nathan-mackinnon Page 2 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Tom Brady and the infinite sadness
Thursday Night Football is usually a pretty sad occasion as ritual, given the mess that it tends to be with the short rest and everyone still very much sore from the game they played just four days prior, and the lack of practice time dulling any sharpness. But last night was particularly acute. ...
It’s also the start of NFL propaganda season
You always have to hope that the Sunday night game, or really any primetime NFL game, is a good one. Because when it’s bad, there’s just far too much dead time for Cris Collinsworth’s brain to drip out of his ear. I don’t mind Collinsworth as much as other people. He can be a little too “Everything ...
Hornets buy back favorite hoodie from Goodwill
When Kenny Atkinson ultimately passed on the Charlotte Hornets head coaching job, the thought was at least Mike D’Antoni will keep LaMelo Ball, Miles Bridges, and the rest of Buzz City entertaining. After the former Houston head coach’s meeting with part-owner Michael Jordan this week, it seemed all...
Make it a best of 13
Usually, especially in a Stanley Cup Final, you need at least a few games before the level of play truly takes off. Coaches and teams want to try different things, chase their matchups, or keep things tight as they can to preserve already exhausted players until there is absolutely no choice. No one...
The NHL finally gets its era-shifting Final with Lightning vs. Avs
Hockey being what it is, mostly weird and random, rarely throws up the two best teams in the NHL’s showpiece, the Stanley Cup Final. Sometimes we get close, and most seasons it’s actually hard to decipher who are clearly the best teams. With shootouts and overtime goofiness affecting the standings, ...
Nazem Kadri is in the Oilers’ shirts instead of his own head
On a night where suffocating defense was being celebrated across the sports spectrum thanks to the Celtics David Copperfield’ing the Warriors in the 4th quarter, the night’s other playoff action saw Nazem Kadri prove what a force he can be when he’s not letting his brain drip out of his ear....
Fight fire with fire, burning with fear
You have to hand it to Avalanche coach Jared Bednar. He does have one of the best checking centers in the NHL at his disposal in Nazem Kadri. It would be easy, explicable, and defensible to just toss Kadri over the boards every time the Oilers put Connor McDavid out there, and be done with it. After...
This looks like Connor McDavid’s time
This could finally be it. The NHL is starving for its next superstar. Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby’s first-round exits with Washington and Pittsburgh left a void for a television-ratings hockey juggernaut....
Whatever sport the Heat and Celtics are playing, it’s trash
A lot of sports fandom and analysis is about feel vs. facts, which can go pretty haywire at times. It definitely “feels” like these NBA playoffs have been uniquely blowout-heavy, but it kind of turns out they haven’t been. There just hasn’t been any game-turning shots in the last minute or buzzer-be...
The stars come out in the NHL
Hockey followers love to taut that not only is hockey the ultimate team game — everyone gets a shift after all — but that the playoffs highlight this. It’s somewhat true, though it’s usually a top-end player or goalie taking home the Conn Smythe as the playoff’s most valuable player when all is said...
Let’s appreciate all the money Ryan Johansen has stolen
The Predators bit the dust last night, as we all suspected they would. The Avalanche are just too much, the Preds were a wonky team whose best player on both ends is a defenseman, Roman Josi, because he has to be. For their entire existence, which is getting up near 25 years now, the Predators have ...
Connor Ingram goes from third string goalie to Nashville’s best bet at an upset
It may have been an impossible task after all. What more could Connor Ingram have done to stop the Colorado Avalanche other than grow a third arm or leg? In his second-ever NHL start, and first in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, Ingram went from Nashville’s No. 3 goaltender to Patrick Roy overnight. He’ll...
Johnny Hockey is on one
Pacific time zone hockey tends to get ignored in the same fashion as west coast baseball. It’s hard to win an MVP or another award when your games are on at 9 and 10pm, as you’re cutting into hockey writers’ drinking time. You have to put on a world-class and ear-shattering whining campaign to get s...
The Avs are really going to trust this to Mr. Darcy?
Once again, the Colorado Avalanche are the Showtime of the NHL. They were last year, though last season being what it was it doesn’t really count for evaluation/analytic purposes. But reverting back to an actual NHL schedule (or something closely resembling one) hasn’t slowed the Avs much. They pick...
Sorry Nate MacKinnon, but the NHL All-Star Game should be a Participation Game
What should an All-Star Game be: an opportunity to see the best players all playing in the same game, or a celebration of the sport and league that brings fans together?...
Free Connor McDavid (and other stars)
Simply by the numbers, Connor McDavid had one of the more incredible seasons in NHL history last year. 105 points in just 56 games, which would have averaged out to 154 points over a full, 82-game season. His 1.87 points-per-game was the best rate seen in 25 years. It came with the caveat of the uni...
Nazem Kadri cost the Avs everything
Hockey is a truly vicious sport, in that the team that wins the Presidents’ Trophy — i.e. the team that is best over the largest sample size — rarely “justifies” that achievement in the playoffs. You have to go all the way back to the Hawks in 2013, another shortened season, to find a team that was ...
Hockey writers and Auston Matthews are still jerks
Oops, they did it again....
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’...