Denver Summit FC 2-2 Bay FC: Eighteen Shots, Three Big Chances Missed, and a Two-Goal Lead Gone for the Third Time

Photo Credit: @fiddle.fotos

Denver matched their season high for shots on target and tripled Bay FC's expected goals at Centennial Stadium. The numbers underneath the scoreline say this was the most dominant ninety minutes Denver have failed to win. The standings say six matches remain.

CENTENNIAL, Colo. — Denver Summit FC drew 2-2 with Bay FC at Centennial Stadium on Wednesday night, conceding in the seventy-third minute and again in the fifth minute of stoppage time after leading by two goals.

Denver remain tenth in the NWSL on thirty-two points from twenty-four matches, five behind eighth-placed Seattle Reign and four behind ninth-placed Angel City, both level on matches played. Six fixtures remain, three at Centennial, with eighteen points available.

Bay arrived fifteenth on twenty-three points, with twenty-four goals in twenty-four matches. They took two of them from a Denver side that had conceded one goal in its previous three home fixtures.

Head coach Nick Cushing drew the distinction himself afterward.

"The performance was a three-point performance, but the result was one point," Cushing said. "And we've got to hope that isn't the two points dropped that affect our ability to get above the line."

The attacking night was the best of the season in several categories

Denver finished with eighteen shots, ten on target and seventeen of the eighteen taken from inside the penalty area. Ten on target equals the club record set against Houston Dash on July 12.

Opta's expected goals model put the match at 3.66 for Denver against 1.22 for Bay. Denver had five big chances and missed three of them. They recorded thirty-five touches in the Bay penalty area against twenty-two the other way, attempted seventeen crosses to seven, won six corners to two, and completed one hundred and fifty-three passes in the final third at seventy-three percent, against one hundred and twenty-eight at fifty-nine.

Lindsey Heaps opened the scoring in the forty-second minute from a Natalie Means pass, which the club records as Means's first career assist. Janine Sonis added the second in the fifty-seventh, finishing a Yazmeen Ryan pass that slid through the Bay back line.

What Denver did not do was take a third. In the sixtieth minute a single corner produced four shots worth a combined 0.99 expected goals and none of them went in. Goalkeeper Jordan Silkowitz finished with seven saves.

The second half split cleanly in two

Through the first sixty minutes Denver took fifteen shots worth 3.59 expected goals. From the sixty-first minute to the final whistle they took three, worth 0.08.

Bay's night ran the opposite way: eight shots and no goals before the hour, four shots and two goals after it, from 0.53 expected goals. Bay manager Emma Coates made three substitutions in the sixty-third and sixty-fourth minutes. Denver's first came in the sixty-eighth.

Asked what a team does differently once it leads by two, Cushing did not reach for tactics.

"It's very, very simple. Just go three, four and five," he said. "You kill the opponent off, especially a team that's second from bottom that is probably just playing out the season."

Claire Hutton scored in the seventy-third from a Taylor Huff pass. Huff, cautioned in the seventy-ninth, equalized herself in the ninety-fifth. Bay picked up a second yellow card, to Keira Barry, in the ninety-seventh, meaning the match continued for roughly two minutes after the equalizer.

Cushing returned repeatedly to the same word afterward.

"You don't get gifted three points in this league," Cushing said. "Anybody can beat anybody, and it's about mentality."

The rotation

Cushing named a changed side on a four-day turnaround, with Seattle arriving three days after Bay, and was asked to explain it.

"Just freshness, right? It's the nature of playing on a Friday and then playing on a Wednesday, is we rotate a little bit," Cushing said. "It's on those players to be prepared to come in."

He was asked again about the sixty-eighth-minute changes, which removed the team's leading shot-taker and the assist provider on the opening goal.

"I live and die by my decisions, and I'll go back and reflect on whether we should have changed," he said. "But those details are pretty irrelevant when you've had ten chances to win the game."

The individual ledger

Sonis was Denver's most involved player for the second consecutive match, with seventy-four touches, nine crosses, twenty completed passes in the final third and 0.91 expected goals, all team highs apart from the last. Her goal was her eleventh of the season in twenty-three appearances, three from the penalty spot, and moves her into a tie for fourth in the league's scoring charts. She remains the only defender leading her club in scoring anywhere in the NWSL.

Heaps led the match with three chances created and generated 1.04 expected goals, the highest figure on either side, in her seventh appearance since arriving from Olympique Lyonnais. It was her second goal in consecutive matches after scoring at Angel City on September 11.

Sonis, who has now been the closest teammate to Heaps for both of her goals, was asked about the celebration that has followed them.

"That's her celebration, and I'm still trying to figure out how to do it, because I think I do the wrong thing every time," Sonis said. "So it's become a little bit of a joke."

Melissa Kössler took a team-high four shots in sixty-nine minutes before being withdrawn. Ryan recorded three shots on target, more than any player in the match, and her assist was her fifth of the season, the most on the team, alongside six goals.

Kaleigh Kurtz completed fifty-one passes at eighty-nine percent, more than anyone on the field, and has now started all twenty-four matches and played all two thousand one hundred and sixty minutes of Denver's season. Megan Reid completed forty-four. Abby Smith made three saves and recorded nineteen recoveries, the highest figure in the match by any player.

Denver's four substitutes — Ayo Oke, Olivia Thomas, Delanie Sheehan and Yuzuki Yamamoto — combined for one shot and forty-seven touches across a combined one hundred and three minutes.

Denver committed eight fouls and took no yellow cards.

Bay's night, and the season series

Huff was the difference. She finished with three shots, two on target, four chances created, a goal and an assist, having entered the match with two goals and two assists in eighteen appearances all season.

Hutton, who has started all twenty-four of Bay's matches, scored her second of the year. Racheal Kundananji generated Bay's highest individual expected goals figure at 0.50 without scoring. Aldana Cometti won three tackles before being substituted in the sixty-fifth minute, and Silkowitz added eleven recoveries to her seven saves.

Bay won sixteen tackles to Denver's five and thirty duels to nineteen, and finished with two yellow cards and three offsides.

Asked about the officiating, Sonis declined the exit.

"You can't blame anything on the officiating, especially when you do enough as a team to have full control of the game," Sonis said. "When you don't control the controllable moments, you leave a team in the game.

The draw completes a season series that began with the first match in Denver Summit FC history. Bay beat Denver 2-1 at PayPal Park on March 14, a match in which Sonis assisted Kössler's goal and was sent off in the twenty-seventh minute, leaving Denver to play more than an hour with ten. Six months later, Denver outshot the same opponent eighteen to twelve and still took a point.

Where the goalkeeping numbers sit

Smith faced five shots on target, made three saves and conceded twice, a performance FotMob's model grades at minus 0.55 goals prevented. The model rates Huff's equalizer as a shot a goalkeeper stops more often than not.

The surrounding numbers cut the other way. Across the three matches Kat Asman started while Smith was unavailable, opponents averaged ten shots, 1.13 expected goals and fifteen touches inside the Denver penalty area. Across Smith's two matches since returning, opponents have averaged fifteen shots, 2.30 expected goals and twenty-nine touches inside the box — double the chance quality, in front of largely the same back line, inside three weeks.

The one like-for-like comparison available is Portland and Gotham, where each goalkeeper started once. Asman saved nine of ten shots on target across the pair. Smith saved six of seven, conceding only a Sophia Wilson penalty. Smith has started twenty-one of twenty-four matches this season; Asman three.

The season ledger

Denver have scored thirty-nine league goals across twenty-four matches, and the distribution remains unusually flat for a first-year club. Sonis leads with eleven and four assists. Ryan has six and five. Kössler has six and one. Natasha Flint has five and four, Yamamoto three and two, Heaps two and two in seven appearances, Thomas two and one, and Oke three assists from the back line.

Denver have now scored multiple goals in four consecutive matches — six against Chicago, three against Gotham, three at Angel City, two on Wednesday — and lead the league with twelve goals scored between the forty-sixth and sixtieth minutes.

The concessions have their own shape. Denver have led by two goals in eight matches this season and won five of them. The three exceptions are San Diego on April 25, a 3-2 home defeat from 2-0 up; Angel City on September 11, a 3-3 draw from 3-1 up; and Wednesday. Across the last two matches, all three goals conceded arrived between the sixty-third and seventy-fourth minutes. Those three results account for seven dropped points in a race Denver currently trail by five.

Cushing separated Wednesday from the Angel City result four days earlier, despite both ending in dropped two-goal leads.

"I think very, very different draws," Cushing said. "The draw in Angel City, although we were three-one up, is a draw that I think at this stage of the season I would take. In the evolution of us, the mentality of the group and the maturity of the group, you have to win the Angel City game once you go three-one up."

Sonis, asked whether a two-goal lead invites the problem, pointed at the league rather than the scoreline.

"Two-zero is a really difficult lead," Sonis said, "but I think in this league you can't get complacent ever, regardless of scoreline."

Six matches, three at Centennial

Seattle Reign visit Centennial Stadium on Saturday at 6:45 p.m. MT on ION.

The Reign have eleven wins, four draws and nine losses, and lost 3-1 at Angel City on Wednesday in their third match in eight days, ending a three-match winning streak and leaving them a point clear of Angel City. They have scored in fifteen consecutive matches, a club record; the last time they failed to score against Denver was the 0-0 draw at ONE Spokane Stadium on April 4, the only previous meeting between the clubs.

Angel City beat Seattle with set pieces, converting a penalty and an unmarked header from a corner. Laura Harvey has fielded nineteen different starting elevens in twenty-four matches and made four changes in Los Angeles, including Claudia Dickey in goal ahead of Cassie Miller.

After Saturday, Denver travel to Kansas City on September 26 and Chicago on October 4, host Angel City on October 17 and Racing Louisville on October 24, and close at North Carolina on Decision Day, November 1.

The full breakdown of the Bay match, including postgame audio from Cushing and Sonis, is on this week's episode of The 5280 Pitch, available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.