Off to a strong start, and with the two-time defending champions in town, was Wednesday’s game the biggest of the season for the Minnesota Lynx?

Sure, coach Cheryl Reeve said pregame, because it’s the next one.

And the result is something the Lynx will surely learn from.

In a matchup of the top-scoring teams in the WNBA, Las Vegas pulled away in the fourth quarter for an 80-66 win.

Reeve said the Lynx defense was good enough to win, but the physicality of Las Vegas was problematic for the Minnesota offense that was too often stagnant.

“Our finest moments are when we’re getting in and out of screens quickly, when we’re seeking the paint and when we cut. … We just didn’t get that done with any frequency. Then Phee is trying to do something one on one, instead of movement, collapse the defense, play behind, and we’ve done that extremely well,” she said.

Napheesa Collier led the Lynx (4-2) with 18 points and 13 rebounds. She is trying to take the positive of when the game occurred.

“Now we can look at film, we know what it feels like we can scheme against it because we know what it looks like. And so instead of just trying to continue to play how we’ve been playing, we can go into things and get to things differently.”

A’ja Wilson led the Aces with 29 points and 15 rebounds, Jackie Young had 19 points and 10 assists and Kelsey Plum scored five of her 10 points in a key fourth-quarter stretch. Each entered the night averaging at least 20.8 points.

Entering the game shooting a league-best 47% from the field, Minnesota shot a season-low 36.9%. Its previous low for points was 82.

“We did get good shots. I missed some layups, we missed some open shots, Courtney missed some that she normally makes, we had some missed threes,” Collier said. “It was an off night for us. And, you know, kudos to Vegas because they played some really good defense. But we did miss a lot of shots that we normally make.”

Courtney Williams had 12 points and eight assists, Cecilia Zandalasini had a dozen points, but Minnesota was outscored 23-10 in the final 10 minutes, 26 seconds.

Down by 11 early in the third quarter, the Lynx got within one on a pair of free throws by Kayla McBride, but Kate Martin hit from deep and Wilson picked off a Williams pass and scored on a layup in the quarter’s final second.

Las Vegas (4-1) kept its hot hand into the fourth quarter.

Five points by Plum and a 3-pointer from Young put Las Vegas up by a dozen to cap a 13-2 run.

McBride scored from deep, but Wilson got four points inside and Young drained another 3 midway through the quarter to make it 77-61.

Miller update

Forward Diamond Miller, out the past three games with a right knee injury, underwent a cleanup surgical procedure Wednesday.

“She’ll be back,” Reeve said. “Scopes are typically four-to-six weeks. I don’t necessarily know they want to put that time on her.”

Miller had right knee surgery in April 2022 at the University of Maryland and had offseason meniscus surgery on her left knee that prevented her from playing overseas.

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The Saints earned their fifth shutout this season on the road Wednesday with a 5-0 victory in Rochester, N.Y.

The scoring started early, with a single from Michael Helman and a Matt Wallner walk putting runners at first and second, and an opposite field home run from Yunior Severino.

Adam Plutko seemed to be recovering well from offseason hip surgery, with four shutout innings.

The Saints’ Alex Isola added a run in the sixth inning, and Severino ended the scoring in the seventh with an RBI single into left field.

Game four of the series is Thursday at 10:05 a.m.

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There was a lot of hard contact made on Wednesday at Target Field, by both the Twins and Kansas City Royals — the Royals a little harder.

Nelson Velazquez homered twice and drove in three runs as Kansas City rang up Twins right-hander Bailey Ober for six runs, plenty for Royals ace Seth Lugo in a 6-1 victory in front of an announced crowd of 18,130.

The Twins entered the game with six wins in their past seven games but lost ground to the second-place Royals in the American League Central Division.

Velazquez hit a two-run homer in a four-run third inning and added a solo homer in the fifth as the Royals gave themselves a chance to split this four-game series that concludes Thursday with a 12:10 first pitch.

Salvador Perez drove in a pair of runs with a double and a home run — partnering with Velazquez for fifth-inning solo shots — and Bobby Witt Jr. drove in Kansas City’s first run and later scored in the third.

The Twins got good wood on some of Lugo’s pitches but mostly sent them right at Royals outfielders. Lugo (9-1) was charged with one run on six hits and three walks in six innings, extending his major league-leading innings pitched to 82 and lowering his earned-run average to an MLB-best 1.72. He struck out five.

Ober (5-3) allowed six earned runs on nine hits, three of them homers that traveled a combined 1,262 feet. He didn’t walk a batter and fanned four.

The Twins put the first two batters on against Carlos Hernandez in the ninth — a single by Jose Miranda and walk to Manuel Margot — but Carlos Correa was robbed of a double on a liner to third baseman Maikel Garcia, and pinch hitter Byron Buxton struck out swinging. Max Kepler then popped out to second for the final out.

Miranda gave the Twins a 1-0 lead in the second inning, hitting a fly ball to the warning track in left that scored Willi Castro from third base. But it didn’t last long.

In the top of the third, No. 9 hitter Kyle Isbel singled sharply to left and moved to third on a groundout by Garcia. He tied the game when he scored from second on Witt’s bleeding single into right.

Perez doubled to left to bring home Witt for a 2-1 lead, and one out later scored on Velazquez’s homer into the bullpen in straightaway center. It traveled an estimated 437 feet — with an exit velocity of 109.3 mph — and made it 4-1 Royals.

In the fifth, Perez hit a no-doubt solo home run into the ’pen to make it 5-1, and after Adam Frazier grounded out to first, Velazquez hit a solo homer into the left field bleachers to make it 6-1.

Lugo, meanwhile, was cruising until the fifth inning, when Trevor Larnach led off with a single to left. Lugo got Correa to pop out to first, but Alex Kiriloff walked to put two on with one out. Kepler then worked a 12-pitch at-bat but struck out looking, and Ryan Jeffers flied out softly to left to end the threat.

Right-hander Diego Castillo made his Twins debut, pitching two scoreless innings in relief. He walked one and didn’t allow a hit. In fact, relievers Steven Okert, Castillo and Cole Sands combined to allow one hit in four scoreless innings.

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LOWELL, Mass. —  Kendall Coyne Schofield once showed off her speed racing against the men in an NHL skills competition at All-Star weekend.
On Wednesday night, she made a mad dash into women’s hockey history.

The three-time Olympian chased down a rolling puck and knocked it into an empty net to seal Minnesota’s 3-0 victory over Boston in the winner-take-all Game 5 to claim the inaugural championship of the Professional Women’s Hockey League.

Liz Schepers scored to break a scoreless, second-period tie, Michela Cava made it 2-0 midway through the third period and Nicole Hensley stopped 17 shots for Minnesota. Coyne Schofield added the empty netter with two minutes left, and then the captain and oldest member of the roster took the first lap on the ice with the Walter Cup.

“It makes me want to tear up thinking about it. She’s done so much for this sport,” said forward Taylor Heise, who was named the playoff MVP. “She’s definitely one of the people that’s helped this sport grow and one of the reasons why this arena is sold out here tonight.”

Three nights after prematurely celebrating a would-be game-winner in double overtime that was waved off for goaltender interference, Hensley earned her second shutout of the playoffs. The two-time Olympian from Colorado had posted one in 14 games during the regular season, when Minnesota limped into the playoffs on a seven-game losing streak.

“We’re ‘the State of Hockey,’” said Heise, who was the league’s No. 1 overall draft pick. “And I think this proves it.”

Boston goalie Aerin Frankel, dubbed the “Green Monster” in her forest green home sweater, made 41 saves for the runners-up. The sold-out crowd at the Tsongas Center, about an hour north of Boston, chanted her name and “Thank you, Boston!” after the final buzzer, even as the Minnesota players celebrated on the ice and league officials set up the podium for the trophy presentation.

Boston forced a decisive fifth game only after Sophie Jaques’ apparent goal in double overtime in Game 4 was taken off the board because of goaltender interference. The Minnesota players, who had already streamed onto the ice to celebrate, throwing their equipment in the air, gathered up their gloves and sticks, and the game resumed.

One minute later, Alina Muller scored to send the series back to Boston.

The crowd was eager to see the home team claim the new trophy, named for league benefactor and Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter, chanting “We want the Cup!” just like Bruins fans do down in Boston. A Fenway-style “Sweet Caroline” singalong kept them busy during the second break.

But with the game scoreless early in the second, Minnesota forward Sydney Brodt skated through the slot toward the goal. She whiffed on a wrist shot, drawing Frankel out of position, then slid around to the right side and centered the puck behind her, where Schepers tipped it in.

It was still 1-0 when Cava circled behind the net and stuffed the puck between Frankel’s pads; it trickled toward the net before the goalie knocked it over the line when she reached back to save it with her stick hand.

The game was a crowd-pleasing conclusion to the six-team league’s first season, when it blew through some benchmarks but left others unmet.

A game in Montreal against Toronto drew more than 21,000 fans to the Bell Centre. Average attendance in the regular season was 5,448, giving the league confidence to expand the schedule from 24 games to 30 next year. Toronto is looking for a bigger home than the 2,500-seat arena where it played most of its games.

One negative was below-average attendance for the New York team, which split its home between Connecticut, Long Island and New Jersey. Games were broadcast nationally in English and French in Canada, but U.S. fans were left with regional networks and YouTube.

And the teams don’t have nicknames yet — a result of the rush to get on the ice in six months after the two competing pro women’s hockey leagues in North America declared a truce, with help from Walter and tennis great Billie Jean King, last summer. The league said on Wednesday that names and logos will be announced in August.

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