07:24
  like they obviously came one, they were very exposed.
• 1:07:28
  How does Becky Hammond and her or coaching staff help adjust?
• 1:07:32
  They have the talent on the team undeniably, right.
• 1:07:35
  But you've got Asia Wilson all over this list.
• 1:07:37
  You got Chelsea Gray listed as the best point guard hands down.
• 1:07:41
  Like. Yeah.
• 1:07:43
  Is this is this also the one that had Olivia Miles as?
• 1:07:47
  Rookie of the Year. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:07:49
  And I. OK, we.
• 1:07:52
  I think that could, I think that could be, it could be.
• 1:07:55
  I think that could be. What do you got?
• 1:07:58
  Speaking of I I want to talk about Olivia Miles.
• 1:08:00
  I want to talk about talk about Olivia Miles.
• 1:08:03
  I want to talk about the rookie class here.
• 1:08:04
  I'm talking Olivia Miles and AZ Fudd.
• 1:08:07
  I'm glad that I didn't do. I debated.
• 1:08:09
  I was like rookie class was my thing or this yeah, survey.
• 1:08:13
  So I'm glad I let you. So the the big caveat here is
• 1:08:17
  it's super way too early. One game analysis that we're
• 1:08:22
  looking at here. Nah Olivia Miles First game, 21
• 1:08:28
  points, 8 assists, 3 rebounds, 2 steals, 2 blocks.
• 1:08:33
  Fifth player to record 20 plus points and five plus assists in
• 1:08:37
  their WNBA debut, joining Candace Parker, Tonya Edwards,
• 1:08:41
  Don Staley and Cynthia Cooper. So that's your that's your first
• 1:08:46
  game. That's some good company.
• 1:08:48
  That's your first game all right.
• 1:08:50
  Now the the easy FUD stat line. Oh yes.
• 1:08:53
  Three points in 18 minutes off the bench US points by number
• 1:08:57
  one overall pick in the WNBA debut in 20 seasons now.
• 1:09:03
  OK, I will. I will say it, Dallas is deep.
• 1:09:07
  Dallas is. Becker, Sims and a Gumwale I can
• 1:09:12
  never say that well combined for 62 points.
• 1:09:15
  So they didn't need Ari to do anything.
• 1:09:18
  She can learn and grow and figure out how everything works
• 1:09:23
  like but still 3 points in 18 minutes.
• 1:09:26
  And I think that was I brought that up with you over the
• 1:09:28
  weekend of like, how does she fit in that system when like you
• 1:09:34
  have some more of that, like veteran leadership and Odyssey
• 1:09:37
  Sims. You've obviously got Paige, who
• 1:09:42
  Paige feels like she's been around for forever, but we have
• 1:09:46
  to remember she is in her second.
• 1:09:48
  Year. Right And then Erika Gumbwale,
• 1:09:51
  who's just like she's been a scorer for for a while now,
• 1:09:55
  right. And so I just like now what's
• 1:09:59
  great for Dallas is they are deep.
• 1:10:01
  And so if one of them is not playing well, you've got next,
• 1:10:05
  next woman up, right? But I do think like I'm sure
• 1:10:12
  that AZ would have liked that performance to have been a
• 1:10:16
  little bit stronger. And the other thing that I do
• 1:10:20
  want to say is that stat line does not speak to some of the
• 1:10:26
  intangibles or the defense and things like that.
• 1:10:29
  And so and I didn't get to watch all.
• 1:10:31
  We kind of were trying to watch some of the game, but we were
• 1:10:33
  out and about. And so like I didn't get to
• 1:10:35
  watch all of that level of detail.
• 1:10:37
  And like, is she at least bringing those things to the
• 1:10:39
  court? And like maybe the stat sheet
• 1:10:41
  isn't full. And so like that's going to be
• 1:10:44
  something to assess with these rooks as well as like, are they
• 1:10:46
  contributing like Raven Johnson for the fever, right?
• 1:10:49
  We've talked a lot about her defense.
• 1:10:51
  Like she is going to be somebody who that's going to be her
• 1:10:55
  primary use on that team right now.
• 1:10:57
  Maybe a little bit of the ball handling, but they're not
• 1:10:59
  looking to her to score a bunch of points.
• 1:11:02
  But there are high expectations on those #1 picks and AZ clearly
• 1:11:07
  didn't quite. The other thing that I would say
• 1:11:10
  about Miles is like, I think that anyone who watched that
• 1:11:14
  game should feel, whether you like the links or not, you
• 1:11:18
  should feel that maybe you had the links too low.
• 1:11:22
  They only lost by a point I think against and it was they
• 1:11:26
  had a chance to win it right at the end.
• 1:11:28
  Miles had this phenomenal pass. Oh.
• 1:11:33
  Yeah, just didn't get the layup basically.
• 1:11:35
  Yeah, so that game was a little bit weird to like.
• 1:11:40
  So you think about it. I think from what I saw, Miles
• 1:11:43
  had a great game. Another rookie on the lings,
• 1:11:46
  Emma Chekhova. Chekhova.
• 1:11:49
  Chekhova, I can't think of how to pronounce it right now.
• 1:11:52
  International player who's coming in, she is going to be a
• 1:11:56
  player to watch. But we had two of our bigs, I
• 1:11:59
  think Chekhova and Natasha Howard fouled out at the end of
• 1:12:03
  the game. So we actually had a
• 1:12:05
  developmental roster player having to come onto the court to
• 1:12:10
  play at the end because we had no and then fees out with
• 1:12:13
  injury, right. And so I do kind of I do wonder,
• 1:12:18
  like I don't know that that was the best look at what the links
• 1:12:24
  could be. Of course it's one game.
• 1:12:25
  So we know that. But like, I do think that Olivia
• 1:12:29
  Miles adds A dynamism to that team.
• 1:12:33
  Freeze Courtney Williams up to play her natural position at the
• 1:12:36
  shooting guard. Courtney even said that at the
• 1:12:39
  post game she was like I get to play my my partner.
• 1:12:42
  I love, I love Nissan. Courtney Williams.
• 1:12:44
  She's so good, such a good human.
• 1:12:46
  All right, that's all I had. We.
• 1:12:49
  Yeah, let's. Moving on, wrap up here.
• 1:12:52
  All right, what to watch this weekend?
• 1:12:54
  We've got a couple games per league that we think you should
• 1:12:57
  watch. Sunday, May 17th at 1:30 PM
• 1:13:02
  Central on Peacock. We've got Las Vegas versus
• 1:13:06
  Atlanta, so this is Angel Reese's home debut at State Farm
• 1:13:11
  Arena. Yeah, We've talked a lot about,
• 1:13:14
  we talked a lot about the Aces blowout loss in their first
• 1:13:17
  game. We did not talk about the fact
• 1:13:19
  that they turned around and did a blowout win to the Sparks on
• 1:13:23
  Sunday. So that was just one day after
• 1:13:26
  that, that loss. So I think.
• 1:13:29
  Speaking of Sparks, I think they signed Kate Martin developmental
• 1:13:34
  deal, yeah. Yeah, that was also when I'll
• 1:13:38
  save it. For a while, yeah.
• 1:13:39
  We'll, we'll, yeah, we'll talk. Then we got Seattle Storm versus
• 1:13:43
  Indiana Fever Sunday, May 17th at 6:00 PM on Peacock.
• 1:13:48
  So Fever looking at O and one right now need to respond.
• 1:13:53
  And then you, yeah, you got this young Storm team.
• 1:13:55
  Yeah, Fauje doing the two small on Britney Griner.
• 1:14:00
  Also so she did the too small like down low with her hand.
• 1:14:03
  Yeah. Apparently Paige does the too
• 1:14:05
  small like your. Pinch fingers, Cunningham.
• 1:14:07
  She was like you, too small. But I think.
• 1:14:10
  Hers made more sense because she just, she just bowled Cunningham
• 1:14:14
  over so it was more of like a like.
• 1:14:17
  You're not. You're not like big versus like
• 1:14:20
  like Britney Griner is like. 69 feet.
• 1:14:23
  Tall. And so Alfage is trying to say
• 1:14:25
  like, you're too small. All right, NWSL, we've got the
• 1:14:28
  Kansas City Current versus the Houston Dash on Friday at 7:00
• 1:14:32
  PM on prime. Like we said, Kansas City is
• 1:14:36
  climbing the table. Houston's been sliding.
• 1:14:39
  See you what happens here. Geez, that's a good one.
• 1:14:43
  Then we've got Portland Thorns versus Angel City FC Sunday, May
• 1:14:48
  17th at 5:00 PM Central on ESPN Two.
• 1:14:52
  Yeah, I mean, Portland's the the table leader coming off that
• 1:14:55
  loss. Angel City has struggle,
• 1:14:57
  struggled, but I don't know if I'd ever count to that team out.
• 1:15:01
  It'll be fun to watch that one. And then finally, we've got Utah
• 1:15:05
  Royals versus Racing Louisville Sunday at 7:00 PM on NWSL.
• 1:15:10
  Plus, like we said, 468 plus minutes without allowing a goal
• 1:15:15
  for Utah. Yeah, I want to watch.
• 1:15:18
  I've definitely want to. Like I'm intrigued to see how
• 1:15:20
  long they can keep that. Streak going.
• 1:15:22
  It's finally a game that you want to watch, and it's not at
• 1:15:24
  9:00 PM at night. Thank.
• 1:15:26
  Goodness, I want to know. I'm going to look up before this
• 1:15:29
  game like what's the longest shutout streak by a?
• 1:15:32
  Team. Is it more than this?
• 1:15:34
  I I'm trying to I saw the stat today.
• 1:15:36
  It was either. They might get it was.
• 1:15:38
  Either high fives or low sixes I think.
• 1:15:40
  OK, so they. They could get there.
• 1:15:42
  Could if in the game or maybe yeah.
• 1:15:46
  PWHL Like we said, we're waiting on this Minnesota, Montreal game
• 1:15:50
  to happen and then we'll see. Probably that's on Tuesday,
• 1:15:54
  probably Friday or Saturday. Friday, Sunday would make the
• 1:15:59
  most. See a Friday, Sunday.
• 1:16:01
  And then last up, we've got Women's Elite rugby.
• 1:16:06
  All these games are on Women's Sports Network.
• 1:16:08
  We've got Boston Banshees versus Denver Onyx Saturday at 4:00
• 1:16:12
  Central, New York X Isles versus Chicago Tempest Sunday at 1:00
• 1:16:17
  PM Central, and the Twin City Gemini versus the Bay Breakers
• 1:16:21
  Sunday at 4:00 central. We have got to tune in this
• 1:16:24
  weekend and finally get a look at this.
• 1:16:26
  We are going to, yeah, we are going to felt like I had
• 1:16:33
  something to add to that, but we are going to.
• 1:16:35
  Yeah, we're going to. All right, winners and losers.
• 1:16:39
  Who's your loser? Oh man, my, there's a lot of
• 1:16:46
  losers. I mean, you got norovirus or
• 1:16:49
  something That is not confirmed. Just to be clear, we don't know.
• 1:16:54
  What it is? We're just saying there's some
• 1:16:55
  illness I should be more responsible, some illness
• 1:16:58
  flowing through the Montreal team that sucks.
• 1:17:03
  No matter how you slice it, that's a loser.
• 1:17:05
  The Valkyries waving Kate Martin is a real big loser.
• 1:17:11
  I think the fan base there was like shocked.
• 1:17:15
  She she was like and and and to be fair, we all can sit here and
• 1:17:20
  be like, we know that you're trying to build a team that's
• 1:17:22
  going to win games and that she just wasn't an ingredient for
• 1:17:25
  that team. Like she even I saw a little
• 1:17:27
  clip with her. It does not take away the
• 1:17:31
  emotion of that and as somebody who was a long shot to get
• 1:17:38
  drafted like she was surprised drafted last two years.
• 1:17:42
  Ago, she was everyone. She was not at a table at the
• 1:17:45
  draft, she was in the crowd and got drafted.
• 1:17:47
  She was there to support Caitlin, just sitting in the
• 1:17:51
  crowd not expecting to get drafted and then got drafted by
• 1:17:55
  the Valkyries. And so like, what a like, cool
• 1:18:00
  thing to have happen or to buy the Aces actually, I think
• 1:18:03
  drafted her first. And so she did land on the
• 1:18:07
  Sparks as a developmental roster player.
• 1:18:09
  She just seems like somebody you'd want in your program.
• 1:18:12
  Like her attitude's great. She brings a lot of energy, but
• 1:18:16
  really, really heartbreaking. And then my other loss, I am a
• 1:18:24
  little like, it's a little, I think just as this W season goes
• 1:18:32
  on, a, we talked about like the online fandom is like a little
• 1:18:37
  wild. And obviously we can try and we
• 1:18:39
  avoid that as much as we can. But like we get a lot of our
• 1:18:43
  stories and some of the talking points and like looking through
• 1:18:46
  some of the social media stuff and getting updates.
• 1:18:49
  And so it's hard to avoid. I think this is probably our
• 1:18:54
  third or fourth episode in a row where we've called out Threads
• 1:18:57
  as being a little toxic. Yeah, so don't go there.
• 1:19:03
  And then I just, I continue to be a little bit perplexed and
• 1:19:10
  miffed by how Caitlin Clark shows up on the court.
• 1:19:16
  I I don't love the. Like there were just a few
• 1:19:21
  moments in that Wings Fever game that and again, I wasn't
• 1:19:26
  watching the whole game. So I don't have all the
• 1:19:27
  contacts, but like she just seems to think she should get
• 1:19:30
  calls whenever she wants calls and like then nothing's a call
• 1:19:34
  on her anything like that. And so I just Speaking of like
• 1:19:38
  opposites and leadership, like Kate Martin, somebody you really
• 1:19:42
  want on your team. Caitlin Clark.
• 1:19:44
  I'll be a generational talent, fantastic set of skills.
• 1:19:48
  She just, I keep, I keep waiting for her to show me like she's a
• 1:19:53
  teammate, a person I want on my team and she's just doesn't show
• 1:19:58
  it. My my loser, I mean really was
• 1:20:03
  the the PWHL scheduling and the whole idea, just the whole like
• 1:20:07
  infrastructure idea that like that they're kind of going to be
• 1:20:10
  second fiddle to NHL. Unless I was thinking more about
• 1:20:14
  it as we're even recording. This is like, you know, I don't
• 1:20:18
  know if it's something that's going to be where you know what,
• 1:20:22
  what amount of teams right now play in arena's actually owned
• 1:20:27
  by the NHL teams or just they're owned separately and rented out
• 1:20:30
  to NHL teams. There's some difference there
• 1:20:32
  and how that works. I think that's something I want
• 1:20:35
  to look into next week, but I think just that whole thing is a
• 1:20:38
  mess. Yeah, Good place to start with
• 1:20:40
  that is Vancouver is actually primary tenant.
• 1:20:45
  And so they're actually the model I think the PWHL would
• 1:20:49
  love to have, but that's just not feasible when you need the
• 1:20:54
  infrastructure already built out, so.
• 1:20:57
  All right, winners, I'm singing with PWHL.
• 1:21:05
  I've got I've got Ottawa Charge and the Detroit city of Detroit
• 1:21:10
  as a whole. Yeah, I think that's.
• 1:21:13
  Ottawa being the underdog, beating Detroit was fun.
• 1:21:18
  Fun series and just Detroit deserves A-Team.
• 1:21:22
  They are hockey town. They're not a, they're not a
• 1:21:24
  whole state of hockey like. They're not a state of hockey,
• 1:21:26
  but they're they're hockey. Town so.
• 1:21:30
  I also like I think the first thing that popped into my head
• 1:21:33
  was the the Frost win in game 4 just like to come.
• 1:21:38
  I mean, you have to win the frost continue to prove time and
• 1:21:43
  again that they will not go away.
• 1:21:47
  They're they're always in it. But I think to I'm really
• 1:21:52
  excited that the WS back. I think there was a ton of,
• 1:21:55
  like, it was fun to have kind of those games flying around over
• 1:21:59
  the weekend. And I had mentioned in last
• 1:22:02
  week's episode that like, I just think that this season is so
• 1:22:06
  critical coming off the back of that CBA negotiation.
• 1:22:11
  You got these broadcast deals and all this stuff going on.
• 1:22:14
  Like, how does that show? And like most of the games that
• 1:22:18
  I saw footage of, there were a lot of people at these games.
• 1:22:22
  They were good games. They were physical games.
• 1:22:25
  We didn't talk. This would go on my losers
• 1:22:27
  column. But the refereeing still needs
• 1:22:29
  some work. There's inconsistencies there,
• 1:22:32
  but the energy around that right now is really, really great.
• 1:22:37
  And so I love to see that. Yeah, that's my.
• 1:22:45
  That's my winner. All right, you can find us on
• 1:22:48
  RTG under score pod on Instagram and the ever so toxic threads.
• 1:22:54
  We try not to be toxic on there. Also RTG pod.com sub stack at
• 1:22:59
  raisingthegameraisingthegamepod@gmail.com and I think I hit them all.
• 1:23:07
  I wouldn't know. Yeah, you, you, you have that
• 1:23:09
  run. I barely know, but yeah, that's
• 1:23:13
  what we got. Come back and join us next week.
• 1:23:15
  We'd appreciate you all being here.
• 1:23:17
  Yeah. Appreciate it.
• 1:23:18
  Talk soon. Bye bye.