layoffs Page 59 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Islanders Fans Reminded Everyone What Home-Ice Advantage Sounds Like
The way-ahead-of-schedule resurgence of the Islanders has coincided with a partial return home, to the Nassau Coliseum, where they’re playing half their home games as they figure out a way to get out of Brooklyn. So it’s only fitting that their playoff opener was back in the old barn, thanks to an a...

Marcus Smart Was The Last Player The Celtics Could Afford To Lose
Boston Celtics guard Marcus Smart could miss up to the first two rounds of the NBA playoffs after suffering a torn oblique on the left side of his body, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski....

Sharks' Joe Pavelski Takes One On The Chin For His Team To Score Opening Goal
Once the Stanley Cup playoffs start, the debate over whether the structural integrity of your face is more important than a goal no longer becomes a debate. There are only two options that players have: give up your face, or let your team down. Less than 15 minutes into Game 1 of the Sharks-Golden K...

The Columbus Blue Jackets Are Not Here To Get Steamrolled
Some fans say that the 3-0 lead when you’re the Presidents’ Trophy winners playing Game 1 at home in the first round against an eight seed from Ohio is the most dangerous lead in hockey, and the Tampa Bay Lightning found that out the hard way in their 4-3 upset loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets on W...

Annoying Refs Bust Up A Party On Long Island, But Jordan Eberle Restarts It
Nassau Coliseum was so frickin’ loud at the start of Game 1 in this first-round series between the Penguins and Islanders, and it somehow got even more deafening 30 seconds into the game. Tom Kuhnhackl came right off the bench for the Isles and set off an explosion in the arena, as he fired a wriste...

A Cranky And Wishful Preview Of The 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs
The Stanley Cup Playoffs begin Wednesday, and while it is considered an incontrovertible truth that the Cup is a better entertainment than the NBA Playoffs, it is also its own hot mess in uniquely weird ways, starting with this....

The Nets Are In
Coming into the final weekend of the regular season, none of the handful of decidedly un-great teams racing for the Eastern Conference’s last few playoff spots—the Pistons, Magic, Nets, Heat, and Hornets—had a truly easy route to the postseason. They’d all have to beat somebody to get through. The t...

NHL To Continue Using Playoff Format Everyone Hates
We’re about to enter year six of the NHL’s current playoff setup, a format that has garnered mostly complaints since its inception. To be fair to the league, hockey fans can and do complain about everything, but the format’s drawbacks do seem to outweigh its benefits. So, just a few days out from th...

MLB Advanced Media Made Billions For Baseball, Chewed Up Its Employees, And Spit Them Out
On the second Tuesday of February, at 3:00 in the afternoon, around 40 employees of MLB Advanced Media—one arm of MLB’s media empire, which also includes MLB.com, MLB Network and MLB Productions—nervously filed into a conference room at MLBAM’s office in Manhattan’s Chelsea Market. They had been liv...

It's Now Or Never For LeBron And The Lakers
The day before the Lakers returned to action after the all-star break, LeBron James told reporters, “My playoff intensity level has been activated.” Let’s check in now on that playoff intensity level....

There Was A Big Ol' Brawl Between Patriots Fans At Their Super Bowl Parade
The Patriots held their Super Bowl parade today in Boston, and when you have so many in this short of a span, it gets a little repetitive. The team took a shot at ESPN’s Max Kellerman, because apparently he was this year’s big baddie who needed to be proven wrong. Bionic mastiff Rob Gronkowski and h...

How The Patriots' Defense Put The Rams In A Trash Can
Okay, so Jared Goff looked lost and Sean McVay had no clue how to adjust and the Patriots basically needed just one touchdown drive to win another stinkin’ Super Bowl while also defeating what we all thought was the future of the NFL. So what did New England do that so panicked Goff and McVay? Mostl...

Jared Goff Blew It
We have to start with what should have been the Super Bowl’s first touchdown. Late in the third quarter, Robert Woods dragged a trio of defenders over to the left sideline while Brandin Cooks ran briefly uncovered into the end zone, only to go unseen by Jared Goff long enough for Jason McCourty to ...

Bill Belichick Stands Athwart The Future
When the most tedious Super Bowl in history had ended and you had picked up your jaw after learning that Tom Brady had not been named the game’s most valuable player out of desperation and habit, you realized that, fittingly, most people did not get what they wanted out of America’s Jesus-Free Chris...

The Rams Had No Answer For One Patriots Play
If you squint really hard, and maybe turn your head 75 degrees to the right, you could find an oasis of good football in the desert of crap that was Super Bowl 53. It didn’t come in the first half, which was the second-lowest scoring opening 30 minutes in Super Bowl history. And it didn’t come from ...

Where The Hell Was Todd Gurley?
The last thing anybody wants to hear on this awful Monday morning is “Bill Belichick takes away your best player,” but, uh, that’s exactly what he did to the Rams’ dismal offense in the Patriots’ 13-3 Super Bowl win. Nothing at all went right anywhere for Los Angeles when they had the ball, but thei...

Mondo Fucking Dumbass Insanely Wrong On Super Bowl Prediction
Here’s CBS NFL analyst Tony Romo, seer of seers, prognosticator of prognosticators, giving his Super Bowl prediction from last week. Check out Nostradamus over here!...

Well, That Sucked
At no time was Super Bowl 53 as compelling, entertaining, or satisfying as that video of a naked guy pooping while flipping into a lake. Sunday evening would have been better spent watching that again. But we watch the Super Bowls we are given, so our options are either to admire the defensive domin...

I, The One Person Who Still Doesn't Believe In The Patriots, Know They'll Finally Be Exposed As A Sham In Their Third Straight Super Bowl
After my previous missive, one written before the New England Patriots defeated the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC title game and earned a trip to the Super Bowl, I had many common oafs criticize my prognostication through electronic mail and other various mediums. You lummox, these messages would st...

Hate The Patriots For The Right Reason
The idea as pitched was to do one more takeout of the essential evil that is the New England Patriots collective—because, yeah, that’s never been done before. Up until now, it’s been one hagiography after another, because the Patriots have been so damned cuddly and cheek-pinchable. The helmet logo i...