cup Page 7 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
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 ...
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 ...
Tyrese Haliburton and the Pacers are putting on a show
It’s the season of giving and the Indiana Pacers have one man to be thankful for their early season prosperity. Tyrese Haliburton has given the league whiplash leading Indiana’s turnaround in the second year of his stint in Indiana. No offense is more captivating to watch or more dynamic than Indian...
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...
The USMNT shows mettle, and a lack of depth
The scoresheet will say that the USMNT got a 3-0 win over Trinidad and Tobago. And because it’s the Nations League, and more importantly the qualifying round for next summer’s Copa America, the result lords over all. Manager Gregg Berhalter will probably say something about the patience and fortitud...
Megan Rapinoe goes out on her shield, with a joke and a smile like always
Going to penalties, taking the last one, scoring, lifting the trophy. That’s probably the perfect ending that most had designed for Megan Rapinoe and OL Reign in last night’s NWSL Final against Gotham FC. A chance to makeup, a little bit, for her penalty miss at the World Cup. Maybe even erase, just...
Wake me up when the NBA adds a Champions League or an FA cup
The first NBA in-season tournament kicked off Friday evening. If you were unaware, you’re less informed than most because the gimmick has only been beaten into our brains every day since the season tipped. It’s really a brilliant way to dress up a regular season game, and the courts are so obnoxious...
USMNT gets to tussle with some real teams…kinda
Ah, the fresh hell of yet another international break. Club seasons are put on pause for a raft of qualifiers, be they Euro, or World Cup, that are pretty much foregone conclusions robbed of any real urgency, especially thanks to the expanded field for 2026. If not those, we get a helping of interna...
Tuesday night should’ve been only celebratory for this Texas Rangers fan. It wasn’t
Last night should’ve been pure, unadulterated joy. I haven’t been shy when it comes to the Texas Rangers and writing about my favorite baseball team. It swept the 101-win Orioles and advanced to the American League Championship Series for the first time in a dozen years. I was a sophomore in college...
Fine, you want a prediction? The New Jersey Devils will win the Stanley Cup
Stanley Cup picks in October are dumb. We have no idea who will be hurt, what the trade deadline will do, what goalie will have an existential crisis (Jakob Markstrom), or what goalie will channel the Arc Of The Covenant and turn their also-ran into a threat (Igor Shesterkin). It’s a long goddamn se...
Behold the Skate Men — NHL Season Preview: Western Conference
Let’s keep it rolling. You can see our Eastern Conference preview from yesterday here....
Chet Holmgren and Victor Wembanyama are finishing what Joel Embiid and Nikola Jokic started
If there’s anything the most recent NBA champions taught us, it’s that the center can still be the focal point of an offense. Sixty-six-million years ago, Michael Jordan’s arrival was a terraforming meteor that ended the age of the pivots and began the reign of guards. Prior to His Airness, NBA cham...
VAR performs its coup de moron
Whether VAR is still in its teething stages, and this is season five so it’s really debatable whether or not it should still be having growing problems, it will never be able to escape its fatal flaw. And that is it is still administered by humans. So it’s still going to be susceptible to human erro...
There's a pretty good chance of Lightning crashing this season in Tampa
Whatever happens to the Tampa Bay Lightning this upcoming season, it’ll all have been worth it. ...
Our national nightmare is over, the San Diego Padres won a game in extra innings
What gets to the heart of baseball, and to the heart of a baseball season, is that 162 games is supposed to be enough for any anomaly or bit of screwiness a long enough timeline to flatten out. Anyone can get hot, but no one can get unreasonably hot for 162 games and six months. Every team is going ...
Travis Kelce is running away with Sportsman of the Year
Sportsman of the year is one of those nebulous awards that checks off boxes by usually honoring a do-gooder, an activist athlete, some stereotypical quarterback, a Finals MVP, Tiger Woods, the fastest man in the world, an American gymnast or some gold medalist in the pool during an Olympic year. ...
Darwin Nunez may be figuring it out
The overriding factor in judging Darwin Nunez last year had nothing to do with him. He had the misfortune of being a big-money forward purchased at the same time as Erling Haaland. ...
Dustin Johnson needs to stop whining and reap what he's sown
You reap what you sow. And Dustin Johnson has no one to blame but himself for not making the United States Ryder Cup team. Once he sold out to Saudi-backed LIV Golf last year for a reported $125 million, his margin for error to make golf’s premier team event became razor-thin. And it shouldn’t be a ...
Here is what we kind of learned from the USMNT’s week
As we and many others stress, international friendlies are weird. Especially when everyone has to fly over from Europe for two games that don’t count for anything while trying to not get hurt. And for the USMNT, there weren’t really too many players trying to carve out a role, or a bigger role, with...