Expansion Teams

In 2025, somebody on Reddit asked me why the Valkyries initial Elo Rating of 1300 was so low, seemingly putting them at a disadvantage in the rankings. While I didn’t choose the value, 1300 is a default that has generally been appropriate for expansion teams, whose average end-of-season rating is 1306 (or 1291 if you exclude the Valks). The Valkyries just happened to be a historically good expansion team. To illustrate that point, I decided to compare all the expansion teams throughout the history of the league:

The Valkyries’ 2025 season stands above every other expansion team, with only the 1998 Detroit Shock coming close (in only the second year of the league’s existence). The two most recent expansion teams before the Valkyries were the Atlanta Dream (2008) and Chicago Sky (2006), both of whom finished well below the initial mark of 1300.

We can also look at these rankings by game number, to see if the Valkyries benefitted from an expanded schedule:

By this metric, the Valkyries’ 2025 season seems pretty closely aligned with the 1998 Detroit Shock, who actually had a slightly higher rating through 30 games. Although they entered the league at very different points in its history, these seem to be the two best showings by any expansion team.