Denver Summit FC Heads to Boston With Something to Prove

A winless expansion side, a depleted backline, and a team that came in on their day off. Sunday's match at Gillette Stadium is more than a road trip.

Glendale, Colo. — Nick Cushing said it plainly at practice this week. This team should be nine points better off.

One win. Three losses. Two draws. Six points. That's where Denver Summit FC sits heading into Sunday's road match against Boston Legacy FC at Gillette Stadium. And if you believe Cushing — and the math backs him up — Denver should be looking at a completely different table position right now. Win in Seattle. Win in Washington. Win this one. That's eight more points. That's a team firmly in playoff conversation instead of sitting 11th.

The margin in this league is brutal. Denver has learned that the hard way.

The Other Side of the Expansion Story

There is no team in the NWSL that Denver has more in common with than Boston Legacy FC. They were announced together. They built their rosters at the same time, under the same allocation rules, chasing the same players in the same windows. They entered the league as a pair — the 15th and 16th franchises — and now, six games into their shared existence, they are headed in completely opposite directions.

Boston is 0-5-0. Zero points. Shut out four times in five games. Last Saturday against Chicago, they took 27 shots and scored zero goals. The pieces are legitimate — Amanda Gutierres was a 2025 Ballon d'Or nominee, Nichelle Prince has a decade in this league, Casey Murphy is one of the best goalkeepers in the country. But legitimate pieces and a functional team are two different things, and Boston has not yet figured out how to be the latter.

The reason isn't talent. It's time. Head coach Filipa Patão arrived from Benfica with five consecutive league titles and a Champions League quarterfinal run. Her system asks for fluid, relational movement — players making decisions in the moment based on trust built over years. She has had four months. The NWSL does not wait.

Emma Hayes, in Denver last month for the USWNT match at Dick's Sporting Goods Park, was characteristically direct about what Cushing has built here. "I think his team have been consistent for the most part," she said. "They're so new. Their pre-season and four or five games. So it's going to take time." The same grace applies to Boston. They're not a bad team. They're a team still becoming one.

But on Sunday, that becoming is Denver's problem to exploit.

The Goalkeeper Matchup No One Is Talking About

Casey Murphy will get all the attention. She should. The 2024 Olympic gold medalist has been the primary reason Boston's goal differential isn't catastrophically worse, making multiple save-of-the-year contenders in a season where her defense has consistently left her exposed. She is elite and she will make saves on Sunday that make Denver fans want to look away.

What often gets lost in that conversation is what's happening on the other end.

Abby Smith leads every goalkeeper in the NWSL with 23 saves this season. Her goals against average of 0.6 is second in the league behind only San Diego's Leah Freeman. She was named to the NWSL Best XI for March — the first monthly honor in Summit FC history — after posting a league-leading 20 saves in the month alone. On March 20 in Orlando, she logged her 250th career NWSL save, becoming the 13th goalkeeper in league history to reach that mark.

This is a goalkeeper matchup between two of the best in the league. Denver's attack doesn't need to be perfect on Sunday. It needs to be persistent.

A Backline Running Short

Boston's defensive situation heading into Sunday is worth understanding in detail, because it is one of the more significant factors in this match.

Nicki Hernandez is out with a thigh injury. Laís Araújo, also a thigh. Chloe Ricketts, an ankle. Bianca St-Georges — who has played the fifth-most minutes for the club this season — has only just returned from a red card suspension. The Legacy's backline is thin in a way it was not designed to be, and it is facing a Denver press that has been one of the more disruptive defensive systems in the league this season.

Nick Cushing's high press at the Summit is built to do exactly one thing to teams like Boston: force turnovers in the opponent's half before their attack can organize. Against a possession-heavy, build-from-the-back system running on a depleted defensive unit, the opportunity for Denver to win the ball in dangerous areas on Sunday is real.

The Questions Up Front

There is one significant wrinkle heading into Gillette, and it has nothing to do with Boston.

Melissa Kössler and Natasha Flint were both limited at practice this week. Cushing indicated he expects both to be available, but neither is confirmed. Those two players account for every goal Denver has scored this season — Kössler with four, Flint with two. Kössler is tied for second in the NWSL Golden Boot race. She has been Denver's entire attacking identity since March.

If one or both of them are less than full fitness, Cushing faces real decisions about who carries the offensive burden. Olivia Thomas, Jasmine Aikey, Ally Brazier — this is the moment expansion depth either shows up or it doesn't.

Carson Pickett addressed the mental side of this challenge directly this week. "This game is probably at this point a 95-minute game," she said. "We have to stay in it mentally. Even going down and having one goal scored against us and still being up, we should have put the throttle on and absolutely scored another goal to put the game away."

She was talking about San Diego. She was also talking about every game Denver has let slip through their fingers this season.

What Cushing Said

The most important thing Cushing said at practice this week wasn't about tactics or Boston's injury situation. It was about what happened after San Diego.

The team was supposed to have the day off. They came in anyway. They had what Cushing described as a really honest meeting. No excuses. No blame. Just an honest accounting of where they are and what they need to do.

"Adversity is a terrible thing to waste," he said.

That's a group that understands what this season is. It's hard. It's uneven. The highs and lows are further apart than anyone inside the building is comfortable with. But they are not hiding from any of it, and that matters more than any tactical adjustment Cushing could make between now and kickoff.

The Bottom Line

Denver Summit FC goes to Foxborough on Sunday without altitude, without a home crowd, and potentially without their two most dangerous attacking players at full fitness. They face a winless team that is desperate for anything — a goal, a point, a moment — and desperation in this league is its own kind of dangerous.

But they also go to Foxborough with Abby Smith in goal, with one of the best defensive backlines in the NWSL, with a press that can systematically dismantle a team still learning how to build out of the back, and with a group of players who came in on their day off and decided the only way through this is together.

Cushing is right. This team should be nine points better off. Sunday is the next chance to start collecting them.

Listen to the full Boston preview — including interviews with Nick Cushing and Carson Pickett — on The 5280 Pitch. Available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.