barryap Page 10 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Manny Machado's Feud With The Braves' Mascot Is Extremely Good
It is unclear when and where the beef between Manny Machado and Blooper, the Braves’ strange mascot, began. It dates back to at least last season, Blooper’s rookie year, when Santa Blooper gave Machado a lump of coal, and later, in the playoffs, when Machado, uh, refused to mount Blooper(?). It has ...

The Best Names Of The WHL Draft
Oh, friends. It’s here. The day we’ve been waiting for; the first true sign of spring. The Western Hockey League Bantam Draft, for 14- and 15-year-olds. A window on what Canadians west of Ontario and Americans west of the Mississippi were naming their children in 2004....

Here's The Name Of The Year Final Four
In 1985, Belgian psychologist Jozef Nuttin published a landmark study in which he revealed that people have a general preference for the letters in their own names over the other letters in the alphabet. The idea is that the sight of those letters provides a temporary self-esteem boost that affects ...

Brad Marchand Has Given Up Being Creatively Annoying And Just Punched A Guy In The Back Of The Head
The truly frustrating thing about Brad Marchand is that he’d be a star without all the bullshit. He’s on the top line of the team with the best odds to win the Cup because he’s really, really good at hockey, not because of the other stuff. It’s just that the other stuff—“pest” feels insufficient to ...

Esa Lindell Kept Diving And Diving And Then Suffered Cosmic Justice
Let us stipulate that diving, or flopping, is not so common in hockey as it is in some other sports we could name, nor is it generally treated with anything but outright contempt. It does exist, and it does, unfortunately often, work, but it’s not regarded with the grudging respect for its value it ...

Now The Sharks Want An Apology From The NHL For A Controversial Call
The Sharks watched, amused, as some rough officiating in the first round led to their improbable Game 7 comeback, and as the league quietly apologized to the still-salty Golden Knights. Not that it did Vegas any good; they’re still golfing. (The Sharks’ general reaction to that kerfuffle could be su...

The Giants Were Extremely Horny For Daniel Jones
The Giants liked Daniel Jones. Obviously, because otherwise they wouldn’t have drafted him at No. 6, ahead of Josh Allen or Ed Oliver or Dwayne Haskins. But: they really liked him....

Daniel Jones, Huh?
For the first time in forever (and a few years after it should have happened), the New York Giants have a quarterback of the future. Duke’s Daniel Jones is the anointed successor to Eli Manning, the shiny new model to replace the beaten-up old jalopy who’s running on rims. Orderly succession is the ...

How To Leave Sportswriting And Never Regret A Second
In the autumn of 2012, I began working at a pricey midtown Manhattan steakhouse. At one of my first tables sat Geno Auriemma, the women’s basketball coach at the University of Connecticut. Eleven years earlier, I had embedded with him and his players for six months for a book I’d write. I’d held a n...

The 8 Deadly Sins Of The First Round
All your brackets are dead. Every prediction model is forfeit. Does the regular season have any meaning whatsoever? (Does life?) Does chance play too great a role in this slippery sport? Does the best team ever win the Stanley Cup?...

The Golden Knights Are Furious Over How Their Season Was "Stolen"
Let’s get this out of the way right at the outset: Yes, the Vegas Golden Knights could have avoided all of this controversy—and their elimination—by simply not allowing allowing four goals in 4:01. One of the weirdest and wildest comebacks in recent memory, a Game 7 eventually won by the Sharks 5-4 ...

It's Time To Vote In The Name Of The Year Elite Eight
Each March, we present the Name of the Year bracket to you in the neatest fashion we can muster. The seeding choices we make rank our naminees in the most ideal fashion we can envision. Were all of the higher seeds to conquer all of the lower seeds, it might be a boring tournament, but the result wo...

Alex Ovechkin Had One Hell Of A Wild Night
In retrospect we couldn’t have asked for a better first-round matchup. The Capitals are the more talented team, but they’re also more banged-up and tired. The Hurricanes are younger and hungrier (whatever that means), but also less experienced—which could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on...

Deadspin Up All Night: The Luxury Of Leaving
Thank you for your continued support of Deadspin. Hockey soon....

Tomas Hertl Has Another "Guarantee" For Game 7
It was, the Sharks to a man insisted, not a guarantee. Just an excited kid with less than a mastery of English. Don’t believe them. If Tomas Hertl didn’t expect everyone to latch on to his comments ahead of a win-or-go-home Game 6 against the Golden Knights, he still knew what he was saying. And he ...

The Jets Can't Win At Home And Can't Protect Leads, But Other Than That, Everything's Fine
It all started so well for the Jets, and ended so poorly, which is how an alarmingly large number of games have gone for Winnipeg this year, and is why there are potentially an alarmingly small number of games left for them. For the 11th time this season, the Jets lost a game they had led entering t...

Philipp Grubauer Saved A Game And The Flames Are On The Brink
It’s less sexy than the Blue Jackets clobbering Tampa, but out west the Avalanche are on the verge of upsetting the other top seed, taking a 3-1 series lead over the Flames after a comeback 3-2 overtime win. Colorado’s doing a lot right, but a large share of their success belongs to goalie Philipp G...

Vote In The Name Of The Year Sweet Sixteen
With plenty of real estate remaining in 2019, it’s masochistic to imagine what next year could look like. Emperor Trump? World Series champion Mariners? The mind reels! But whatever horrors might unfold in 2020, we have at least one pop culture stalwart to soothe ourselves in the post-Game of Throne...

What The Hell Happened To The Lightning?
Six days in April can change a lot....

Cale Makar Has Arrived And His Parents Are Just Barely Holding It Together
It’s been a busy few days for Cale Makar. On Friday, he was named the Hobey Baker Award winner for top college player. On Saturday, he and UMass played in and lost the NCAA Championship game. On Sunday, he signed an entry-level contract with the Avalanche, who had drafted him fourth overall in 2017....