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CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The Portland Paddlers came into Week 14 with a privilege no other team has: another chance after this one. While Week 14 was the end of Season 3 for the Carolina Gold Rush, New York Slice and Bay Area Blasters, but the Paddlers still have Week 15. If they couldn’t earn a playoff spot or clinch the West Division’s No. 1 seed by the end of Week 14, they had three more matches to make up for any loss.

They didn’t need those matches, though.

Saturday’s win against the Bay Area Blasters earned Portland the final open playoff spot in the West Division. They’ll be heading to Championship Weekend for the first time in team history, and will likely finish their dominant season as Major League Table Tennis’s top-ranked team.

“It was kind of expected [with] the mathematics going in our favor right now,” Paddlers coach Christian Lillieroos said on Saturday. “But it’s nice to finally make, officially, the playoffs.”

The Paddlers didn’t even bring their strongest roster to Charlotte, as former Player of the Week winners Kang Dong-Soo (SPINDEX: 2788) and Jens Lundqvist (2751) missed their team’s Week 14 matches. That allowed recent trade acquisition Minhyung Jee (2519), whom the Paddlers received from the Atlanta Blazers in exchange for Rachel Sung (2521) in December, to make her Paddlers debut and play in her first match since Week 2. In that match, she took two of three games from New York’s Choi Haeeun (2533), a two-time Player of the Week winner, and won her first-ever set as a Paddler.

The Paddlers mainstays that did make the trip performed as well as they have all season long. Hampus Nordberg (2748) took on his opponents’ toughest foes, including New York’s Koki Niwa (2797), Bay Area’s Elsayed Lashin (2712) and Carolina’s Enzo Angles (2774), and finished with an outstanding six wins against them. Nikhil Kumar won four of his six singles games against Tao Wenzhang (2737) and Kai Zhang (2612), and he paired with Sid Naresh (2650) to win six of nine doubles games. Min Hyeok Kim (2735) swept New York’s Yiran Wu (2671) and put up a valiant fight against Bay Area’s Taehyun Kim (2730) and Carolina’s Wei Wang (2671). Kotomi Omoda (2611) missed Friday’s match against New York, but she swept Bay Area’s Angela Guan (2457) and Carolina’s Chen Sun (2604) in the six games she played this weekend.

The Paddlers took command of every match they played, which contributed to their 16-5 wins against New York on Friday, Bay Area on Saturday and Carolina on Sunday. 

“We [have] such good depth,” Lillieroos said. “We have no weaknesses on our team. Every single one is strong.”

The Paddlers remain atop the West Division with a 13-2 record and 217 points. They’ll clinch that top spot if they score 11 more points during Week 15. That will be the final week of the Paddlers’ regular season, and they won’t have to worry about missing the playoffs while they play. They know they’ll be headed to Championship Weekend, likely as the team for everyone else to beat.

Only one more goal remains for the Paddlers before then: finish as the top seed in the West Division and confirm that they had the most successful season of anyone in the league.

“First place is still difficult, [but] this was a really good start,” Lillieroos said. “I couldn’t imagine a better start.”

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‍Carolina Gold Rush

After the Carolina Gold Rush became the champions of Major League Table Tennis’s second season, their foes entered Season 3 ready to steal their trophy from them.

Those other teams will have to wait a month before they can do so.

The Gold Rush became the first East Division team to clinch a spot in this year’s postseason after their 16-5 win against the New York Slice on Saturday. They’ve spent their entire season fighting to win another title, and their Week 14 performance ensured they’d be one of four teams with an opportunity to do so.

“If we play good, we will win and go to the playoffs,” Gold Rush coach Alex Yang said on Friday.

Week 14 was a golden opportunity for the Gold Rush, but it could have been a black mark on their season. This weekend was the Gold Rush’s last outing of the regular season, and their final chance to earn a playoff spot through their own effort. That means that if they didn’t clinch, the New York Slice and Princeton Revolution could have scored enough points to surpass them in the standings and eliminate them by the end of Week 15.

The Gold Rush weren’t going to let that happen. They put their most complete roster of the season in front of their home crowd, and that roster delivered. Enzo Angles led the way with five Singles wins against Bay Area’s Johan Hagberg (2657), New York’s Tao Wenzhang and Portland’s Hampus Nordberg. Eugene Wang (2804) won three of his six games against Bay Area’s Taehyun Kim and New York’s Koki Niwa. Chen Sun struggled against Portland’s Kotomi Omoda, but clobbered Bay Area’s Angela Guan and New York’s Choi Haeeun on her way to five wins for the weekend. Wei Wang even earned his first two Singles wins against Bay Area’s Senura Silva (2601) after starting Season 3 0-9.

“I see all [our] players play much better,” Yang said. “Their confidence levels are going up, and also, our opponents [face] a lot of pressure right now.”

Those exceptional performances led to an exceptional weekend that started with a 14-7 win against the Bay Area Blasters, and ended with a 5-16 loss against the Portland Paddlers that ended in an Ultimate Golden Point. The atmosphere inside Charlotte Convention Center resembled that of Week 2, when the Gold Rush opened their season with an undefeated weekend. Another ticket to Championship Weekend felt inevitable at that point, but those plans seemed to have fallen through after a 1-2 finish during Week 3. 

That tumble continued when they returned for Weeks 11 and 12, both of which they finished with 1-2 records. But an outstanding 3-0 Week 13 in Hollywood, Fla., put them right back atop the East Division. And after winning two of their three games in Week 14, they ensure they stay at the top to end their rollercoaster of a season.

The Gold Rush’s rollercoaster of a season stops with an 11-7 record and 199 points. They have not yet clinched the division’s No. 1 seed, but the Princeton Revolution will have to play error-free table tennis in Week 15 for the Gold Rush to lose it. That would put Carolina in position to play whichever West Division team finishes in second place in the semifinal match of Championship Weekend. Winning that match won’t be easy, as the Portland Paddlers and Chicago Wind are locked into the West Division’s two playoff spots. 

But neither of those two teams know what it’s like to win an MLTT title. The Gold Rush do, and they’re about to bring their championship experience to Fremont, Calif., for the postseason.

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New York Slice

Of the four teams that competed in Week 14, three could have left with a ticket to Fremont, Calif. Two of those teams, the Carolina Gold Rush and Portland Paddlers, both earned those tickets on Saturday.

The other team, the New York Slice, left Charlotte on Sunday still searching for that playoff spot.

Not every playoff dream could come true this weekend, and the New York Slice certainly tried. They could have made it if they scored a difficult, yet attainable 53 points. But their 5-16 loss to Portland on Friday only burdened their road to a postseason spot, and their 5-16 loss to Carolina on Saturday removed any chance of that happening in Week 14. They may have defeated the Bay Area Blasters 14-7 on Sunday, but it was too late for that final match of the regular season to matter in their race for a playoff spot.

Though the Slice’s regular season may be over, their playoff ambitions certainly aren’t. They still sit as the East Division’s second seed with a 10-8 record and 185 points, but the Princeton Revolution are just 35 points behind them. If they surpass New York’s point total in Week 15, they’ll lock up that final playoff spot and end the Slice’s season for good.

Regardless of whether or not they play again this season, their season will end in an impressive fashion. Expansion teams aren’t typically supposed to compete for a playoff spot, let alone remain competitive throughout the season. The New York Slice have done just that, and they’ll continue to remain competitive if they make it to Championship Weekend.

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Bay Area Blasters

As with the three teams they faced in Week 14, the Bay Area Blasters had a pathway to Championship Weekend. Not an easy one, though. They had to score 26 points just to stay alive, and even if they did, the Paddlers could eliminate them just by scoring a combined 54 points in Weeks 14 and 15. 

That’s a tall task for a team at full strength, which the Blasters were not. Player of the Week winners Lily Zhang (2606) and Jinbao Ma (2756) both missed the Blasters’ last three matches of their season, forcing the team to sign free agents Angela Guan and Johan Hagberg in their place.

The players that made the trip left a strong final impression on Season 3, especially Taehyun Kim. He won five Singles games and five Doubles games alongside Baek Kwang-il (2608). The effort was not enough. The Blasters went winless to wrap their season, losing 7-14 to the Carolina Gold Rush on Friday, 5-16 to the Portland Paddlers on Saturday and 7-14 to the New York Slice on Sunday. They now find themselves out of the playoff picture as their season comes to an end.

The Blasters haven’t had the best luck this season. They lost Kim, the co-MVP of Season 2, for their debut week due to a foot injury, and he spent most of Season 3 rehabbing from that injury. Because of that rehab, he never reached his full form until late in the season. He was fully healthy this weekend, but there wasn’t much his team could do without Zhang and Ma in Charlotte.

“We’ve faced more challenges this season than the previous season, having some injured players,” Blasters coach Tim Wang said on Sunday. “I think three of our top performers had issues.”

And yet, there were plenty of opportunities that the Blasters had in their control that they could not capitalize on. At least, that’s how Wang sees it. He said he will go into the offseason viewing Season 3 as a “learning experience” as he turns his attention to his roster, the draft, and Season 4.

“I’m definitely going to be communicating with [my players] because we do have the draft coming up, so we have to make sure that we pick the right people,” Wang said. “Hopefully everybody gets a good break and [is] ready for the next season.”

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