samfels27 Page 7 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The Maple Leafs are in their own heads
The Toronto Maple Leafs fixated on the wrong things? I know, it’s a crazy time and we’ll have to get through it together, with intellect and a savoir-faire. ...
It’s fight night at the Winter Meetings, maybe out of boredom
I had sort of bought into the magic of the Winter Meetings there for a second, and I know better. These haven’t been a thing for some time and yet many a writer show up thinking that deals will take place in the lobby or the bar where they can witness them come together over drunken arguments betwee...
If the Bengals and Jags fall in the forest, do they make a sound?
Ever watch two teams, at the same time, trapped in a simulation, a pantomime, merely a dramatization of a football game? Either with the full knowledge that they are trapped within the parameters of a social experiment that they cannot escape? Or unaware of the boundaries placed upon them?...
The Mariners are downsizing, and that's a bad sign for all of MLB
Maybe GM Jerry Dipoto is trying to make that 54 percent a real challenge. ...
Erling Haaland, Marcus Rashford have rough go of it in wild Premier League weekend
Saturday may have been a routine day in the world’s biggest league, but there must’ve been some sort of gaseous cloud that descended over Ol’ Blighty on Sunday. Other than the one that normally settled over England on Sunday mornings that smells of ale, vomit and some sort of meat (no one’s quite su...
If the NFL wanted good refereeing, it would have it
You do have to appreciate that the officiating crew on the league’s Sunday Night game, supposedly the marquee matchup of the week where the entire NFL world tunes in, was able to pack in so much moron-acy into one final drive. The density of clueless officiating in the last minute of Kansas City Chi...
Who else but the Yankees would release a statement about Henry Kissinger dying?
There is probably a long treatise on how a crumbling empire of a baseball team wants to honor Henry Kissinger, the architect of American exceptionalism being an excuse to do whatever that country wants around the world that only led to this crumbling empire, but quite frankly I’m too tired and incap...
The NBA's In-Season Tournament takes from soccer but isn’t a cup
I’ll give the NBA this, as a soccer fan. It’s the only league to take notice of soccer’s consistently rising popularity and attempt to capitalize on that by co-opting some element of it. This is where anyone like me has to fight a blinding urge to scream about promotion and relegation, and earlier t...
The curious case of Cody Bellinger’s free agency
On the surface, Cody Bellinger’s life is about to get better no matter what. He was a down-ballot MVP candidate last season who’s heading into free agency, as well as a former MVP and Rookie of the Year. He would have been labeled a unicorn back in the day, given his ability to play Gold Glove-level...
It's tough to watch, but PSG is doing the right thing
On the one hand, the architects of this PSG team probably should be applauded for actually taking the time to step back and try to create a team instead of collecting players. Messi left, Neymar decamped for Saudi Arabia and PSG didn’t chase whatever shiny thing they could find to plug the holes, no...
What the hell is going on with Corey Perry?
(UPDATE): According to reports, the Blackhawks have said Corey Perry was released because of an incident involving a team employee. No further details were provided by the team....
Red Wings sign old, decrepit man
There have been some green shoots for the Detroit Red Wings (how Christmas-y. Timely!) so far this season. Their trade for Alex DeBrincat has paid off so far, as Top Cat has 12 goals in 20 games so far (a 49-goal pace). Dylan Larkin is doing that thing again where he teases being a genuine No. 1 cen...
You think Monday night was bad? I watch these Bears every week
In the end, the Chicago Bears screwed up what could have been something historic. Last week they managed to be the first team to lose while winning the turnover battle by three and holding the ball for 40 minutes. They had the chance to do it two weeks in a row and live forever. Instead, they’re jus...
You're reading this correctly: The Kings might actually be the best team in hockey
You’d be forgiven if you’ve lost track of the Los Angeles Kings for a while. We’re coming up on 10 years since their last Stanley Cup. They haven’t won a round in the playoffs since, with four pretty inglorious dirt naps in the first round in the interim. They threw up (maybe literally) some pretty ...
If nothing else, Bernardo Silva showed again why he's Bernardo Silva
It is my duty as a Liverpool supporter to bitch about the early kickoff on Saturdays for TV. We all signed a call to action on it and it’s ironclad. In truth, there’s not much the Premier League could have done about Saturday’s clash between the biggest rivals in the league the past few seasons. Wit...
The NHL seems to want it both ways when it comes to supporting minorities
I feel I write these too often, so in the spirit of fairness it should go mentioned that there was a lot of great action on the ice this holiday weekend, such as the New York Rangers solidifying their spot in the NHL’s aristocracy with a 7-4 win over the Boston Bruins, or the Buffalo Sabres managing...
Everyone can now see it — this is what CM Punk really is
“And I cried because I knew I was leaving a place that I love, and it was a home, and I knew where I was going, wasn’t going to be easy for a guy like me. Because I’m one of you. So I look at it like this: Aug. 13th, 2005, I left professional wrestling.”...
From Christian Pulisic to Gio Reyna, we rank the US men's soccer team
Chaos is a ladder, said Lord Baelish. Especially when it comes to international soccer, where injuries, manager changes — both with country and club — a bad transfer or run of form can shift a player’s standing with his national team within a week or two. Getting together only every month or longer ...
The Cardinals appear to want to assemble the worst starting rotation
The 2023 season for the St. Louis Cardinals was an absolute disaster. Though they entered it as the NL Central favorites, even if by default, they lost 91 games as pretty much everything went wrong. The epicenter of their collapse was their starting rotation, which contained pitchers that couldn’t s...
The NHL is pawing at international competition again
While admitting I’m completely clueless as to the detailed logistics of constructing an international hockey tournament, the overall idea of it isn’t complicated. While the actual hockey is probably better before the NHL season when players are fresh and teams have a chance to practice and shape the...