hockey Page 15 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

For its next trick, the Mariners will juggle orcas while unicycling over a volcano
It takes a lot for the sporting public to notice a Saturday highlight other than a football one in early October. It has to be especially good on a weekend when Alabama staves off an upset, but my god what the Seattle Mariners are doing is beyond good. ...

There’s something magical about bad football
Remember, Amazon pays $1 billion per season for this. That means that Thursday’s Colts-Broncos hobo ho-down cost Jeff Bezos somewhere around $62.5 million. In the words of Axl Rose, “You get what you pay for, and life is real high priced.”...

Hockey Canada’s new interim boss is not helping
Hockey Canada’s interim board chair, Andrea Skinner, sat before the Heritage Committee and took zero responsibility for anything that’s gone on under the HC tent. In fact, she tried to glorify Hockey Canada’s settlement with the woman who claimed to be gang-raped by members of the Canadian Junior te...

Oh yeah, it’s Fat Bear Week!
Look, normally in this space in the a.m., I’d have to talk about Hockey Canada’s chair pulling a “Not All Men!” act in front of the Canadian parliament. Or a couple of owners in NWSL relinquishing “day-to-day” operations of their teams, but not selling their teams and disappearing into the cave wher...

It’s time the NFL made Guardian Caps mandatory
In the aftermath of Tua Tagovailoa’s frightening concussion on Thursday Night Football, the NFL has taken baby steps to prevent another woozy player from bypassing the concussion protocol. Tagovailoa’s hands and arms stuck in the fencing response was one of the most indelible images since Lawrence T...

Sports would be all right if it wasn’t for the organizations that run them
Yesterday was just a banner day for the governing bodies of sports. We know that people in power will do just about anything to protect what little fiefdom they have. In the grand scheme of things, having a seat on the organization running whatever league or game is a pretty small fiefdom. But that ...

Are you actually going to have to put up with Red Wings fans this year?
Well yes, because they never shut up, no matter the team’s fortunes on the ice. They’re always around, screaming about the “Yzer-plan!,” and assuring you that the Red Wings dynasty will continue because in their minds whatever comes in 2025 is still connected to what happened in 2002. This is the wa...

P.K. Subban was just a little ahead of his time
Hockey still can’t seem to recognize its need for a rockstar. While not the biggest problem with hockey’s culture at the moment (hi there Hockey Canada), the ethos that no player can stand out or be above the team keeps the game from having vibrancy or personality. And vibrancy and personality are w...

Are we done being salty about the Astros yet?
Last night, the Astros clinched their fifth AL West title out of the last six. And that one they missed was the 2020 season, which basically doesn’t count. So for all intents and purposes, this is their fifth straight division title. Currently, that’s the longest streak in the majors, as the Dodgers...

Baseball’s rules changes are more about looks than effect
I don’t envy the task that MLB has. I also don’t trust that anyone in charge of it has any sense of the challenge, but that’s another topic for another time. Baseball’s charm will always be rooted in its history and simply the amount of time it has been part of American culture. While pro football m...

Who the hell let Ray Hudson in the house?
CBS has mostly been a gift to soccer fans. Unlike Turner when it bought the Champions League rights, forgot about it until the day before the tournament started, and then dusted off some closet and called whatever former USMNT members were within an hour’s flight of the studio, CBS has taken its cov...

Stephen A. Smith forgets the basics of football
Stephen A. Smith is great television. The way he casually cascades between idioms in an excited, commanding voice is magnificent. I get jealous of his inflection just watching him. That said, he’s also had a series of brain farts that can’t be overlooked. Whether it’s ranting about nonexistent ties ...

Aaron Judge is the king, but not for the reasons some New York dips**t thinks
It’s going to be a month of this. Aaron Judge has 50+ homers by Sept. 1, one of the very few to accomplish said feat. And with all baseball records, there are going to be self-appointed gatekeepers who have decided it is their purpose to keep the hordes at bay from sullying something sacred. There i...

For one day, Yann Sommer channeled the spirit of Ron Tugnutt (wait Ron Tugnutt isn’t dead, right?)
Most soccer analysts, especially those who really get in up to the elbow in the analytics, say that the sport is pretty random. Most games are only decided by a single moment (or rarely more than a handful), and those moments can bounce any which way no matter what the trends of a match or a season ...

People are still out there wishing death on high schoolers for their college choices
We learned a lot in 2020, most of it sad and depressing. In the moments when we weren’t terrified, mourning, angry, or all of the above, some of us might have turned on sporting events once the UFC got back to broadcasting events and the NBA concluded the 2019-20 season in The Bubble. Sports looked ...

C.B. Bucknor drags everyone down with him
It was yet another banner day for C.B. Bucknor behind the plate, as we watched in real time while he lost sense of the strike zone and perhaps indeed any sense of direction at all. The plane which the ball must pass through to be called a strike is imaginary, of course, and tough to judge from a pos...

No surrender in Calgary
One of the familiar tropes in the NHL is the “poor ol’ Canadian team.” Lord Stanley’s chalice hasn’t been parked north of the border in 29 years, and there must be a reason for it. After all, the first two Great Bettman Lockouts were somewhat based on the fact that Canadian teams couldn’t have their...

Looking at possible numbers for the NFL to retire league-wide
The NFL is now the only big-four pro sports league in North America to not have a number retired throughout the league. The NBA retired Bill Russell’s No. 6 earlier this month after his death. Major League Baseball gave that honor to Jackie Robinson’s No. 42, while the NHL has barred anyone from don...

Tyrod Taylor should be starting for the G-Men over Danny Dimes
It’s important not to succumb to too many overreactions in the preseason, especially during opening week. Teams are just starting to figure things out, and starters are coming in and out of games like they’re playing hockey. I try to not get too caught up in making predictions based on a few preseas...

Why does Canada get to participate in the World Juniors?
You may have forgotten about hockey’s World Juniors championships. It’s the middle of summer after all, which is supposed to be the definitive dead time for hockey. You’ll probably need a reminder that the WJCs, in their normal slot back in December/January, had to be scrapped thanks to COVID outbre...