PWHL Opening Face-Off

Well, it's another feature story from TigerBlog, with an added bonus. 

You can read about Princeton's extraordinary rebounders Ellie Mitchell and Caden Pierce and watch a video where they talk about how they do it with Ford Family Director of Athletics John Mack HERE.

Speaking of basketball, when TigerBlog wrote about Brian Taylor the other day, he didn't mention that at one point Taylor was once traded for one of the seven players in NBA history with multiple career streaks of 10 or more games with 30-plus points.

Who was it? 

The others on the list are Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Wilt Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor, Jerry West and the newest addition, Joel Embiid. None of them were ever traded for Brian Taylor.

That leaves only one. Hint - the trade sent Taylor from the Nets to the Kings, who at the time were the Kansas City-Omaha Kings. Another hint - the player traded for Taylor is in the Naismith Hall of Fame. You have probably heard that Jordan was cut from his high school varsity as a sophomore, but he's not the only Hall-of-Famer to have that happen. It also happened to the player who is the answer to the Brian Taylor trade question.

TigerBlog will give you until the end to figure it out.

In the meantime, since the subjects seem to be pro sports and trivia, here's a question for you: 

What are the six cities that are represented in the new Professional Women's Hockey League? Another hint: of the six, there are four that were considered "original six" NHL franchises.

The answer is New York, Boston, Montreal and Toronto, who were four of the NHL's original six, as well as Ottawa and Minneapolis. The two original six cities not represented are Chicago and Detroit.

The PWHL begins play Jan. 1, when New York is at Toronto in a game that will feature two of the four Princeton alums in the league. The four Princetonians are Claire Thompson (New York), Maggie Connors (Toronto), Rachel McQuigge (Ottawa) and Mariah Keopple (Montreal). The opening game of the league will be followed a day later by Montreal at Ottawa.

In all, teams will play 24 regular seasons games each, with a few at neutral sites. There will also be a break for the World Championships April 4-14 in Utica, N.Y.

Thompson, of course, is an Olympic gold medalist and World Champion already. Keopple, you may recall, was the one who scored the game-winning goal when Princeton defeated Cornell in overtime to win the 2020 ECAC championship.

As TB did some research, he found that the reaction to the team names wasn't exactly overwhelming. Here are excerpts from a Hockey News story:

* The proposed names of the Toronto Torch, Minnesota Superior, Montreal Echo, Boston Wicked, Ottawa Alert, and New York Sound were met with wide spanning criticism from fans, media, and onlookers.

* "To everyone saying the new PWHL names are AI generated: no way because ChatGPT did a way better job" 

* Meg Linehan, senior writer at The Athletic agreed writing "I know team names are hard or whatever but… Boston Wicked makes me want to actively fight whoever came up with it. Why would you do this. Why."

TigerBlog actually likes the Boston Wicked, since "Wicked" is a common phrase among Bostonians and the team color is green, which conjures up the Broadway musical, which is one of TB's all-time favorites. 

Regardless of names, and apparently, rather plain uniforms, the league itself seems to be on stabler footing than its predecessors. Additionally, any professional league for a major women's sport shows just how much progress has been made in the world of women's athletics. 

Such a league would have been unthinkable not that long ago. Ask former Ford Family Director of Athletics Mollie Marcoux Samaan or any of the other great Princeton women's hockey players of the past if they would have minded odd-sounding team names and plain uniforms. The answer would be a resounding "who cares."

The teams will be playing in various arenas, including for the New York team splitting its home games between the USB Arena (home of the Islanders) and the Total Mortgage Arena in Bridgeport. 

Come New Year's Day, it'll be worth following this league, and the four Princeton players who are part of its inaugural.

And the NBA trivia answer? That would be Nate (Tiny) Archibald, who at 6-1 wasn't so Tiny. Archibald averaged 18.8 points and 7.4 assists for his 12-year NBA career, which included a 1981 championship with the Celtics.