smu Page 2 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Avalanche have gone full Freddie Four Fingers
The NHL trade deadline has gotten into high gear a couple days before Friday afternoon’s deadline, so let’s roll through the highlights of what’s already gone down....

Have the Premier League’s financial rules kept Newcastle from being Newcastle?
While the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability Rules might have lost a shade or two off their teeth with the news today that Everton have had their 10-point penalty reduced to six on appeal (though they have another charge to dodge), that doesn’t mean they’re not having an effect. The desolate...

This week in the NHL February 24, 2024
Sebastian Aho scored with 18.9 seconds to play and Pyotr Kochetkov stopped 44 shots as the Carolina Hurricanes outlasted the visiting Florida Panthers to win 1-0 on Thursday night in a showdown between two of the Eastern Conference's best teams in Raleigh, N.C. - Field Level Media Read More...

Gio Reyna knows he needs to justify the noise
The funny thing about Gio Reyna, and more to the point, all the noise about him – the controversy with his family and Gregg Berhalter, the anticipation of any appearance with the national team, the confidence that he’s the country’s most talented player – is that it is built on such a tiny foundatio...

The Man City monster rises from the sea
The Premier League has reached the portion of the season when it paws at having a winter break, splitting up the 21st round of fixtures over two weeks to give half the teams the week off this week and half the teams the week off last week. Unless they have a FA Cup replay. Or a League Cup semifinal....

Youth is wasted on the young, unless you are these NBA teams
So, who has the hottest young talent in the league? We’re analyzing the five teams who have built the best through the draft across positions and skill sets. No room for wannabes here – gotta be 25 or below to even join the party. We’re also looking for impact players, not DNPs, with dreams bigger t...

Erling Haaland, Marcus Rashford have rough go of it in wild Premier League weekend
Saturday may have been a routine day in the world’s biggest league, but there must’ve been some sort of gaseous cloud that descended over Ol’ Blighty on Sunday. Other than the one that normally settled over England on Sunday mornings that smells of ale, vomit and some sort of meat (no one’s quite su...

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 ...

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...

Stefon Diggs and Josh Allen could be headed for a breakup
The relationship between Stefon Diggs and the Buffalo Bills has reportedly been shaky for some time. Monday Night’s performance at home against the Denver Broncos did little to make Diggs want to stick around past this season. Diggs’ brother Trevon (Dallas Cowboys cornerback) couldn’t contain his fr...

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...

It’s going to be a good winter in Buffalo
Obviously, it’s never a good winter in Buffalo. And winter never stops, so I’m told. Anyway, the one thing that can make the time pass in the darkest months on the shores of Lake Erie is a hockey team worth watching. Kids, the Buffalo Sabres will very much be worth watching this season. So the resid...

Mariners fans probably have some good suggestions on what Jerry Dipoto can do with his 54 percent
One way to definitely not make your fans feel better about a season in which their team’s growth flattened out instead of turning into the juggernaut promised is to tell them that’s the plan all along. But that’s what Seattle Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto felt was the best salve for the sting of the M’s ...

First rule of team social media: Don’t s**tpost your own player
It didn’t take long for SSC Napoli to crash from the dizzying heights of their third-ever Scudetto last spring. First, manager Luciano Spalletti left the club and eventually took the Italian national team manager’s job. And then the team got off to a very wonky start this season in Serie A, collecti...

Manchester United are doing that thing again
Yes, we have been here before. It was the beginning of last season that Manchester United started like ass, got utterly thwacked by Brighton, manager Erik Ten Hag made them run a few more miles in training, and then it was fine for a while. It was mostly fine because Marcus Rashford turned into the ...

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...

If the shootings at UVA couldn’t change gun laws, nothing will
America has its favorites — football, guns, and racism. Charlottesville, Virginia, has all three....

The Tampa Bay Rays are running out of dudes, and ESPN somehow becomes more of a farce
The Rays might be the best developmental organization in baseball, staying on top of an AL East where they’re constantly outspent by factors of three by their competitors by consistently bringing dudes through their system and onto the MLB roster. Or they toast other organizations in trades and turn...

Wiz Khalifa continues Pirates tradition of pitching while totally zooted
While the Pirates will never build him a statue, Dock Ellis has made sure that the greatest accomplishment in sports was performed by a Pirate. That was throwing a no-hitter while on LSD. Perhaps as our country continually lessens its aversion to drugs it’ll get the display it deserves at PNC Park, ...

The Gold Cup was never about lifting another trophy for the US
The reinforcements won’t be coming from this group. Outside of goalkeeper Matt Turner — whose status as the unquestioned No. 1 goalkeeper for the United States men’s national team didn’t change after five games in this year’s CONCACAF Gold Cup — what player from this American squad that only defeate...