Another coach of a PWHL expansion team has been let go.

On Monday, the Vancouver Goldeneyes announced a “change at the head coaching position,” parting ways with Brian Idalski after just one season.

“As we conclude our inaugural season and evaluate the future direction of the organization, we have made the decision to make a change at the head coaching position,” Goldeneyes General Manager Cara Gardner Morey said in a statement. “We thank Brian for his professionalism and commitment to the Vancouver Goldeneyes and wish him all the best moving forward.”

Idalski was hired in June 2025 as the Goldeneyes’ first head coach. He had two decades of experience in women’s hockey, including at the pro level and with the Chinese women’s team at the 2022 Beijing Olympics.

The Goldeneyes joined the PWHL last season along with the Seattle Torrent in the league’s first wave of expansion. Vancouver looked like the team to beat with a roster stacked with talent, led by Sarah Nurse and Sophie Jaques. But the Goldeneyes struggled in their inaugural season, finishing sixth in the league standings. They were the second team eliminated from playoff contention, just days after Seattle.

Vancouver’s roster greatly underperformed expectations, and very few Goldeneyes players matched or improved upon their production from last season. In fact, when The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn first launched his PWHL data model, Vancouver had the deepest offensive roster in the league, with a 12.9 offensive rating — 10 full points more than the next-best team, the eventual champion Montreal Victoire (2.2). Vancouver’s preseason expected win percentage (.560) was also among the highest in the league, but in reality it was nowhere close with a .411 percent win rate.

Throughout the season, Idalski talked a lot about wanting Vancouver to be difficult to play against with a strong on-ice identity, much like his college team. But that style didn’t really translate for Vancouver, which looked like it lacked direction at times during the season.

Vancouver won’t be alone in its coaching search. Last month, the Seattle Torrent announced the team had parted ways with head coach Steve O’Rourke after a similarly disappointing inaugural season, finishing last with just eight wins. Vancouver, however, won the No. 1 pick in the 2026 PWHL Draft via the league’s “Gold Plan,” and secured the right to draft generational defender Caroline Harvey later this month.

The Toronto Sceptres and Boston Fleet also currently have vacancies at the head coach position after Troy Ryan (San Jose) and Kris Sparre (Hamilton) accepted jobs with the league’s new expansion teams. Las Vegas has yet to announce its head coach.

Bruce Meyer, the interim head of the Major League Baseball Players Association, said Monday he was “very surprised” by the details of the salary-cap proposal owners made four days earlier. The union’s analysis of the offer showed players would make less money overall — and that amateur players who turn pro would be particularly hit hard.

“I thought they would try harder to make it look good, and they didn’t even do that,” Meyer said on a video conference call with reporters.

The players and owners both made opening economic proposals last week in a collective-bargaining process that’s expected to take until next spring at the earliest. MLB proposed that starting next season, teams could spend no more than $245.3 million on salary, along with a mandated floor of $171.2 million — a huge change for baseball, the only prominent league in the U.S. that does not have a cap and floor.

Owners are framing the push for a cap around a desire to improve the sport’s competitive balance. Players, however, have long opposed a cap system on economic grounds and others, setting up a contentious labor battle.

Cap systems typically come with a revenue split: an agreed-upon distribution of the overall money the sport takes in. MLB proposed players and owners start out with an even 50-50 split but the union said players already earn more than half.

“Using MLB’s definition of revenue and player share as set forth in their proposal and their presentation to us, player share under their proposal would go down,” Meyer said. “Player share for this season, 2026, is projected to be well over 50 percent, using, again MLB’s definitions of revenues and what counts against player share.

“Had MLB’s proposal been in place in 2026, players, we estimate, would lose over half a billion dollars.”

Glen Caplin, an MLB spokesperson, responded with a statement Monday: “Our salary cap-and-floor proposal addresses our fans’ concerns by leveling the playing field while sharing baseball revenue with the players 50-50 like the other leagues. Under our proposal, major-league players will receive more compensation in year one of the system than in 2026. We are ready to listen if the MLBPA wants to counter our proposal at the bargaining table.”

Two discrepancies are at play here. Many of the fights that await the players and owners will center on how different areas of spending are counted, and the first discrepancy is in that category.

Meyer argued that the share of money that goes to the players or the owners — in this case, the 50-50 split MLB is proposing — “doesn’t tell you anything unless you know how ‘share’ is defined.”

“People should be aware their proposal deducts billions of dollars in expenses,” Meyer said. “It’s not even a real 50 percent.”

The second discrepancy centers on whether big leaguers should care if newly minted minor leaguers make less money. Because if the players’ overall share is coming down in the league’s proposal — from above 50 percent, as the union says it is, to 50 — yet MLB players themselves are not taking salary cuts, then the difference is owed to a change elsewhere.

The union expects that the league is planning to propose greatly reducing the $500-plus million that clubs pay annually to domestic and international amateur signees — the top prospects from schools throughout the U.S. and other countries, such as the Dominican Republic.

“They projected MLB players’ payroll in ‘27, ‘28, would be flat,” Meyer said. “The only way to get to even those numbers would be to drastically reduce or eliminate amateur entry compensation, both domestic and international. And maybe forms of benefits too.

“They haven’t made a proposal on that, but from what they’ve given to us, it seems clear that their projections build in effectively an eradication, or almost complete eradication, of things like amateur signing bonuses.”

Meyer said amateur players are “in many ways the most vulnerable, players coming in without a lot of resources, mostly.”

When the players made their proposal, they offered a set of changes across different economic buckets: they proposed nearly doubling the minimum salary, for example, to $1.5 million. The owners, however, chose to wait to address key player-pay issues in other economic areas.

That includes the minimum salary, time to arbitration, time to free agency and the luxury tax. MLB is expected to eventually offer gains for players in those areas as inducements for switching over to a cap system.

The league has argued that the union’s opening proposal — which would raise the first tier of the competitive balance tax to $300 million, a $56 million increase from today — would not improve the sport’s parity. (the sides disagree on whether baseball’s competitive balance is broken.)

The league accused the union of actually offering to make it easier for the Los Angeles Dodgers, the two-time defending World Series champions, to continue to outspend everyone.

“For example, under the union’s proposal, the Dodgers would pay less in luxury tax payments, giving them an additional $70 million to spend on payroll,” Caplin of MLB said last week.

Meyer fought back against that idea generally Monday.

“They’ve said, ‘Well, but your CBT proposal, the tax threshold is so high that that would reduce the amount of luxury tax proceeds,’” Meyer said. “It’s the complete opposite of what the league argues (otherwise).

“When the league tries to make the disparities look greater, they actually include those luxury tax proceeds as part of spending — even though half of it goes directly to the smaller-market teams.”

We’ve arrived at a different counting dispute. Last week, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred referenced a $446 million gap between the Dodgers and the team with the lowest payroll in baseball, the Miami Marlins, from last season. Manfred described that gap as an unfair fight.

But the union doesn’t think $446 million is the best figure to use. That amount includes player payroll as well as how much the Dodgers paid in luxury taxes.

It’s undoubtedly the case that the Dodgers had to pay a luxury tax bill for 2025 of about $169 million. What the union argues is that luxury tax payments are not payroll, however — because some of that money goes right back to teams.

“The payroll disparity is actually exaggerated by the way the league lumps in luxury tax penalties,” Meyer said.

Ultimately, the union wants to see smaller-market teams spend more.

“Every team has the ability to do what the Brewers are doing, what the Padres have done, or what Tampa has always done,” Meyer said. “One of the things that I find kind of ironic in a perverse way: if Team X decides we’re not going to spend money on players, well, that increases the disparity in payroll, right? They can themselves increase the disparity by choosing not to spend.”

“We want to encourage more San Diegos,” Meyer continued.

Meyer said the league and the union do not yet have their next bargaining meeting scheduled. The current labor agreement runs through Dec. 1. The owners are likely to start a lockout if a new deal hasn’t been reached by that time, and the industry expectation is that sides will still be far apart at that point.

“Even if we’re not making progress on the major economic components, there are a lot of other things that we bargain over,” Meyer said.

Monday’s press conference was something of a departure from the last set of negotiations in MLB five years ago. While the league and the union held plenty of press conferences during that process, which produced a lockout from December 2021 until March 2022, those were later in bargaining.

What remains to be seen is whether the sides find a way to play a full 162-game season in 2027. If owners stick to a cap, games could wind up canceled. The last time owners proposed a cap was in 1994-95, when a 232-day strike canceled the 1994 World Series.

“Our union has never been broken and never will be,” Meyer said. “You can take away a different lesson from our history, but that would be a big mistake.”

INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark and coach Stephanie White downplayed their viral argument that occurred in Indiana’s 100-84 loss to the Portland Fire on Saturday. Clark and White addressed that moment Monday before practice, both calling their relationship “great” and saying they will “ride” for each other. They also said their exchange has been overblown by media and fans.

“Two people being competitive. Two people that really want to win,” Clark said of the nature of her back-and-forth with White. “I think a lot of those things happen all of the time, and I know there’s a camera on me, and that’s how it’s gonna be. But there’s a lot of people out there in the media or on TV that they think they know a lot of things, but they’re just blatantly wrong about a lot of things. And I ride for Steph. I ride for these girls. … Steph has my back more than anybody.”

The apparent disagreement between Clark and White happened during a timeout at the 8:26 mark of the second quarter on Saturday. Neither revealed on Monday what led to their exchange, though Clark said, “We were down (18) points, so probably that.” It appeared that while Clark and White were arguing, White decided that she had heard enough from Clark and signaled for her to be subbed out. Clark then stood from the bench and was replaced in the lineup by rookie Raven Johnson. Clark shook her head while drinking from her water bottle as she stood beside White, who was seated and continued talking to the five players who were preparing to enter the game.

Thought Steph left her fire in Connecticut! 🥵 pic.twitter.com/meFefzUAAf

— Mostly WNBA Tweets  (@MostlyWNBA) May 31, 2026

The Fever never regained control of the game in what turned out to be arguably their worst performance of the season. Clark was held to a season-low 6 points on 1-of-7 shooting, which was just the seventh time she’s been held to single digits in the WNBA.

After the loss, Clark said she didn’t think twice about her incident with White. She said she’s more focused on helping her Fever, who are 4-4, snap their two-game losing streak when they host the Atlanta Dream on Thursday.

But in the days since Indiana’s loss at Portland, the clip of Clark and White disagreeing has been shared on sports broadcasts and social media. Several prominent figures, like Hall of Famers Sue Bird and Cheryl Miller, have weighed in. Clark and White, however, pushed back on the notion that this particular argument was a fair summation of their bond.

“I think what happened in that moment is I was challenging a player. It’s coaching, is what it is,” White said. “I don’t think it often becomes an issue if you’re watching it in men’s sports most of the time. But my relationship with Caitlin is great. I love Caitlin. I ride with her.”

White is in her sixth season as a WNBA head coach and was an assistant for eight years. She also spent six years in the league as a player. The 48-year-old said the back-and-forth with Clark was not an uncommon experience in her two decades of WNBA experience.

“This is not a new thing. It’s just new because everything that (Clark) does gets clicks. That’s how everybody makes money,” White said, waving her hands toward reporters. “… When there was player confrontation, tension, coaching 10 years ago when I was doing this … it wasn’t on social media. That was just getting started. It happens in every sport. It happens in all walks of life, so this is not anything that’s new, and it’s not a story.”

White, who played for the Fever and previously coached them, rejoined the franchise last year. She replaced Christie Sides as head coach and is now in her second year as Clark’s coach. White is also an assistant for the U.S. women’s national team and coached Clark in March when Clark made her senior team debut in the World Cup qualifying tournament. Clark took home MVP honors.

But before Clark reestablished herself on a global stage, she endured a trying 2025 season with White by her side. After never missing a game in college or as a rookie in the WNBA, Clark was limited to just 13 games last year due to various lower-body injuries. White helped her navigate the weight of those absences.

“When I got hurt at the Connecticut game last year, I bawled in Steph’s arms. That’s somebody I will ride for, for the rest of my life,” Clark said. “People that just sit on their phones all day, they don’t see those moments. They don’t see the moments when we come into work. They don’t see the moments that absolutely suck, and people have your back. But they think they know everything, and in reality, they don’t have a clue.”

White added that “all the people who haven’t played at an elite level” wouldn’t understand why it’s inevitable for a coach and star player to butt heads.

“She wants to be coached, and I want her to help me be a better coach,” White said of Clark. “We’re both competitive. We’re both stubborn. We’re more alike than different, and hopefully we continue to bring the best out of each other.”