By Hailey Salvian, Shayna Goldman and Sean Gentille

We waited more than a year for proper PWHL nicknames and logos. Now that we have them, courtesy of Monday’s official unveiling, we’re not going to waste any more time.

Which of the six new combos — the Boston Fleet, Minnesota Frost, Montréal Victoire, New York Sirens, Ottawa Charge and Toronto Sceptres — is our No. 1? How do the rest measure up?

The Athletic’s Hailey Salvian, Shayna Goldman and Sean Gentille teamed up for the definitive ranking.

1. Montréal Victoire

Hailey rank: 1
Sean rank: 3
Shayna rank: 1

Shayna: Everything about Montreal’s look and branding just clicks. Victoire just feels fresh relative to other names associated with Montreal hockey in the past (and present, really). It’s something that works for both French and English speakers, too. The maroon of the color scheme feels grand enough to match the energy that the name brings, and using cream over white adds a classic touch. The navy completes the look and accents the logo. I have nitpicks here or there with the rest of the teams, so the combination of the name and logo makes this an easy No. 1 for me.

Hailey: I was surprised at how much I liked Montreal, considering I wanted the league to go back to Les Canadiennes from the CWHL days. Regardless, Montreal has the best combination of name and logo, which is why it gets the edge over New York and Toronto for me. There’s more detail to appreciate in the Montreal logo specifically, with the fleur-de-lis and the hidden M toward the bottom. “Victoire” is also just a cool name to have for a team with the most clutch player in the history of the women’s game.

Sean: I almost feel bad having them at No. 3. Shayna and Hailey are correct about everything. I really appreciate the freshness of the package — if this one isn’t groundbreaking, it’s pretty close. Also, the logo looks like a diamond! Nobody else said that!

2. Toronto Sceptres

Hailey rank: 3
Sean rank: 2
Shayna rank: 2

Hailey: If you asked me immediately after the PWHL announcement, I’d probably have “Sceptres” lower than No. 3 and maybe I was just being a picky local because I can see Coca-Cola Coliseum from my apartment. But Toronto’s logo might be my favorite of the six and the name is really growing on me – if nothing else it’s certainly unique. The colors look great, and I do think a team like Toronto – with fans who dressed up as spoons and nurses last season – could have a lot of fun with this. Sarah Nurse literally has a brand with the motto “Queen Energy Only.”

Shayna: Absolutely yes to the logo and to the color scheme. The name just … I need some time with this one. The Toronto teaser tweeted out the other day made me think “Royals” or “Monarchs” was the direction here, and I think either of those would have slapped. Sceptres isn’t a bad name and it’s unique to a sports team, it just doesn’t roll off the tongue yet.

Sean: I didn’t like the nickname initially — like, at all — but it grew on me pretty quickly … if we’re grading on a curve. I don’t love a monarchy; Canadian money bothers me for this reason. Still, points for creativity, the originality of a navy-light blue-gold combo and the best logo of the bunch. It’ll sell well with Taylor Swift fans.

Hailey: I didn’t even consider that. Sean might be the biggest Swiftie of the group!

3. New York Sirens

Hailey rank: 2
Sean rank: 1
Shayna rank: 6

Sean: I’m hard to please when it comes to team names. I don’t like collective nouns (i.e., “Kraken”), but I’m also not looking for more Panthers or Vikings. That’s a small sweet spot, and nobody hit it more directly than the Sirens. The logo isn’t my favorite — something about the way the wordmark halves the Y — but I think it’ll pop as a center crest.

The main reason I have them in my top spot: I don’t think any name-logo combo is more cohesive. “Sirens” works as a reference to hockey, yes, but also Long Island Sound, and I continue to love that shade of teal, especially in concert with the New York Liberty and Gotham FC. It’s the total package.

Hailey: I was Team New York Sirens until my last-minute swerve to the Montreal bandwagon. I think the name Sirens is my favorite, but the Montreal logo was the tie-breaker in my ranking. The colors are great, and the synergy with women’s sports in the tri-state area is a nice touch. This team has a lot of potential with in-arena activations, too. Can we get a giant siren?

Shayna: I absolutely love New York leaning into teal to stay consistent with the Liberty and Gotham FC. But the name is a no from me. I know it’s probably a reference to the water, but my immediate thought was: “We get it, New York’s loud with a lot of sirens.” I actually would prefer the Sound, which was one of those original trademarks leaked last year. That made sense for a team that bounced among New York, Connecticut and New Jersey. As for the logo – remember the Superman S you probably sketched on your notebook in middle school? This feels like a dressed-up version of that.

4. Boston Fleet

Hailey rank: 4
Sean rank: 4
Shayna rank: 3

Sean: I had a pretty defined top three and bottom three — half the brands seem to be going for one thing, and half another — and Boston was the best of the second batch based largely on the logo. It helps that the letter ‘B’ looks so much like a fishhook, but credit where it’s due. I also spy a bit of a Hartford Whalers reference, if you look from the side. Is that me projecting? Perhaps. In any case, it’s fine. A little uninspired, but fine. As for the name, I don’t like “Fleet,” but I also dislike it less than the other (Anglo) collective nouns.

Hailey: While Boston is a tier below Montreal, New York and Toronto, it’s also the best of the rest for me. The logo is far superior to Ottawa and Minnesota – the details inside the B and the anchor shape – though I like the “Charge” name more than “Fleet.” I can’t imagine it’s easy developing a sports brand in a city with the Red Sox, Bruins and Celtics, but this is a nice entry.

Shayna: Boston may have one of the coolest logos here, which really boosts its ranking. The anchor-like B is just so sharp. If that W is an intentional reference to the Whalers, I like it even more as a way to celebrate New England hockey in the post-Connecticut Whale era. The name I was initially sour on, but it’s not that bad. It’s a nice nod to Boston’s history and overall being a major seaport.

5. Minnesota Frost

Hailey rank: 5
Sean rank: 5
Shayna rank: 5

Shayna: I was really rooting for the “Reign” here with the purple scheme as a nod to Prince, but this isn’t a bad direction. The Minnesota Frost is honestly a pretty sick name that makes a lot of sense for a hockey team without being too cheesy and literal. The reason they don’t rank higher isn’t because the other teams are all so incredible that it was a process of elimination. The logo just falls short and drags the entire branding down. The ‘F’ is a promising start, but feels so incomplete.

Sean: This feels more like a create-a-team template than any of the others. I guess the negative space creates a mountain, which … it’s something. Points for purple.

Hailey: More than the other teams, Minnesota feels like a victim to the legal process when it comes to naming sports teams in 2024. The Ontario Reign already exist in the AHL, and the league clearly wanted new names it could fully own. I honestly don’t dislike the Frost – or any of the names for that matter – and I love the colors, but I can’t stop thinking about the F being on a cartoon superhero. I thought it was Frozone, but he doesn’t wear purple.

6. Ottawa Charge

Hailey rank: 6
Sean rank: 6
Shayna rank: 4

Shayna: Ottawa is very middle-of-the-road for me. I think the more I look at it, the more I find flaws with it. The color scheme doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but red-yellow-white is bright and eye-catching on the ice which I can appreciate. But I second what Sean said earlier on collective nouns for team names. And the logo (plus the color scheme) is giving knock-off Calgary Flames. I do love the Flames look and logo, so it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It just isn’t my favorite!

Hailey: I honestly don’t have strong feelings about Ottawa: The name works well enough for me, and the logo is fine. The whole electric charge vibe would have been cool if Daryl Watts was still on the team. Too soon! I’m sorry!

Sean: “Go Charge Go” is going to be a great arena chant, but the rest of it looks way too close to a software company logo from, like, 1997 for my taste. Sorry.

(Images courtesy of PWHL)

James Earl Jones, who was 93 when he died Monday, will be remembered by baseball purists for the stirring, soul-reaching words he delivered in the 1989 film “Field of Dreams.”

Cast as a fictitious writer named Terence Mann, Jones is nominally speaking to Kevin Costner’s Ray Kinsella. But what he’s really doing is speaking to anyone in the audience who has long wondered whatever became of the baseball cards they collected growing up. He’s speaking to anyone who ponders what Babe Ruth would hit today, or what Shohei Ohtani would have hit yesterday. He’s speaking to anyone who’s ever held a baseball glove up to their nose just to smell the leather.

We know this to be true partly because of the staging. Mann is facing the camera while standing on the edge of a baseball field that’s been carved out of an Iowa cornfield. But the real magic comes from Jones, who uses his rich baritone voice in such a way that we want to go outside and build a ball field:

The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.

These words have become a baseball anthem without music, in much the same way Jones, accompanied by the Morgan State University choir, recited “The Star Spangled Banner” before the start of the 1993 All-Star Game at Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

And yet Jones was not a baseball fan growing up. And he did not fall hopelessly in love with the game as a result of appearing in such baseball-themed movies as “The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings” (1976) and “The Sandlot”(1993), as well as the Phil Alden Robinson-directed “Field of Dreams.”

But neither was Marlon Brando a mafia boss before “The Godfather,” or Margaret Hamilton a witch, wicked or otherwise, before “The Wizard of Oz.” What we see from Jones in “Field of Dreams” is an actor who pulled all the necessary dramatic levers and pulleys inside him to become a baseball fan, or, in my case, the kind of baseball fan I remember as a kid growing up just two miles from Fenway Park.

In the scene in which Kinsella has somehow convinced Mann to attend a Boston Red Sox game at Fenway, we see Jones watching the action in a manner that jumped out at me when I first watched “Field of Dreams.” While Costner’s Kinsella is busily jotting down the name “Moonlight Graham” on his scorecard, Jones’ Terence Mann shows us a look of earnestness mixed with a dash of serenity as he watches the game action. In an era before mobile phones, before the wave, before beer decks, before walk-up music, that’s how people watched baseball. It’s such a small thing, but Jones figured it out.

Yes, it’s the “people will come” exhortation on the ballfield in Dyersville, Iowa, that transformed Jones into a baseball icon. But it’s what happens just before the speech that had me wanting to stand up and applaud when I first watched “Field of Dreams.” As Kinsella’s brother-in-law (played by Timothy Busfield, who happens to be a for-real baseball fan) charges into the scene to announce that Ray is bankrupt and must sell the farm, we see Mann with a copy of “The Baseball Encyclopedia.” In the pre-internet days, it was the baseball bible. And Mann treats it as one. It’s on his lap, open, perhaps to the page revealing the lifetime stats of Shoeless Joe Jackson, Eddie Cicotte, Buck Weaver or any one of those baseball-playing ghosts on the field.

That struck a note with Larry Cancro, a senior vice president with the Red Sox who has worked on the marketing side of things for nearly four decades. He told of a time when he was around 10 years old and his family was visiting relatives in Melrose, Mass. “I was sitting there with my three sisters,” he said, “and my father’s cousin had a copy of ‘The Baseball Encyclopedia.’ It was the first time I’d ever seen one. And I started poring through it. In the years to come, I ended up getting several copies. When you see that scene in ‘Field of Dreams,’ there’s James Earl Jones, proudly holding a copy. Only a real baseball fan sits there looking through ‘The Baseball Encyclopedia.’”

Cancro helped facilitate the Fenway Park scene in “Field of Dreams,” shot while the Red Sox were on the road. Costner and Jones are seated in Loge Box 157, Row PP, Seats 1 and 2.

Cancro is happy to report that the two actors were “gracious and friendly” to all Red Sox employees who were involved in the shoot. Even better, Cancro remembers the bond that formed between Jones and the late Joe Mooney, the longtime Fenway Park groundskeeper who was one of those old-timey curmudgeons with a way of being standoffish to strangers. He could also display exaggerated disinterest when dealing with celebrities whom he perceived as not being real fans, or not knowing the history of Fenway Park, or both.

“The way Joe operated, if you were there to show off or trying to be a big deal, he wanted nothing to do with you,” Cancro said. “Joe was a sweet guy, of course, if he knew you. But he and James Earl Jones really hit it off. Kevin Costner, too. But the thing with James Earl Jones, they were laughing and having a good time. Joe liked him, which is really all you need to know about James Earl Jones being at Fenway Park.”

Now, there are baseball purists who have their issues with “Field of Dreams.” There’s the late Ray Liotta’s Shoeless Joe Jackson batting right-handed. (Shoeless Joe was a left-handed hitter.) There’s Kinsella navigating his Volkswagen bus the wrong way on Lansdowne Street behind Fenway Park. But there can be no denying what Jones brought to the production, from his spoken baseball anthem to his very believable portrayal of Terence Mann, who, we learn, grew up loving the game and dreaming of playing alongside Jackie Robinson at Ebbets Field.

As Jones often said, he considered himself more of a stage actor than a film actor. He won three Tony Awards. Nor was “Field of Dreams” his most famous film role. Providing the voice of Darth Vader in the “Star Wars” films pretty much ends that discussion. In terms of honors, he earned an honorary Academy Award in 2011 and was nominated for best actor in “The Great White Hope” (1970).

He won Primetime Emmy Awards for “Heat Wave”(1990) and “Gabriel’s Fire” (1991), a Daytime Emmy for “Summer’s End” (2000) and a Grammy Award for “Best Spoken Word” in “Great American Documents” (2000). When joined with his three Tonys — “The Great White Hope” (1969), “Fences” (1987) and a Lifetime Achievement Award (2017) — and his honorary Oscar, he is in the rare company of actors who achieved EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony) status. In “Fences,” he plays the role of Troy, a former baseball player in the Negro Leagues. Other notable film roles include “Coming to America” (1988), “Claudine” (1974), “Cry, the Beloved Country” (1995) and the voice of Mufasa in “The Lion King” (1994).

And yet in an interview for “Field of Dreams at 25,” he called the film “one of the very few movies I’ve done that I really cherish.”

Looking back on the film, Jones said, “Magic can happen if you just let it happen and don’t force it. And that was (director) Phil Robinson’s choice with ‘Field of Dreams.’”

The same could be said of his portrayal of Terence Mann. He just let it happen. He didn’t force it. In doing so, his voice marks the time.

(Photo: Kevin Winter / Getty Images for the American Film Institute)

Former Houston Rockets assistant coach and general manager Carroll Dawson has died at age 86, the team announced Monday.

The cause of his death was not disclosed.

Dawson, known as “CD,” spent nearly three decades with the Rockets from 1980 to 2007, starting as an assistant coach under Del Harris and working with Bill Fitch, Don Chaney and Rudy Tomjanovich before transitioning to the front office in 1996. He remains the lone figure in franchise history to have served as an assistant during each of their four NBA Finals runs, most notably during the back-to-back championships in 1994 and 1995.

“While CD’s contributions to basketball were remarkable, it was his character that truly stood out,” the Rockets said in a statement. “We will deeply miss his uplifting spirit, infectious humor, and kind-hearted nature. We are proud that CD’s legacy will forever be honored with his banner hanging from the rafters of Toyota Center, alongside our other Rockets legends.”

The Rockets family mourns the loss of beloved former coach and general manager, Carroll Dawson, affectionately known as “CD.”

For nearly three decades, CD was a cornerstone of our organization, instrumental in shaping the careers of stars like Hakeem Olajuwon and Ralph Sampson.… pic.twitter.com/U0iE3EIET1

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— Houston Rockets (@HoustonRockets) September 9, 2024

As an assistant, Dawson built a reputation around the league for developing big men, working closely with Hall of Famers like Elvin Hayes, Hakeem Olajuwon, Ralph Sampson and Moses Malone. His proficiency in player development carried over to his role as general manager, tasked with the day-to-day running of the Rockets’ scouting department.

Dawson constantly sought avenues to upgrade the roster, successfully pulling off trades for the likes of Scottie Pippen, Charles Barkley, Cuttino Mobley and Tracy McGrady — along with drafting of Yao Ming in 2002. In 2007, Dawson hired Daryl Morey as his successor.

That year, the Rockets hung a banner with the initials “CD” from the rafters at Toyota Center to honor Dawson’s work with the franchise.

But Dawson’s impact wasn’t just limited to the NBA. He was also an instrumental figure in the construction of four-time WNBA Champion Houston Comets, which still stands as the most successful WNBA franchise of all time. As executive vice president of the organization, Dawson played a monumental role in signing WNBA legends Tina Thompson, Cynthia Cooper and Sheryl Swoopes along with the hiring of coach Van Chancellor.

“I’m lucky to have the chance to get to know and work with (Dawson),” Rockets general manager Rafael Stone told The Athletic in a statement. “He’s a Houston Rockets legend and someone I learned a lot from, particularly his ability to use humor to make his point and connect with people. That’s a timeless quality that not many people possess and it was cool to get the chance to observe.”

(Photo of Dawson at the 2006 NBA Draft Lottery: Jennifer Pottheiser / NBAE via Getty Images)