The Golden State Valkyries Inaugural Season Schedule Released

The entire WNBA regular season schedule was announced on Monday with plenty of exciting news for Valkyrie fans. There will be 22 home games this year as the league further expanded the regular season to fit 44 games and the team may host a preseason game. Season ticket sales are continuing as the team works through existing deposits as they try to sell the tickets set aside for season sales before announcing mini-plan or single-game ticket availability. Broadcast information for all games has not been released yet, but Friday games are scheduled to be on ION again.

Home Start

The Valkyries get to play the first day of the season and will get to host the Los Angeles Sparks on Friday, May 16th. Their next game is also at home against the Washington Mystics on Wednesday, May 21st. The home start and playing two teams that missed the playoffs last season increases the chances of a good early start. The team also gets to play in Los Angeles on Friday, May 23rd before the rest of a tough road trip, a baseball series format with two games in three days visiting the defending champion New York Liberty.

Commissioner’s Cup

Conferences do not matter for playoff positioning, but they are used in the Commissioner’s Cup competition to ensure that the championship game pits one team from the Western Conference and one team from the Eastern Conference. As was the case last season, all games to qualify for that final will be played during a single stretch. The Valkyries will play each of their six conference foes once from June 1st through June 17th with the team with the best record in those games playing an extra game to crown the winner. The Valkyries start with a home game against the winners of the last cup, the Minnesota Lynx and also get home games against the next two highest finishers in the conference last season, the Las Vegas Aces and Seattle Storm. That leaves road trips to visit the Phoenix Mercury, Los Angeles Sparks, and Dallas Wings.

Unbalanced Schedule

The Valkyries will play each Western Conference team four times, twice and home and twice on the road, but there is variability in whether they play Eastern Conference teams three or four times. The two teams that they drew four times are the New York Liberty and Washington Mystics. They play the Atlanta Dream and Chicago Sky twice on the road and once at home and get to host the Connecticut Sun and Indiana Fever twice while visiting each team once.

Camp Day Game?

One of the first days that WNBA fans traditionally look for when their team’s schedule is announced is the camp day, traditionally a weekday day game after the school year ends that tries to accommodate as many summer camp student attendees as possible. Some teams do not even include the game in season ticket packages in order to free up even more seats for the event. The Valkyries schedule does not include any weekday day games, which may mean that those are now optional for teams as some hardcore fans are always afraid of having to miss the game. The event does appear to still exist around the league as Golden State is scheduled to visit Indiana on Wednesday, July 9th, for a 9:00am PT tipoff and then visit Seattle on Wednesday, July 16th, for a 12:00pm PT tipoff. All weekday home games are currently scheduled at 7:00pm PT and weekend games are at either 12:00pm PT or 5:30pm PT on Saturday and 5:30pm on Sunday.

Stretch Run

Although the team has stated that first season competitiveness is a goal, it certainly remains to be seen whether they can field a team that can qualify for the playoffs. If they are in that position late in the season, they do have a five game homestand starting with the only time they have to play on back-to-back nights before finishing with two games on the road. That streak of home games is matched by their first five games after the Commissioner’s Cup games, including four games hosting Eastern Conference opponents. The team does have a five-game road trip and a four-game road trip, both almost completely being against Eastern Conference teams. Besides the baseball-style schedule at New York, the team faces the Las Vegas Aces and Phoenix Mercury twice in a row during the season with each team hosting once before both teams travel to the other location.

Overall

The team has to be happy with the chance to play their first games at home and build up excitement early, especially with a win or two. Although ticket sales are likely to be strong regardless, they do have that extra home game against some of the marquee Eastern Conference teams. The team does have two Monday games, which are uncommon, but only six games on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, including one holiday game, leaving fourteen games on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. Once the expansion draft results are announced this Friday, the anticipation will continue to grow for the first day of the season.