light Page 5 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Baseball fans go batty for beer novelty, but hole-y wow — who saw this coming?
Tuesday was a historic day for baseball in western New York, as the Rochester Red Wings, the Triple-A affiliate of the Washington Nationals, introduced beer bats....
Would you idiots please stop blighting great soccer matches with your racism?
The Euro Championship did not go England’s way. After two hours of football ended locked in a 1-1 draw, England and Italy squared off in penalty kicks. Italy won after Marcus Rashford hit one off the post, Jadon Sancho’s attempt was stopped, and the final try, taken by 19-year-old Bukayo Saka, was s...
No, the Lightning didn’t cheat
At some point in the next couple days, the Tampa Bay Lightning will win their second consecutive Cup. Could be tonight, or maybe the Canadiens have one last death rattle in them and send this series back to Tampa on Wednesday. It’s hockey, weird things happen, we’ve seen 0-3 comebacks, but here it’s...
This isn’t catching Lightning in a bottle
The Stanley Cup Final kicked off, and while most news outlets spend the majority of their coverage of the Tampa Bay Lightning whining about their salary cap, and not their roster building or coaching which allows them to do things like have Nikita Kucherov miss the season and still be fine. John Coo...
Lightning keep cashing in on ex-GM Steve Yzerman’s masterfully built roster
The NHL playoffs have been robust, entertaining, competitive, hard-hitting, and full of intrigue. Last night, however, was none of those things. The defending Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning absolutely waxed the New York Islanders 8-0. Although former General Manager Steve Yzerman has retur...
The Penguins tried to game the system and lost big
One of the many catchphrases that Eddie Olczyk has been trying to “fetch” for more than a decade is “Goaltending: If you don’t have it, you got no chance.” Like most of the things Eddie O says, it probably sounds way cooler and more clever in his head. It’s not a play on words, it doesn’t rhyme, it’...
The Panthers got a finish lesson
It sounds stupid to almost everyone who loosely followed the Panthers-Lightning Game 4 yesterday, considering that the Cats gave up six goals and lost by four. But for most of the game, especially in the first period, Florida kicked the absolute shit out of the Lightning. They relentlessly attacked ...
Gimme an X! MLB’s 20,000th player reminds us what baseball desperately needs
In 1975, Bob Watson scored Major League Baseball’s one millionth run, an achievement which earned him one million Tootsie Rolls and one million pennies from the candy company, all of which Watson donated to charity....
The NHL Playoffs are back and it’s fans-tastic
Look, if there’s an opening to make a Cinderella reference, I’m gonna take it. Just deal with it, and let me have what little I can get. ...
The Olympic torch relay is going just great
Japan has a fire to put out....
We don’t need conference tournaments this year
What exactly are we doing here?...
The Lightning’s talent-development assembly line is humming along again
As we’ve commented in the past, even with most seasons across sports being thrown into upheaval, be it shortened preseasons or odd schedules and lineups that change on a daily basis thanks to COVID protocols, the chalk has remained at the top of the standings....
The NFL doesn’t want you thinking too hard about its latest COVID meltdown
The Panthers didn’t have any new positive coronavirus cases on Wednesday, which is good. The eight players that Carolina had to put on the COVID-19 reserve list this week, not so good....
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...
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...
Islanders Learning There Just Might Not Be Anything They Can Do
Buzzer-beaters are supposed to be the territory of the NBA’s Orlando bubble, but the Tampa Bay Lightning moved the phenomenon 2800 miles to the Northwest on Wednesday night. Nikita Kucherov capped off the Bolts’ best offensive foray of the night by scoring off Ryan McDonagh’s cross-ice pass with jus...
Do You Mind If We Dance With Your Dates? - NHL First Round Preview: Eastern Conference
In a bit of true hockey hilarity, the actual NHL bubble-ized playoffs will begin without either of the “hosts” on Tuesday. Both the Toronto Maple Leafs and Edmonton Oilers scheduled a date for their respective faces with the pavement, and hence will have to watch these modified playoffs take place i...