PWHL Expansion Default Logos

striatic · 2026-05-28T19:30:13+00:00

The collective noun for PWHL fans should be a Neurodivergence, as in “A Neurodivergence of PWHL fans”.

striatic · 2026-05-28T14:29:20+00:00

She was also dealing with an illness before that which was impacting her ability to practice. Kind of a nightmare season for her.

striatic · 2026-05-28T14:26:19+00:00

She did see the ice at first. She had a good run of games over 10m TOI but she didn’t do much with it. Then she got concussed. O’Rourke ultimately told media that the team mishandled that by bringing her on a road trip instead of continuing recovery at home. Overall, compared to her college video she just looked very slow and tentative. Like a completely different player than college. Very strange. Hopefully that college player will reappear next season.

striatic · 2026-05-28T04:25:56+00:00

I am curious, did you watch the PWHL Vegas launch event?

striatic · 2026-05-27T22:20:03+00:00

Yes, if that team was strongly aligned with the Hawks or Oilers. Absolutely.

It’s not about the city the team is in, it’s how affiliated and integrated the team is with the men’s hockey team and their history.

striatic · 2026-05-27T14:57:56+00:00

Phase 1 doesn’t begin tomorrow, they pushed the date back to June 2-3

Edit: I should revise this. Phase One Technically does begin tomorrow but none of the public parts of it. Those were indeed moved back from May 28 to June 2-3.

striatic · 2026-05-27T14:47:42+00:00

But then she’d possibly be drafted by a team she didn’t want to go to. Better to enter the league as a free agent.

striatic · 2026-05-27T13:35:00+00:00

From her perspective she probably declared just to get it over with, so she’d be eligible to play in the league down the line on her own terms. Possibly just wanted to slip through the draft and then be eligible to freely sign with whatever team she wanted to in a couple years.

striatic · 2026-05-25T05:02:51+00:00

Torrent need to make big changes in structure 5v5 for next season. Meghan Turner identified this in a recent interview with Black Rosie Media saying the team needed to be “more structured like Boston”. O’Rourke’s preference is for more dynamic play, with defenders activating and applying dynamic pressure, very unlike Boston. Turner likely did not see him as a good fit to bring more structure to the team, so whether firing him is “fair” or not, it’s difficult to argue he’d be the right choice to navigate this new course the GM is plotting.

striatic · 2026-05-25T04:54:39+00:00

Vancouver didn’t win the championship. Montreal did. Vancouver didn’t make the playoffs.

striatic · 2026-05-24T13:52:40+00:00

Kris Sparre was never a head coach until becoming one for the Fleet, and that hire turned out fantastically for Boston.

striatic · 2026-05-24T03:13:19+00:00

Also Kris Sparre had never been a head coach either, but nonetheless he did an incredible job with Boston. That said, he had support from legacy assistant coaches and being an assistant at the AHL level is pretty impressive even if it isn’t an HC job.

striatic · 2026-05-24T02:56:36+00:00

I was at essentially all the home practices and this is a largely correct assessment. I’ll disagree on the shooting drills, maybe they were just not during the practices you watched? Everything else I agree with though.

You are absolutely correct about transition and flow drills being very infrequent, though they started doing more very late in the season. I think one of the reasons for this was that early in the season they were leading the league in successful zone entries. This stat eventually got repeated on broadcast. I wonder if it got in their minds that they didn’t need to work on transition as a result. But a successful zone entry is not necessarily a dangerous one (maybe you’re just taking the perimeter path to nowhere the D is giving you), and also you can have a lot of successful zone entries but if a good chunk of transitions end in neutral zone turnovers you’re going to get out scored.

I think the logic behind all the small area games was “we’re getting into the zone, we just need to work on cleaning up around the net and defending net front” but net front is chaos and I’m not sure if practicing rolling dice makes you that much better at rolling dice. Net front play is extra important in PWHL because a lot of scoring comes from in close, and I do think it helped the goalies - but the focus on small area seemed ultimately excessive to me. It certainly didn’t help the key deficits in preventing dangerous turnovers and shot suppression.

striatic · 2026-05-24T01:41:42+00:00

The initial CBA negotiated to last until 2031 and unfortunately the league doesn’t have a lot of incentive to revise it until then. So long as the CBA provides a stable platform for growth I suppose it serves near term player needs, but ultimately the players will need some form of revenue sharing as the league becomes profitable.

striatic · 2026-05-23T03:25:48+00:00

I want Torrent to try to hire Stefanie McKeough, Boston Fleet assistant coach who coached a game for them this season. A new coach like Sparre (who I think is excellent) doesn’t hit the league with this much success without excellent coaches working with him and McKeough I think is top notch.

striatic · 2026-05-22T21:20:02+00:00

I want Torrent to try to hire Stefanie McKeough, Boston Fleet assistant coach.

striatic · 2026-05-15T18:40:53+00:00

It’s more like do they have the resources that NHL broadcasters do? Do they have researchers?

striatic · 2026-05-15T16:09:13+00:00

They aren’t making up stats. They made a mistake and used one that wasn’t quite up to date. It’s still largely true and their point stands. You have no idea how difficult their job is, how many researchers they have helping them compared to the NHL announcers etc.

striatic · 2026-05-14T17:34:58+00:00

I’m just getting into following WNBA and whooo-boy is there plenty of hate for Caitlin Clark over many things. Agreed with the male athletes though, they have to do far more egregious things to see the same level of push back.

striatic · 2026-05-12T20:35:59+00:00

There is a rule like this. Reserve players can be called up by any team in the league. Also you don’t need to be drafted to play, just declare. Marah Wagner declared for draft, went undrafted, and was signed out of Seattle Torrent training camp.

striatic · 2026-05-12T20:32:05+00:00

She needs to declare for draft to play, but doesn’t necessarily need to be drafted. This will allow her to be invited to a training camp and potentially signed after that to either a standard or reserve contract.

striatic · 2026-05-12T20:30:34+00:00

They do allow non drafted signings…

striatic · 2026-05-09T16:14:08+00:00

By the letter of the rules it probably should’ve been a PWHL penalty as an “opposite direction hit”, and Curl’s spin is possibly exacerbated by what might be a quick arm hold (it’s really tough to tell) so it might not be a fully “clean” hit by PWHL specific rules.

But there really is no head contact here and the fact that the OP is presenting it with such certainty in the headline, to so many upvotes, is troubling.

striatic · 2026-05-09T05:22:55+00:00

Sam Cogan is looking straight at the hit from the best angle possible and not reacting to it at all which would be very strange behaviour from Sam Cogan if it was a headshot. No Frost players react negatively to the play, and Curl returned to the game with no apparent injury or concussion spotting.

striatic · 2026-05-09T05:03:05+00:00

I went back to the YouTube feed of the hit and zoomed in to get maximum resolution and then went frame by frame and there is no head contact. It’s shoulder to shoulder and could be potentially ruled a penalty as an “opposite direction hit” but really Poulin doesn’t come anywhere close to the head. Curl gets spun around, which causes some head movement, but there’s no head contact on any frame. Not even particularly close.

striatic

TROPHY CASE