MLP Playoffs Finals – 4 Biggest Questions
The final weekend of the Major League Pickleball (MLP) season has arrived. 4 of the consensus top 5 preseason teams have battled their way through a fast-paced regular season and have put themselves in position to win a title. There is no question that the St. Louis Shock are the favorites going into the weekend. They are the only team to have swept their way through the quarterfinals. As the most battle tested group having played together for the past 3 seasons, the stars could not be aligning any better for the Shock to breakthrough with a title.
We will not be the only ones to point out that the last two seasons have demonstrated anything can happen. The Dallas Flash won the title as the #3 seed in 2024 and the Columbus Sliders upset their way to a 2025 championship. All bets are off in a short best of 3 playoff series where the always volatile Dreambreaker could be the deciding factor.
We’re not doing a full preview of the matchups as you can find that content elsewhere. Instead, we decided to go over the biggest questions in our mind heading into the final weekend of this MLP season.
Does Brooklyn have the Dreambreaker horses to get it done over New Jersey?
The New Jersey 5’s chose Brooklyn over Dallas as their semi-final matchup. Neither team was an ideal option, and you could put out a pretty solid case for either matchup being the right choice. One factor that we haven’t seen being discussed as much about the choice is the Dreambreaker advantage that New Jersey has over Brooklyn on paper.
With the addition of Federico Staksrud, the New Jersey 5’s are well positioned to match Brooklyn’s dangerous men (Haworth and Alshon), which puts their women in an incredibly good spot against the Brooklyn women. The Rachel Rohrabacher injury situation has been hard for us to wrap our heads around this year, but we’d be very surprised at this point if Rohrabacher is ready to go for a Dreambreaker. That means Brooklyn will be going with Hannah Blatt and Jackie Kawamoto, who split 1-1 against the Sliders in the quarterfinals two weeks ago.
Hannah Blatt can be best described as an athletic ball-maker in singles, but she should be overmatched by ALW and coming out with a split in any given 4-rally turn would be a massive win for Brooklyn. Jorja Johnson is a quality singles player but she might have as much variance in her singles level. The error prone spells make Jorja a relatively good matchup for Dreambreaker queen, Jackie Kawamoto.
Brooklyn benefitted in the quarterfinals from the Sliders singles specialists being very tight and they were tied at 18-18 before CJ Klinger took 3 points in a row off Chris Haworth. Brooklyn will also benefit from a nothing to lose mentality in a Dreambreaker, but the biggest matchup that decides a Dreambreaker will be how well Hannah Blatt can play Anna Leigh Waters.
Are New Jersey’s men good enough to win a title?
This is the most obvious question, but it has to be answered. Based on social media reporting, Noe Khlif is still practicing with Anna Leigh Waters so it seems that they are going to ride it out with those two. ALW and Noe went 0-2 in the quarterfinals, and the book is out on how teams are going to play this matchup with Noe seeing the vast majority of the balls. Alshon has always had a tough time against ALW, and the most interesting doubles match of the semi-finals may be ALW vs. Alshon, even if Noe Khlif is the focus.
Federico Staksrud and Will Howells have flown under the radar with all the Noe scrutiny, but it remains sub-optimal that Fed and Will are playing on their, well, sub-optimal sides in men’s doubles. At this point, they have to be the 4th best mens team of the remaining 4 men’s doubles group (i.e. last). This New Jersey team doesn’t need to avoid Dreambreakers, but they can no longer bank on 2 wins from ALW so they need to find some men’s wins if they want to go all the way.
How will Kate Fahey hold up under the most pressure packed weekend of her pickleball career?
The Shock have 3 battle-tested top 5 players on their roster. Anna Bright, Hayden Patriquin and Gabe Tardio have played a bunch of pressure packed matches over the past couple of years on the PPA and in the MLP arena. Outside of the playoff runs with the Shock and some singles finals, Kate Fahey does not have the experience that her teammates have on the biggest stage.
The “wanting it too bad” syndrome may have plagued the Shock in their efforts to win the past two seasons, but there is so much improvement from their roster overall that it would be a surprise to see this syndrome persist for another playoff run. The bigger question to us is whether Kate Fahey can handle the inevitable burden that she will carry as the x-factor for her team in doubles. Avoiding Dreambreakers can only happen if Fahey is playing her best ball and holding up in the support role for Anna Bright and Gabe Tardio. Surely, the Shock opponents this weekend will not employ the unique play the majority of balls to the opposing team’s best player strategy that the Ranchers chose to run with.
If Kate Fahey holds up her end of the bargain, it is hard to believe this Shock team will not be the champions of MLP.
Does Dallas have enough juice left?
The Flash are the darlings of the MLP season. Everyone likes a phoenix rising from the ashes story so when most people left Dallas for dead, Dallas did not listen. They banded together as a group and committed to the process of getting better each event.
The improvement in the play from their women has been a big factor and their strategic discipline against opponents has been an underrated aspect of their ascent. With two weeks off and teams putting all their resources into preparing for all scenarios, the question is whether there is enough juice left in this Dallas team to topple two more big dog teams en route to a championship.
As much as we can expect Dallas to remain disciplined as a group, we have to expect that St. Louis will be just as ready and willing to execute the game plan that they arrive at. It becomes more difficult to find edges when opponents are just as focused on exploiting roster deficiencies come playoff time. Dallas was able to get it done against LA, but St. Louis is a different beast.
There is a big time female advantage for the Shock and Augie Ge is a clear weak link among 3 other elite men in this matchup. Augie, Alix Truong and Brooke Buckner will need to the best pickleball of their lives to be able to match the level that St. Louis brings.
It’s so hard to believe that Dallas has the juice to make something special happen, particularly when they aren’t anything special from a Dreambreaker standpoint. However, crazier things have happened and it will be fun to see if there is any magic left in this Dallas squad.
