cup Page 54 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Maradona, the best human to ever do it
When you discuss the greatest to play any sport, there’s definitely a mythical edge to it. Jordan, LeBron, Gretzky, Lemieux, Mantle, Mays, Payton, Sanders, whatever your names are, it always feels like you’re talking about some sort of separate being. Something bestowed upon the Earth, unknowable in...

The MLS playoffs are already borked and they haven’t even started
As if it wasn’t hard enough to navigate a team or sport through a pandemic, and some would rightly suggest it’s impossible and stupid to do so, soccer has to add onto that an international break. So not only do you have strict protocols and testing and basically have to cross your fingers and clench...

The Tampa Bay Lightning, the NHL’s best organization, finally have their stamp
It’s funny, if you remove the esteem, the adjectives, the histrionics we attach to those who win championships and those who don’t, and just look at the results on paper, the difference is small. We attach a chasm between the teams that lift the trophies and those that they beat for them, but in rea...

The Lightning eviscerate the Stars, win the Cup, and mercifully send everyone home from NHL bubble
It shouldn’t have taken this long, and the Stars were lucky to not get run out of the building in four games, the sort of thorough thrashing to clinch the Cup and the ending the Lightning deserved. But there hasn’t been a sweep in the Final in 22 years. So the Bolts will happily settle for a six-gam...

Celtics stay alive and the hockey gods make an appearance
There are a maximum of 12 NBA games left this season thanks to the Celtics keeping their season alive....

Steven Stamkos gets his Willis Reed moment
The “Willis Reed Game” has grown in proportion as an epic through the decades, as these things tend to do as the years tick off. By this point, it wouldn’t be a surprise if a lot of younger fans assume that Willis Reed hobbled out of the Knicks locker room missing a leg, hopped around for 65 points,...

Lightning Do Mighty Fine Impression of Dallas Stars to Tie Series With Dallas Stars
Every Stanley Cup Final, and really any championship series, ends up being some sort of referendum on where that league and sport is. Because original ideas generally are treated like an infestation of Asian Longhorned Beetles by 75 percent of every front office, no matter the sport, and whomever wi...

The Celtics Just Needed a Good Scream
Sometimes, it’s good to just scream your problems away?...

Deadspin Presents 'Heartbreak City,' to Make Fans Across North America Relive Their Worst Moments — Part 1: One-Team Towns
Every year, 31 teams don’t win the Super Bowl, 30 teams don’t win the Stanley Cup, 29 teams don’t win the World Series, and 29 teams don’t win the NBA championship. There can only be one champion, after all....

My Son Is Also Named Dort: The Game 7 That Wouldn't End Because Refs Ref It Up
It was another primetime night for the NBA in Orlando, and generally their worst nightmare is when the refs hijack such an occasion. NBA refs can never decide if they want to be the show or not, and the indecision tends to just make it worse (credit the other sports arbiters for knowing exactly what...

Playoff Krejci, Golden Knights Rule and Our NHL Conference Semifinals Predictions
We’re on to the NHL’s conference semifinals, which will actually bring us into something resembling hockey season, as players usually start arriving for informal pre-camp skates at the end of August and beginning of September....

Tuuka Rask Leaves NHL Bubble and of Course Boston Sports Guys Are Giving Him Shade
Tuukka Rask is the father of a newborn baby, and he’s been away from his family all month, playing with the Boston Bruins in the NHL’s Toronto bubble amid the coronavirus pandemic. On Saturday, Rask announced that he was leaving the bubble, with his team tied 1-1 in their best-of-seven Eastern Confe...

Is Arsenal’s FA Cup Win a Harbinger of Something New, or the Same?
Whatever Arsenal actually accomplished, and whatever they actually promise after yesterday’s FA Cup triumph over Chelsea, there’s hope. Hope that new manager Mikel Arteta is ready to take the club beyond where Unai Emery did, beyond where legend Arsene Wenger left them before that, and hope that he ...

US Men’s Soccer Team Can Screw Up World Cup Qualifying in a Whole New Way This Time
If you can believe it, World Cup Qualifying in CONCACAF (Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football) was supposed to have started already. However, with FIFA canceling the spring, summer, and September international windows due to COVID-19, the North American region ...

NWSL Restart a COVID-Free Success as Houston Dash Win Challenge Cup
As strange as it may sound, maybe because good news is rarer these days than adamantium, the NWSL Challenge Cup wrapped up today and would have to go down as a success. At the top of the “reasons why” list: after the Orlando Pride pulled out before even arriving in Utah, the tournament saw no positi...

You Can Cut Off Its Head, But The U.S. Soccer Federation - And The Dudes Running It - Are Still A Bunch Of Snakes
It wasn’t quite a Friday night news dump, but coming in the wake of a pandemic and the world’s first mass-sports suspension, it still made for tidy cover for something slimy to slither out the side door without anyone noticing. Last night, after all North American pro sports leagues were suspending ...
![The USWNT Is Making The Best And Easiest Choice For Its Next Manager [Update]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/wclyyjyetiskkdpu6tqw.jpg)
The USWNT Is Making The Best And Easiest Choice For Its Next Manager [Update]
For once, U.S. Soccer is doing something smart. The federation confirmed that it will announce the next manager of the USWNT on Monday, and multiple reports, including from Sports Illustrated’s Grant Wahl, say the choice is going to be Reign FC boss Vlatko Andonovski. Rejoice, because this is the ri...

Carlos Vela And LAFC Finally Overcame Zlatan And The LA Galaxy
LAFC finally did it. After three draws and two losses in five tries, the younger brother of Los Angeles triumphed over its bullying older sibling on Thursday night, defeating the LA Galaxy 5–3 and advancing to the Western Conference finals. It was the most hyped edition of El Tráfico yet, with the h...

NYCFC Blew It Again, As Is Tradition
NYCFC, a team that looked like an MLS Cup contender during the regular season, has found itself out of the playoffs at the conference semifinals. That sentence was true in 2016, 2017, 2018, and was made true in humiliating fashion once again after NYCFC lost to Toronto on Wednesday night. ...

FA Cup Match To Be Replayed After Team Walked Off The Field Due To Racist Abuse
It’s been a banner fortnight for racism in English soccer. After the debacle in Sofia, wherein the England national team was racially abused by Bulgarian fans, the racism came home in an FA Cup match this weekend....