This week on The IX Sports Podcast Hockey Edition, host Maya Smith is joined by New York Sirens’ beat reporter Breanna Ebisch, to break down what the team looks like after a busy expansion season.
The pair begin the podcast by discussing the top PWHL news of the week: the case of the (briefly) missing Walter Cup.
The replica of the Walter Cup went missing for several days this past week as it was in transit to Lethbridge for Montréal Victoire’s Dara Greig’s day with the Cup. The Cup was eventually located, but its brief stint out of the spotlight has left fans and journalists with a myriad of questions.
Then the two turned to discuss the New York Sirens, which lost several key players during the PWHL Expansion process this year — though it avoided being completely torn apart.
“New York has a pretty like solid number I would say just kind of looking at their current roster, draft picks excluded, like a pretty reasonable number of forwards and defenders, and three goaltenders, which is always a nice thing to see going … into training camp,” Smith said.
Smith started the conversation with a discussion about goaltenders.
Kayle Osborne left the team in expansion, but the Sirens did sign Elaine Chuli, and maintained Callie Shanahan and Kaley Doyle on their roster.
Ebisch said Shanahan is a favorite to get the top goaltending job, since she played backup to Osborne last year.
When asked about the weakest spot for the Sirens, Ebisch started by saying that the team retained most of its defenders — which is good. But they did lose a lot on the offensive end.
“I do think the the chemistry that the forward lines had last year was probably the best I’ve seen it as a New York Sirens team as a whole. And losing so many of those players and having to now fill those gaps, I think is might — I don’t want to say it’s going to cause a problem or might be a problem, but definitely … it’s a challenge to meet the the needs that are up there now,” Ebisch said. She noted that the team has retained Kristýna Kaltounková and Sarah Filier, who are both strong on the offensive end of the ice.
Tune in to hear more analysis of the Sirens’ roster and to hear more about the schedule — or lack thereof — for the next PWHL season.
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