I’m going to seek the wild haunts of this world

Masafusa Shibuya, satin, organdy, and silk thread

Work referenced: The Clone Wars, Season 3, Episode 17, "Ghosts of Mortis"

Art description: Anakin Skywalker stands in the Well of the Dark Side on Mortis with his lightsaber raised, having been given a vision of his future by the Son and tempted to the Dark Side.

Era: The Clone Wars

Location: Well of the Dark Side, on Mortis

Work referenced: The Mandalorian

Art description: Kuiil, an Ugnaught man, strokes the face of one of his tamed blurrgs, which is equipped with a saddle and a bridle for riding. Technology from Kuiil's moisture farm can be seen in the distance.

Era: New Republic

Location: Arvala-7

Nishimoto Ryota

-it’s the main way to create more high paid positions to play women’s hockey in North America, as well as get people in coaching roles and training roles and such

-I was of the opinion that six teams was too little to start with when you’re creating a league out of an already two established entities where one league had 7 teams + a whole tournament barnstorming style

-I am not overly concerned about the talent pool, I’ve seen people cite Seattle and Vancouver’s performance as reasons to worry about the talent pool but those rosters have a lot of players who performed well in this league before, and I think if anything it’s more proof that the talent differential between teams is still extremely limited and a lot of good performance is mostly coming from ability to build chemistry, travel impact, etc

-I also think it’ll be good to create more spots and allow more unpolished players in the league like, not a ton, but we’ve seen players like giaquinto or mackinnon who were able to have more development time take big steps forward and like, well players are mostly finished products by the time they’re in their age 22 season and done with the ncaa, and the Sdhl can help, there is very little that gets you 100% ready for the physicality and speed of the PWHL other than just getting in there and gettin reps, and having just a handful of more spots per team for teams to invest in players with that will be good

-by expanding to Seattle and Vancouver and having the issues they did this year with travels they’ve also been putting themselves in the corner where they kind of need to put teams between them and the original six teams

-it’s probably better to just rip the band aid off and do it now especially with post Olympic hype + most players being on one to three year contracts now where turnover is big anyway

-one of the most important things this league has ahead of it from a business standpoint is getting a valuable US television deal and they’re going to need more us teams to get their value up

It comes across as “There can’t possibly be that many women’s players who are good enough.” In a cycle of women aren’t as good or there are inherently less good women at professional sports.

Seattle and Vancouver’s issues being boiled down to just the expansion happening at all as opposed to travel and the Olympics playing major parts is so silly. But also I feel like the effects could have been mitigated if they had a longer preseason to gel and form team identities, along with just more general training. Vancouver and Seattle had their star players taken out for large parts of the season because of injuries and sure original teams were able to take that blow a lot better when they had injuries, but they have also had more time playing together!

The idea that the talent wouldn’t be built up as soon as resources became available is laughable. What was one of the big stories of the Olympics? How far Italy/France had come from where they started once their countries put a little energy into creating national teams? How much the Swedish team suffered when they lost access to resources and funding and how strong they are now being built back up. But sure the talent is inherit and the PWHL could do nothing to help get people up to speed if they were below the skill level they wanted.

Which speaking of, are we suppose to pretend like all the countries with national teams don’t have a talent pool we can pull from? Like the Olympics wasn’t the perfect time for the PWHL to look at the national teams and scout for like 20 players who they like the looks of? That they can’t go to worlds where the talent is also amazing but suffers from lacks of funding and resources.

I’m sure there are also former PHF and NWSL players who are still around. SDHL players who already have long and accomplished careers. NCAA players who get drafted but there aren’t enough roaster spots for them to stay on the roaster. The reserve players in the PWHL already there.

I’m going to point out (again) how limited the goalie spots are in the PWHL and having no place to put young talent and keep them sharp is going to kick us and them in the ass one day.

And I don’t care if “the product gets worse” which wow I hate that statement. Thank you. My product is seeing women get invested in and seeing what they can achieve. The product is the amazing community around the PWHL. Of course it’s good hockey, but it’ll be better hockey the more women are invested in.

Even if the teams aren’t as good one year after expansion (rolling my eyes) it’s not like there aren’t way to mitigate that and get people up to speed.

Also- I don’t care about the PWHL as a business. Rich white guys blow so much more money on other random things for longer all the time. If a white guy wants his name to be on a championship cup, who already owns like two other sports team and a boat load of money I’m not worried about him.

And everyone worried about the PWHL as a business had also never seen the financial records or knows the leagues plans. They are making at best guesses, and at worst nonsense fear mongering. Is there not a better time to reimagine and expand of what we think a sports league is and how they are funded?