You may not know it by name, but Conditioned Pain Modulation (CPM), the sensation of one source of pain lessening the severity of another, is a fairly universal experience. On an unrelated note, while on bedrest after surgery, I decided to pass the time by watching back every single power play opportunity the New York Sirens had in 2025-26.
Okay, okay, perhaps that’s a bit harsh. The Sirens’ PP ranked sixth in the PWHL, and their 13 goals on the player advantage equaled the two teams directly above them. However, their 12.7% success rate would have also been good for sixth in the league last season, when there wasn’t a seventh or eighth place to occupy. Alas, Toronto and Vancouver’s units barely escaping single-digit percentages only does so much to improve the perception of New York’s, and does nothing at all when looking at it in a vacuum, as I am.
A large part of that perception is the difference between the expectation set at the start of the season and the reality at the end. The Sirens had the league’s second-best power play in 2024-25 and emerged from the wreckage of expansion with an exciting new forward group. Anticipating their run of form to continue, or even improve, was reasonable. Yet, here we are, with New York missing the playoffs by a margin that could have been entirely made up by a timely power play goal here and there. So, what exactly happened?
Substituting Shelton
The best offences can’t function without their defence, and the unfortunate reality of the Sirens revamping their forward core is that they sacrificed one of the very best play-driving defenders in the game to do so. Yes, I recognize the surface-level irony of pinpointing a player that didn’t record a power play point this season on one of the two teams worse than the Sirens, but I attribute that more than anything to the Sceptres’ (mis)usage of her, and that’s a can of worms I’ll let Melissa or Geremy open if they’d like to.
Ella Shelton led all PWHL defenders in power play goals in 2024-25 with three, a total that matches every single Sirens blueliner combined in 2025-26. She’s an excellent skater that hardly misses a beat with the puck on her stick, a vital trait for leading breakouts towards the offensive zone, and becoming a mobile scoring threat once there. What Shelton brought to New York’s PP simply wasn’t replicable by anyone on the 25-26 roster.
The Sirens, nonetheless, had to fill the void somehow, and they had a few options available to them to try. Jaime Bourbonnais entered the season second all-time behind Shelton in power play goals among defenders. New acquisition Jincy Roese was coming off the eighth-most productive season by a blueliner in the league’s first two years. Captain Micah Zandee-Hart had seven career power play points to her name, and Allyson Simpson quickly showed she wasn’t afraid to put the puck on net in her rookie season, averaging 3.4 shots per game over her first seven contests.
However, New York instead tapped sophomore Maja Nylén Persson to quarterback PP1. Certainly not a flashy choice, and a seemingly dubious one given the accolades of those listed above, and it follows that Nylén Persson performed… actually pretty damn well?
Maja Not the Problem
Having earned a reputation as one of the Sirens’ more reliable defensive defenders, it’s easy to forget Nylén Persson has quite the scoring touch. The three-time SDHL Defender of the Year racked up 192 points in 180 games over a five-plus season stint with Brynäs IF, including 16 goals and 65 points with the player advantage.
The primary difference between Nylén Persson and her power play predecessor, Shelton, is mobility. Nylén Persson’s not a bad skater by any stretch, but lacks the explosiveness of Shelton. While she makes up for it through her positional awareness, that strength of hers is comparatively less impactful when gunning for offence on the power play. Whereas Shelton excelled on the breakout by putting herself in good position to take space through her skating, Nylén Persson relies on her teammates to do that heavy lifting, but sets them up to do so with good vision and patience.
It’s a different approach, but one that works all the same, as New York’s first group rarely failed to gain the zone with possession throughout the season. Once set up, Nylén Persson was among the more frequent one-timer options for the Sirens – something that I’ll touch on more further along – and her passes found the tape of teammates’ sticks with notable consistency.
The latter, as it turns out, is something the rest of the top unit very much struggled with.
Their Own Worst Enemy
All hyperlinks (and there are a lot of them) going forward lead to condensed game archives on the PWHL’s YouTube channel, timestamped to the play in question.
There’s a uniqueness to analysis done in hindsight that only truly started resonating with me at this point. When the power plays are periods or even games apart, when the games are days or even weeks apart, and when the hockey season spans more than a calendar season, something like this can fly under the radar as merely a moment of frustration. When you’ve got the full season at your fingertips to isolate each power play one after another, it suddenly becomes a concerningly obvious trend.
As it turns out, the New York Sirens’ power play is quite good at killing New York Sirens power plays.
It could be a pass right to an opponent, it could be a flubbed reception, or it could be an ill-advised shot. It could be Kristýna Kaltounková, it could be Sarah Fillier, or it could be Casey O’Brien. Regardless of what or who it is, New York’s top unit was good for at least one costly unforced error a game.
This nasty habit is somewhat mitigated by the power play’s ability to quickly regroup, often aided by Kayle Osborne’s puck-playing prowess. However, what even the best recovery cannot stop is their opponent’s ability to make a line change, preventing New York from taking advantage of the No Escape Rule and making their second go-round more difficult to cash in than the one they just threw away.
Alternatively, of course, the Sirens may have simply pissed off the hockey gods.
I digress, so let’s move on to PP2. While PP1 got past the opponents’ blue line with ease and then fell apart once they got there, the second unit was the polar opposite. Controlled zone entries were a rarity for them, and there’s one player that particularly stands out as a culprit.
Wheeling, Not Dealing
I’ll be honest, this one shocked me. Maddi Wheeler was an all-around revelation for the Sirens in her rookie season, tying for fifth in team scoring and being one of only three forwards league-wide to rack up at least 50 shots and 50 hits.
That said, watching her on the power play evokes the definition of insanity.
New York’s fourth game of the season against Seattle was the first in which they had significant time with the player advantage. In the second unit’s initial appearance, Wheeler takes a breakout pass and skates up the left wall with Cayla Barnes pressuring and Lyndie Lobdell back in support. By the time Wheeler reaches the hash marks, none of her teammates are in frame. Barnes forces her to turn and she loses an edge, allowing Jenna Buglioni an easy clear. A frustrating play, but not something to write home about, especially on its own.
Anyway, here’s Wheeler skating directly into opponent coverage in the first period of their very next home game. Here’s her doing it again. And one more time for the road, in the same game, even.
Of course, she wasn’t the only one at fault (see: Paetyn Levis and Anne Cherkowski doing the same, for example). However, the second unit turned to Wheeler for their entries so often that she became representative of the issue with PP2 as a whole. Without Nylén Persson’s first pass or the speed and shiftiness of Fillier, they struggled to cleanly gain the zone in the time they were afforded. To top it all off, more often than not, PP2’s shift began with the need for a zone entry, coming on for PP1 after a lost possession and clear down the ice. Considering we’ve already established how prone the top unit was to that, it’s easy to imagine how two minutes can fly by without much to show.
Alternatively, of course, the Sirens may have simply pissed off the hockey gods.
A Quick Fix?
Combing through and pointing out every shortcoming isn’t exactly constructive if you just leave it at that. To determine where the Sirens’ power play can improve, we need to look at what went right for them as well. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of New York power play goals from this season, and a brief description of how they happened.
- Levis makes a deceptive pass to O’Brien who roofs it with no hesitation.
- O’Brien completes her hat trick with a spinning shot out of a scramble.
- Kaltounková whacks in a loose puck directly following a blocked point shot.
- Kristin O’Neill one-times in a centering pass from O’Brien.
- Nylén Persson finds O’Brien cross-ice for a tap-in.
- Taylor Girard caps off a tic-tac-toe from a sharp angle.
- Simpson caps off a tic-tac-toe from a much less sharp angle.
- O’Brien shoots for a rebound and Nylén Persson pinches down to finish.
There’s a common thread between all of these scoring plays; the puck left the goal scorer’s stick just as fast as it got there, and gave the opposing goalie very little, if any, time to set themselves. This is why I specifically highlighted Nylén Persson’s volume of one-timers earlier. Getting shots off quickly necessitates an equally quick reaction from the opposing defenders and goaltender, creating chaos in front of the net even if the puck doesn’t find its way to the back of it. Yet, despite it comprising the majority of their power play goals, the one-timer wasn’t a factor for New York on far too regular a basis.
This is mostly to do with how they set up, with O’Brien and Fillier playing on their forehand sides, but also to do with how much the Sirens ask out of Kaltounková to buoy their power play. While the Czech has easily their most threatening one-timer, she also proved to be their most effective option in the bumper position and in front of the net, making her absence down the stretch all the more impactful. As good as Kaltounková is, she can’t be in multiple places at once.
Conveniently, this is an issue that can be neatly addressed should New York end up picking third overall in the entry draft.
Tessa Janecke scored 22 power play goals over the course of her NCAA career, and the left-shot center lines up at the right circle on the PP with the United States’ senior national team. Having such a scoring threat in that spot would free Kaltounková up to wreak havoc in front, or allow her and Janecke to trade places on the fly for a more fluid power play overall.
Regardless of the personnel that will make up the 2026-27 edition of the New York Sirens, it all comes back around to the fundamentals. Hitting the tape with passes leads to a quicker pace of play. A quicker pace of play leads to penalty killers being forced to chase. Penalty killers being forced to chase leads to gaps in coverage, and those gaps in coverage are taken advantage of by hitting the tape of the open player. It’s all much easier said than done, as the last two thousand words have served to illustrate. But once the foundation is in place, the talent and creativity can take over, and the goals will come.
Alternatively, of course, the Sirens could simply not piss off the hockey gods.