The 9 Biggest Questions Heading into MLP’s First Event of 2025

We are unabashedly proponents of the team format being the best format to watch in pro pickleball. That has not changed despite the lack of money and effort being put in by a handful of teams, the watering down of competition and the inability to understand the potential ramifications when making a rule change. The product is still fun because it is different and exciting, and we are really looking forward to seeing how things play out in this condensed MLP scheduling format.

One thing that has always been tough at MLP events is keeping track of everything that is going on. With all 16 Premier teams in action in Orlando this weekend, it will likely be the hardest weekend to figure out what is going on along with new rosters and new rules. At the same time, we get to see all the Premier teams in action and get to see how the theoretical roster construction translates into real, on-court results. That’s fun!

Today, we are going to highlight the things that we have our eye on most by answering the 9 biggest questions we have before MLP Orlando.

1. Who are the most intriguing players to watch at the first event?

There are 4 players we’ll be keeping a very close eye on.

Eric Oncins is intriguing from both a play and chemistry perspective. It will be fascinating to see how he and Alshon gel in the first event together as two big personalities who play a very aggressive style of pickleball. The Ranchers play Brooklyn (formerly DC), Atlanta, Columbus and Chicago, which won’t be a cakewalk of a schedule by any means to start the year.

This will be Rachel Rohrabacher’s first event since being dropped by Anna Bright. Rohrabacher’s did not bring anything near her best level in the Girlies final main draw loss together against the Kawamoto’s. Brooklyn (formerly DC) has big time championship aspirations and will need Rohrabacher to be the engine for this interesting roster. Their final match in Orlando is a juicy one against Rohrbacher’s former doubles partner, Anna Bright, and the St. Louis Shock.

Andrei Daescu has cemented himself as one of the best men in pickleball. He was underrated when he was picked by the Orlando Squeeze in 2023 and AZ put together a flawed roster around him in 2024. Now that Columbus has spent big money to acquire the big men and the rest of their brand new roster, they are counting on Daescu to bring a group together that, on paper, could contend for a title. Can Daescu be that lead dog for the Sliders?

3 of their 6 Orlando matches are against very tough teams – New Jersey, Dallas and Texas. Columbus also plays 12 of their 25 matches in the first 2 weeks of the MLP season (yes, seriously). With what looks to be a very friendly schedule at the next event in Columbus, Daescu and the Sliders better figure things out quickly as a group.

Meghan Dizon is probably tired of hearing how much pressure she is under to play with ALW but the best way to combat the narrative is to get some dubs. As a title contender, New Jersey will be favored in most of its early season matchups until proven otherwise and the Orlando event will be no different as they play Columbus, Brooklyn (formerly DC), Atlanta, Phoenix, LA and St. Louis. Their next event in Austin could get dicey if the 5’s come away with anything worse than a 4-2 record this weekend.

2. Which teams are the most interesting teams to keep an eye on?

We probably covered it to a good degree in the players to watch question. Columbus and New Jersey will be fascinating for different reasons as we have already highlighted.

However, we may be most interested to see how some of these bottom 8 teams look in MLP. The Phoenix Flames should be must watch pickleball for at least the first couple of events of the season – they only have two matches in Orlando. Our sense is that things could go poorly and that will make them far less interesting later in the season. They only have matches in Orlando but if they can show up as a frisky, spoiler type of team, 2025 could be a fun year.  

We’re also probably more curious than most to see how the consensus two worst teams fare in Orlando.  The Hustlers and Hard Eights only have 2 matches so we’ll see how much we can gather from such a small sample. However, if the early returns are really bad, it may tell us everything that we thought we already knew.  

3. Is Ben Johns going to be mopey Ben?

Carolina one of the teams that will only play 2 matches in Orlando. In 2025, an MLP team featuring Ben Johns is going to be a heavy underdog in both matches to start off the year against Columbus and Dallas. What we saw from Ben last year is that he would begin events with energy and effort, but that early effort would be short lived as the frustration of his team’s lack of success would lead to classic mopey Ben behavior.

Another rebranding for Carolina cannot distract from their sad roster construction around the best player in the world. Yes, Ben is still the best in the world but the days of Ben taking over 70-80% of the court and winning are over. Ben needs to be playing at near his top level for Carolina to have a chance against almost all of their opponents. Does bringing the band back together with brother Collin only for MLP bring any extra juice for Ben or does he shut down like he did in 2024 the moment any adversity hits?

Mopey Ben is bad for pro pickleball, but we still laugh every time we see him come to play.  

4. Who will be the first starter benched as a healthy scratch?

One of the topics that feels like it has gotten lost in all the roster construction and rule change discussions is the fact that we have 6-player rosters. Although most of the subs have little to no chance of seeing any court time outside of an injury need, there will be teams that decide to play their bench players over their starters.

There’s a clear trend that the non-Premier quality women drafted as starters could be fighting for playing time during the season. The two most obvious early bench options are Helena Spiridis and Mehvish Safdar.

The Hustlers drafted Spiridis with one of their starter selectionse, but it seems like there is a pretty good chance they go with Ling Wei Kong over Spiridis (we can’t rule out Dominique Schaefer either), who likely isn’t ready to compete at a Challenger level right now. The Utah Black Diamonds paid real money for Safdar, but there is a strong likelihood we see Genie Erokhina either start the season for Utah or come in early if Safdar doesn’t perform.

Other early female bench players who might see playing time are Alli Phillips with Orlando, Liz Truluck with the Carolina Hogs and we also wouldn’t be completely shocked if the Flames and their wild management group decided to start Alex Walker over Genie Bouchard.

The only guys that are probably at risk of losing their starting roles early are Ryan Fu and Ivan Jakovljevic. It’s quite possible that Blaine Hovenier is a starter in Orlando.

Also, someone is going to end up stealing Helena Jansen from the Ranchers. She is putting in the work and travelling to Austin to train with the Ranchers coach and GM, Ryan Dawidjan. It’s hard to believe that a bench female with talent that really cares isn’t going to improve enough to be stolen during the first waiver wire period.

5. Will side out scoring to 11 make a difference to the results?

We are inclined to believe that the scoring system shouldn’t impact the results significantly. Real Clear Stats has data from a couple of years ago to show that a side out scoring game to 11 is analogous with a rally scoring game to 21. While game-to-game results may not be impacted significantly, we expect to see the appearance of more blowout games simply because winning on serve in rally scoring makes it difficult to blow teams out. So, our prediction is that there are going to be more games within matches that do not feel as close.

We have gotten so used to rally scoring at MLP that we may overstating its positive impact on entertainment and tension in the team format. The first MLP in 2021 featured rally scoring games to 15 and we thought that event was outstanding. There’s no reason to believe the change in scoring will substantially alter the product, but we do have reservations about whether there is a noticeable dip in excitement as a result.

6. Are the Chicago Slice underrated?

The Slice received overwhelmingly positive press following the draft because they put together a decently competitive roster entirely from scratch. Since that time, the positivity has netted out to pundits viewing them as a non-contending team that should get to a play-in match.

We wouldn’t have thought of this Slice team as underrated after the draft, but it does seem that we are slightly higher than market putting them at #8 in our pre-season power rankings – everyone else has them at #9 or #10. If you squint a little harder, the Slice could either be better or more flawed than what meets the eye.

Their women keep their floor quite high compared to any other team that doesn’t have two capable Premier female starters, and they have two men with hypothetical upside. Their women are due to beat some of the better teams on paper here and there, and that could create chaos with their men feeling like they don’t have anything to lose when they go out there.

That being said, James Ignatowich as an MLP leading guy has not worked out. Max Freeman hasn’t been getting any good doubles wins. And what do you really get with Callie Smith and Vivienne David in 2025?

That’s why the #8 spot felt like the perfect goldilocks spot to have Chicago going into the season and we are a little surprised no one else is seeing it that way.  

7. Is the Brooklyn Pickleball Team (formerly DC) a good enough Dreambreaker roster?

Going into the season, Brooklyn is in that awkward team building predicament. They are expected to be a playoff team, but the consensus is that they aren’t a true championship contender. Internally, the two of us have a slight disagreement about where Brooklyn stands as a Dreambreaker team, which could be an important difference maker in the regular season when it comes to playoff seeding.

Rachel Rohrbacher has shown she can get real singles wins on tour and Dekel Bar is undoubtedly capable of getting some wins. Even though Riley Newman and Jackie Kawamoto can hold up to a certain degree in a Dreambreaker, the Brooklyn roster features 4 players who not play singles on any regular basis on tour.

They will play Texas, New Jersey, Miami, Orlando and St. Louis this weekend, and you would probably favor them in a Dreambreaker against only Texas. Dreambreakers are volatile but you also need a certain baseline level of capability to ensure that volatility is there.

Again, we disagree between the two of us as to whether Brooklyn has the needed baseline level of capability in Dreambreakers, and it will be fun to see how their non-singles group performs throughout the season.

8. Will there be any other franchise city swaps?

Speaking of the Brooklyn Pickleball Team, it was weird to get news on the Saturday of the Easter long weekend that the Brooklyn Aces were swapping cities with the DC Pickleball Team. Understanding that the DC franchise has closer ties to Brooklyn and vice versa with Brooklyn to DC, especially with Kevin Durant no longer playing on a Brooklyn based NBA franchise, the timing was odd to say the least.

If this was going to happen, it is better that it happens sooner rather than later as there aren’t really established fan bases for the most part and the players do not live in the cities themselves, unlike other established pro sports. However, it is still another example of a lack of continuity on MLP’s part that can make establishing a brand even more difficult. We are still in the early days of MLP but there has to be some steadiness to the ship at some point if team pickleball is going to become any semblance of a thing for more casual viewers.

We didn’t know franchise city swaps were a possibility so you can never say never that it won’t happen again in 2025.

9. How should the MLP teams be tiered going into the season? 

We didn’t tier our power rankings that we posted last week so we’ll take a stab at doing that here. 

Championship Favorites: Dallas Flash, St. Louis Shock, New Jersey 5’s

Hopeful Contenders: Texas Ranchers, Columbus Sliders, Brooklyn Pickleball Team (formerly DC)

Frisky Play-in Teams: Chicago Slice, LA Mad Drops

Better Than Average of the Below Average: Orlando Squeeze, Phoenix Flames, Carolina Hogs

Interesting but Fatally Flawed: Utah Black Diamonds, Atlanta Bouncers, Miami Pickleball Club

Bad: New York Hustlers, SoCal Hard Eights 

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