The Mourning After Page 27 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Leafs and Lightning are playing the strangest series
In a playoff series, especially one between two very good teams which the Lightning and Maple Leafs are, you expect some swings. No one expected a short series, which means twists and turns as teams exchange wins. Momentum generally swings on the performance level of your goalie the next night, but ...
Kyle Busch could miss race for daughter’s birth, and good for him
It’s a very cool thing for Trevor Bayne that there’s a chance he’ll get back behind the wheel in NASCAR’s Cup Series. Bayne, the Rich Strike-esque winner of the 2011 Daytona 500 on his 20th birthday, is the standby driver if Kyle Busch’s surrogate goes into labor and Busch misses either Darlington t...
Philly’s Joel Embiid, Dallas’ supporting cast help get their teams back into series
The last two NBA Finals losers, the Heat and Suns, are in very similar positions in the second round of the playoffs. Both took care of business at home, then went on the road Friday night and got smoked....
We’re not going to get rid of the Mets, are we?
Usually, you can dismiss hot April starts as nothing more than cute. Whether it’s real or not, if you have the motivation, you can always lean on baseball “needing to play out” because of the length of the season. Sure, it’s harder to dismiss a hot start from the Dodgers, but why even try? Almost an...
That was MLS’s biggest night
Perhaps there have been too many markers as “MLS’s biggest night” that the words have lost all meaning. So many stadium openings (which is good! Except for those that might have been opened on the public dime), or MLS Cup finals, or TV deals, or expansion teams joining the fray (and definitely not a...
Rangers give Igor Shesterkin the Henrik Lundqvist treatment in 79 save performance
Perhaps the one downside of the NHL game speeding up is that more and more teams look the same. It gets harder to identify a specific style to a specific team as rosters are just packed with players who can move at a high pace and are directed to just get the fuck up the ice as quickly as fucking po...
Please, please no more John Buccigross songs
The only thing worse than having to listen to Gus Johnson these days, and he’s been a real chore for years now, is having to listen to someone trying to be Gus Johnson....
You should root for the Florida Panthers
I know there’s a lot of obstacles. First off, hockey is probably the most provincial sport we have, and once everyone’s team is out, those fans tend to not give a fuck about whatever happens next. We’ve spent so much time coming up with reasons to hate everyone else it’s impossible to change gears. ...
Quarterbacks and Nakobe Dean fall in the NFL Draft. Also: Draft Matt Araiza, you cowards!
Well, the second round passed without a QB in sight, making this draft just the third in the past 30 years to only see one quarterback selected in the first two rounds. And perhaps even more surprisingly, Cincinnati’s Desmond Ridder went ahead of projected favorite Malik Willis, who the Seahawks pas...
It was a good night to get one’s s**t wrecked
This time of year is far and away the most frantic for a sports fan. Usually both the NBA and NHL are in their playoffs, with three or four games per night each. This year, the NHL is dragging ass a bit, and there really is only one playoff race, but it still means one has to keep tabs on it. The NB...
The Nets are so weird
And thus ends yet another attempt by the Brooklyn Nets to skip the line and crash into the NBA penthouse. Actually, “another Nets experiment” sounds a little more apt. Because the Nets, the Brooklyn version, have always felt like one....
Please stay healthy, Byron Buxton
It’s become part of the rhythm of a baseball season. Mike Trout will tweak something, or leave a game early, and every baseball fan will sigh, and wonder why they can’t have nice things. We all feel deprived of something when Trout misses a large chunk of time. This will also happen whenever Shohei ...
Alex Ovechkin is the best, no matter what he might stand for
On Wednesday night, Alex Ovechkin recorded his 50th goal of the season. It is his eighth 50-goal season, which ties the record for most in NHL history, along with Mike Bossy and Wayne Gretzky. But Ovechkin’s accomplishment is far more impressive than those two’s, and eight 50-goal seasons in any era...
Oh man, some intern is going to get it
There are a lot of things in this world that I don’t really understand, or can’t do, or can’t foresee. But I used to be pretty sure that there’s someone out there who is paid, probably pretty well, to know those things, to predict them, and to get those things done. Or to at least make sure they get...
The baseball is deflated again
I’m cribbing heavily from Joe Sheehan’s newsletter again, but in his latest missive he points out that things keep getting better and better for pitchers. Thanks to technology and greater study, they discover new pitches or tweaks to existing ones as they keep throwing harder and harder. At the same...
I’m sure you’re shocked to find out Mel Kiper isn’t vaccinated
If I had to put a face to the unvaccinated, it would probably look like Mel Kiper Jr.’s. I can’t really tell you why, because it’s not like he’s been even the most outspoken at ESPN about being a dingus. But there’s something about his mush…the fact that it looks like he’s never smiled, and if he ha...
Unlikely heroes lead way to start NBA playoffs
The stars were out for the first day of the NBA playoffs, with Donovan Mitchelll scoring 32 points to lead the Jazz to a 99-93 win in Dallas, Karl-Anthony Towns putting up 29 points and 13 boards to lead the Timberwolves to a Game 1 upset in Memphis, 130-117, and then Tyrese Maxey scored 38 points f...
Joe Maddon out-galaxy brains himself, manages to win anyway
There are a couple of key questions in baseball over the past several years that regularly intersect: “Why can’t the Angels win anything when they have Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani, two unique talents among the greatest the game has ever seen?” and “How did Joe Maddon ever win a World Series with th...
Farewell to my first and last
The generations of sports fans who grew up learning and loving a sport and team through the radio are disappearing these days. Another one came to a close on Thursday night in Chicago, though this one was a little different. We were a group out of place and time, which we came to identify ourselves ...
It’s math time with Chris Pronger boys and girls!
As one of my editors pointed out yesterday, maybe we should just be relieved that Chris Pronger can type at all given how his career was ended. That’s generally the hope for any hockey player, as forlorn as it may be. And perhaps Pronger was trying to do the right thing and illustrate how so many fo...