2026 MLP Finals – 4 Takeaways – No Panic
Done. Just like that. An MLP season gone in a flash.
The New Jersey 5’s wrapped up the season in spectacular fashion with their first title under the backdrop of picturesque Central Park. Federico Staksrud threw his shoes (and socks), champagne was sprayed and Anna Leigh Waters finally secured a long-time coming MLP championship – she never won an event in the pre-2024 era either.
It was a fantastic finish to a kind of meh season as the playoffs provided more optimism for the future and sustainability of MLP as a consumer product. It seems nuts that the UPA decided to put a major PPA tournament on the final weekend after MLP. But hell, who cares about the PPA anyway…are we right?
1. No Panic – The 5’s played their best ball of the season in New York as they steamrolled through Brooklyn in the semifinals and got as much as they could have asked for from all 5 of their players in the finals against the Shock. It wasn’t perfect in the finals, but no one could have expected that it would be.
Federico Staksrud and Anna Leigh Waters were the stars for New Jersey. However, they needed big performances from the rest of their roster. After a 0-2 performance against the Palm Beach Royals for Noe Khlif and ALW and continued susceptibility from Howells/Staksrud, the calls were louder than ever for the 5’s to do something different in the finals. The Khlif situation, in particular, was a concern for the 5’s as it had been a slow burn throughout the season of opponents figuring out the optimal strategy against Khlif/ALW.
It looked like real possibility that something was going to change heading into the finals.
Instead, the 5’s stayed the course. They trusted that the lineup choices they settled on during the season were the right ones and did not panic heading into the most important weekend in franchise history. Their steadfastness was rewarded as every single one of their players stepped up at different times when they were needed.
Noe Khlif and Jorja Johnson won their mixed games in the first match to push it to a Dreambreaker. Will Howells hit a quality deep return on match point against Gabe Tardio in the first Dreambreaker to get the ball back into Anna Leigh Waters’s hands. Jorja Johnson upped her level against the Shock women in the second match as Howells and Staksrud staved off game points against the Shock men to give the 5’s a 2-0 lead.
Everyone did enough of their part to avoid a regulation loss to the Shock and get the matches to a couple of Dreambreakers. It’s so easy in life to overcorrect and overreact to negative or positive situations, especially when the fear of public criticism looms. However, as long as the process is good, it’s usually best to trust the process.
That’s what good organizations do in professional sports. No one would have faulted the 5’s for switching things up going into the weekend but they simply did what they thought was right in trying to make a decision without a clear right answer. Potential criticism, public backlash and armchair quarterbacking be damned.
In a world where everyone’s thoughts and opinions are more easily accessible than ever before, it is becoming more difficult not to succumb to the outside pressure and noise. The New Jersey 5’s maintained their composure and spent Sunday night celebrating in New York City because of it.
2. Fed-V-P – We generally care very little for awards like MVP or most improved. They are meaningful to the players but mean very little in the grand scheme of things. Sure, Anna Leigh Waters is the best of all-time and giving her the ball at 20-20 in the Dreambreaker is reminiscent of the feeling you get when Tom Brady gets the ball with 2-minutes left in the 4th quarter of a tie game. It goes without saying that the 5’s do not win the title without Anna Leigh Waters.
Still, if you had to choose an MVP for the finals, Federico Staksrud was more than deserving. He performed over and above his expected level by several notches. The 5’s mens doubles group was seen as the clear weak link for them all season and all they did was go 3-1, including a clutch comeback win in the second match of the finals against Tardio/Patriquin.
Not only was Federico a demon in both mens and mixed, he found some of his best singles level in both Dreambreakers against the Shock. The singles specialist narrative was not kind to Hunter Johnson, but he was simply bested by Staksrud’s greatness on the weekend. The shot-making Hunter had to bring to win the rallies that he did was incredibly high, and it would have been a tough ask for anyone to match Fed’s singles level across those two Dreambreakers.
Staksrud was on a mission for the 5’s.
The past two and a half seasons of MLP have not been kind to Federico, part of it his fault and part of it not. The Orlando Squeeze never put together a real contender around him and his buy-in level around MLP reflected the inability of Orlando to do better. At times, Fed has brought a Ben Johns level of engagement to his MLP intensity, knowing that he never had a chance at a title. While not an ideal approach for a pro athlete, it is understandable for a guy who grinds as hard as any player on the tour.
It was remarkable to see the change in Fed’s attitude after being traded late in the season to a team with a real shot to win a title. Fed went from being rather ambivalent about MLP to being the guy who wanted to win as much as anyone else out there.
Staksrud was climbing the back of GM, Ryan Harwood, in the celebration circle after their Dreambreaker win in game 1. He fell on his back after he and Howells completed their mens comeback like he was Rafa Nadal winning a French Open title. After they won it all, Staksrud had tears of joy running down his eyes.
It was wonderful to see one of the true pros in the game find his best level with the 5’s, who appeared to bring the fun back to MLP for a player who has been stuck in mediocre-ish purgatory.
3. Shock Sadness – It was pretty much a foregone conclusion for the entire season that one of the 5’s or the Shock would get that championship monkey off their back. Unfortunately for the Shock, they weren’t able to get it done for a third straight year.
As the only team in the regular season MLP era to keep their original roster together for all 3 seasons, it would have been fitting for St. Louis to finish off their run with a title. The progression from this roster over the past 3 years has been something special to witness.
Prior to the 2024 draft, neither Gabe Tardio nor Hayden Patriquin were obviously destined for top 5 status. Neither of them was earmarked by teams as a franchise cornerstone. Fortunately for the kids, they found themselves in a perfect situation getting handpicked by Anna Bright and put into an organization where they had to stay focused and on track.
Kate Fahey was not even on the draft board for most of the 12 Premier teams heading into the 2024 draft. Anna Bright hand picked her as well and all Fahey ended up being was the best pick of all-time in any MLP draft. She went from having very little pickleball experience to being able to hang with the best of the best in the MLP finals 3 plus years later. Fahey keeps getting better and is now one of the best right-side women in the game. Not to mention that she is likely the #2 female singles player in the world.
While the 5’s have retooled their roster a few times over the past couple of seasons and paid big money for that retooling, the St. Louis Shock haven’t had to do anything other than spend money. There is a narrative out there that the teams with the deepest pocketbooks in MLP were fighting to win a title. Although that is true, there is something different about this Shock franchise that mostly spent money just to keep their OG group together.
In the arms race of MLP in 2026, there is something wholesome about the Shock organically identifying and developing a roster from scratch. At least, as wholesome as it can get for an ownership group with their own arena, private jet and new stake in an NBA franchise.
The 5’s won the title with only two original members of their 2024 drafted team (Howells and Waters), and none of this works for New Jersey without Anna Leigh Waters. Still, the Shock were a couple of Dreambreakers away from winning a championship with their original roster, plus Hunter Johnson the singles specialist.
It’s a tough pill to swallow for St. Louis, who will almost certainly go their separate ways in some capacity for 2027 as it sounds like MLP will be shifting to a salary cap/floor model that will prevent the concentration of too many top players on one team. This was their best chance over the past 3 years, but they were simply out Dreambreaker’d by a team with the one of the best men’s singles players around and the greatest women’s singles player to ever walk this earth.
The margins being so small offers little consolation to a roster and ownership group that wanted to win so much, some could say too much at times. That desire to win is not what held them back in 2026. It was two heavyweight franchises going toe-to-toe in the biggest arena the sport has to offer, where only one could come out on top.
Regrettably for St. Louis, it was not their weekend in the concrete jungle.
4. MLP to the Moon – There have been times over the past 3-years, in this post-merger world of MLP and PPA, where we have had serious questions and concerns about UPA’s investment in MLP as a product. There were too many signs that made it seem like MLP was the red-headed step child of the UPA umbrella. As the money making side of the operation, the PPA appeared to be the primary focus for the UPA.
Connor Pardoe actively tanking the first MLP draft of the post-merger era. Key UPA Board members never buying-in or buying-out of their MLP franchises. There are many examples of this type of activity that we have touched on in this blog over the past couple of years. Only a handful of people inside the UPA will ever know the truth behind all of this but that has always been our read of the situation, right or wrong.
At this moment in time, though, it feels like there is a shift in the perception of MLP from the powers that be at the UPA. This sentiment of ours is purely anecdotal and speculative, based primarily on social media hawking. But it really feels that a changing of the guard is happening to have MLP propped up as an equal product to the fans as the PPA.
It is abundantly clear, at least to us, year after year that MLP is the higher ceiling pro pickleball product. The PPA is fine for what it is but the top-end offering of MLP has unmatched enthusiasm from fans and players. More passion. More energy. More passion. More energy.
You have fans so passionate about MLP that they are coming purely to watch without the allure of playing their own amateur event alongside the pros. Former Las Vegas Night Owls GM, Kaitlyn Kerr, posted a reel on Instagram showing the re-sale value of MLP tickets for the finals on the open market – over $1,500 for VIP and almost $400 for general admission. It was crazy to see a legitimate secondary market develop for standalone MLP tickets.
It is only in this team-based format that you have fans of opposing teams dueling it out in the bleachers as we saw with the New Jersey and Brooklyn fans in the semi-finals. The players care so damn much about winning an MLP title and that fervor comes through to fans.
We’d be so curious to see what the Pickleball TV stream numbers looked like for the MLP finals compared to a big PPA Championship Sunday. We don’t care much about the FS1 or CBS ratings. The Pickleball TV numbers are the most telling for the trajectory of both arms of the UPA, and that should best inform the UPA Board as to whether the juice is worth the squeeze for MLP it in the long-term. If those viewership numbers are trending in the right direction, the UPA will have no choice but to keep the pedal to the metal.
Following a spectacular playoff run, it doesn’t feel right that less than a third of the calendar year is devoted to MLP and the remainder goes to the PPA. We understand for financial reasons why that is necessary, but that’s not the point
The Finals weekend was must watch TV for us and it is the only time of the year where we have felt as though any pickleball content fully justified carving out time on the couch to watch it live. We hope that the momentum continues to build for MLP and UPA’s investment in the product reflects the passion that we see from the players and fans.
It has been notable to us that MLP is taking alternative approaches to bring eyeballs to MLP. Whether it is working or not, it is good to see MLP trying new strategies such as paying influencers like KFC with Barstool to create social media content or Rachel Stuhlman to attend the finals in New York and post about it on her Instagram story.
We have had our gripes with MLP but are optimistic that there has been a shifting of the winds in 2026 to MLP being treated with the care and attention that it deserves.
p.s. we echo the same sentiment as Memes of Pickleball, and surely many others, when we graciously request a change to the commercial break content on Pickleball TV. Surely, anything would be better than the same repeats of ‘My Pickleball Life’ and instructional content we have been seeing for the past two years. Literally anything! We don’t know how much more twoey nation content our brains can handle. For the love of God, please put an end to this content epidemic.
Agree or disagree? Let us know in the comments or email us at nmlpickleball@gmail.com! You can also follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @nmlpickleball
