2 Page 215 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Iceland Are Still Underdogs, But They Can't Be Counted Out
No nation as small as Iceland (population: 337,479) has ever qualified for the World Cup before, but simply getting to Russia won’t be satisfying enough for this team. After a couple of miraculous wins in Euro 2016 that put Icelandic soccer on the map, this Scandinavian group will be forced to exper...

Alex Ovechkin's Face Said It All
“This moment...” Alexander Ovechkin started, flanked at the podium by the Stanley Cup and the Conn Smythe Trophy. He never once that I saw looked at the latter, but he kept glancing toward the big one, the one he had kissed and lofted and screamed into and shared with every single one of his teammat...

So Much Cool: My Night Among Joyous And Drunken Caps Fans<em></em>
Tomorrow is a bigass waste of time. I am a grown adult, which means that the majority of my decisions are based around tomorrow. I save money. I go to bed at a reasonable hour. I don’t do crack. Tomorrow dictates a great deal of my actions, which is a shame because today is RIGHT HERE to be celebrat...

Last Time Australia Were Bad And Fun, But Now They're Bad And Boring
At the 2014 World Cup, Australia were one of those entertaining minnows who have no real shot at escaping the maws of the big fish hunting them down but still make the chase interesting. In a hellacious group along with Spain, the Netherlands, and Chile, Australia lost all three matches, as was expe...

The Game Clock Broke In Vegas And Caused Total Chaos
If ever you need confirmation of the theory of general relativity, just watch your team in a Stanley Cup clincher. After Lars Eller scored the go-ahead (and soon to be Cup-winning) goal with 7:37 left, time started doing funny things, depending on who you were rooting for. While those final minutes ...

And Now Let Us Bask In The Radiating Joy Of Euphoric Caps Fans
I am always up for images of sports fans celebrating a championship—the euphoria is contagious, especially when it’s a fan base that hasn’t tasted the glory of a title in a good long while. For a nice appetizer, here’s the celebration on the ice:...

An Emotional T.J. Oshie Describes Winning The Cup In Front Of Father, Suffering Dementia<em></em>
You will get absolutely nowhere if you try to keep the emotion bottled up inside while watching Caps winger T.J. Oshie talk about winning the Stanley Cup with his father in attendance. Oshie’s father is battling Alzheimer’s disease, so big joyous events they can experience together take on added imp...

The Capitals Are Finally Champions
This year was different. The Washington Capitals are Stanley Cup champions....

Backstrom To Ovechkin Has Never Been Bigger Or Prettier
It’s 2-1 Washington as I write this, but the goals are coming fast and furious so let’s not spend too much time on this before the score changes. (No shit, Vegas made it 2-2 before I finished writing that sentence.) But the Caps have been scoring some of the prettiest goals of the playoffs—especiall...

Ovechkin And Fleury Say Hello, With Sticks
Alexander Ovechkin’s and Marc-Andre Fleury’s playoff familiarity goes all the way back to 2009. Fleury’s side has won every single one of their series (even if he happened to be on the bench for some of that). That could change tonight, obviously. Even before puck drop, they were sending each other ...

Denmark Will Go As Far As Christian Eriksen Takes Them
The vast majority of teams that make it to the World Cup don’t have a quart of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream’s chance in Jason Whitlock’s freezer of winning the thing. The latter stages of this edition feel particularly preordained, like if one of Brazil or Germany or Spain don’t win the tournament then...

D.C.'s Chinatown Is Sinking Under A Sea Of Red
It has been a long, long while since the last time D.C. had any reason to throw a public sports watch party. With the Caps on a run through the Stanley Cup playoffs, and the weather around town holding up beautifully, Caps watch parties, taking place inside and around the Caps’ Chinatown arena, hav...

Peru Just Might Have Enough To Make This Their Lucky Year
This is the first World Cup since 1982 for Peru, but that doesn’t mean they’re here just to play three games and go home. After weathering an absolutely cutthroat cycle of South American qualifying and earning a spot in a group from which they’re favored to place second and advance, Peru are poised ...

Kendrick Perkins And Kevin Durant Have A Friendly, Obscene Moment Together
Kendrick Perkins, nominally on the Cavs roster, is just there to wear a suit and start shit. He’s a large, rude chaperone who escorts the team from Cleveland to the Bay and back, occasionally stepping up to yell at or near Drake or knock knees with Steph Curry. Last night he fully embraced his role ...

France Have All The Talent In The World, They Just Need To Figure Out How To Use It<em></em>
France are one of the four or so teams coming to Russia for whom anything less than a World Cup title will be a disappointment of sorts. I mean, look at their roster. It just oozes talent, with Champions League experience across the board and the depth necessary to fill in for anything from an unfor...

Just How Extremely Over Are The NBA Finals?
Let me take you inside the game for a moment: we record the Deadcast a little while before you actually hear the Deadcast. It is not, despite the seamlessly integrated ads and effortlessly fluid riffage, a live show. When we recorded this one on Wednesday morning, the NBA Finals were not quite as ex...

Kevin Durant Lightly Restrained After Hearing Very Funny Or Very Boring Heckle<em></em>
Last night, it was not “KD you suck” that got Kevin Durant’s attention and made him walk slowly in the direction of the heckler, but rather that classic barb that gets under everyone’s skin: “KD! You cheesebutt!”...

Kevin Durant Is A Recurring Nightmare
The bad dream that’s afflicting LeBron James is a long one, replete with horrors. J.R. Smith is there, wandering around with a lit M-80 in his hand. Jordan Clarkson is somehow lurking around every corner, wearing Kobe Bryant’s face as a mask. Kevin Love’s drowning in a glass water tank and LeBron ca...

Kevin Durant Won The NBA Finals Tonight
Even if everyone already knew the Warriors were eventually going to win the NBA Finals regardless of what happened tonight, Game 3 was actually pretty fun. The Cavs gave the Dubs their best shot on the way to a respectable 110-102 defeat. Kevin Love came to play, Rodney Hood reminded us that he was ...

Morocco Are Back In The World Cup After 20 Years And They Mean Business
Hearing the name of the country of Morocco probably doesn’t conjure images of soccer greatness. It’s understandable. The Moroccans have gone 20 years—five whole World Cups—without making an appearance on the sport’s biggest stage. But while Morocco’s national team hasn’t covered itself in much sport...