the-nhl Page 5 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Coming soon to a city near you: MLB expansion
It’s always been the mantra of Rob Manfred that MLB wouldn’t look towards expansion until the stadium situations for the A’s and Rays were settled. After all, anywhere they’d award an expansion team could still be used as leverage for those teams to wrangle all the tax giveaways and government hando...
Connor Bedard's most recent highlights prove he is going to be even better than everyone thinks
I’ll throw out all the caveats first, because that’s what every hockey fan outside of Chicago wants. ...
Mike Babcock sets a land speed record for being fired for being Mike Babcock
It has to be asked what did the Columbus Blue Jackets think they were going to get by hiring Mike Babcock? ...
Mike Babcock is seemingly at it again, though it's surprising he knows how to use AirPlay
Hockey doesn’t even need to start to be stupid, especially when it comes to a needlessly recycled coach like Mike Babcock. If you don’t recall Babcock since he got fired from the Leafs, you may remember him from such episodes as making Johan Franzen’s life an utter hell or tricking Mitch Marner into...
Bill Peters is why hockey players grow up to be douchebags
Hockey’s culture problem is easily explained. One, the sport doesn’t have much interest in changing, because it’s always been, and is happiest, when it’s insular. Say anything about it, and the response will automatically be, “You just don’t get it because you’ve never been in the room.” Two, that i...
Dodgers, Chelsea FC owner might be the uniting force to save women's hockey
There are two famous rivalries in North American women’s hockey: Canada vs. the USA, and the PWHPA versus the PHF. One rivalry will continue in perpetuity at every World Championship and Olympic Games, while the other is dead....
No one does the absurd quite like the Red Sox
The challenge of baseball, and the beauty of it, is the length and density of it. It’s pretty much every day for six months, and every team and every player has to do whatever is necessary to even remember what day it is at this time of year and beyond. Over 162 games in 180 days or so, anybody can ...
The 15 Most Valuable Professional Sports Franchises
This story was corrected and revised on July 6, 2023. ...
Building and destroying men: The Greater Toronto Hockey League's assault on childhood
Scott Fraser inhales deeply. “I got way too many things in the vault, brother.”...
The Leafs sign Ryan Reaves, solving a problem they don't have
At least the Toronto Maple Leafs never disappoint. At least anyone who isn’t a Maple Leafs fan, that is....
Women’s hockey reforms, for better or worse
A pro women’s hockey league in North America has been something of an ungettable dream. Or at least having one unified one has been. There was the CWHL in Canada, but that folded. There was the NWHL, which became the PHF, but it ran alongside the CWHL and never with it. When the CWHL folded, the PWH...
Connor Bedard’s impending Chicago arrival needs the proper context before it’s overhyped
It’s Connor Bedard Day. The long-sought-after Canadian is more popular than Justin Trudeau (although I’m not exactly sure how high of a bar that is these days) will be selected No. 1 overall by the Blackhawks during tonight’s NHL Entry Draft. Any other move from Chicago with the top overall selectio...
NHL Draft: Who is going to take hockey's Sidd Finch?
The NHL Draft, which takes place tonight and tomorrow, isn’t quite the NFL Draft. Most of the players taken won’t show up for a season or two with their NHL teams. It’s also not the MLB draft, where it’ll be a long time either and everyone spends those middle years going off Twitter videos from vari...
NHL creates inclusivity coalition after inclusivity committee proved ineffective
There are few committees and panels less effective than company-created inclusivity programs. It’s not quite on the level of egregiousness as a business conducting an internal investigation of its own toxic culture, but it’s in the same ballpark — or in this case arena. The NHL and its players’ asso...
The off-putting history of Spencer Strider, and the incredible weirdness of the NHL Awards
I won’t pretend what follows makes any sense. It is simply a matter of taste, and my tastes have warped and mutated often into a territory I can no longer explain. If you’re an Atlanta baseball fan, Spencer Strider is a titan walking among men. Cobb County probably has dubbed it “Strider Day,” a gam...
MLB, NHL vying to see which league can botch Pride representation more
If you put NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and MLB commissioner Rob Manfred in a maze, which one finds the cheese the quickest? In recent weeks, both rat overlords of their sports have taken stances — veiled or otherwise — against Pride in order to “protect their players.”...
Qatari ownership has come to sports on this continent, and is it just the beginning?
We’d wondered when Middle Eastern regimes would come for U.S. sports. They’ve got their mitts all over soccer now, warping how that sport works in Europe. They’ve completely altered golf. Boxing too. And yet it seemed that North America was the last frontier. ...
Ice Cube is angry about how the Big 3 is covered despite never making it easy to cover
Ice Cube — founder of the 3-on-3 pro basketball league, The Big 3 — appeared on Dan Le Batard’s show earlier this week to get some things off his chest. Much of his irritation stemmed from how his league is covered by the sports media world. What Ice Cube didn’t realize is that “the media” are the o...
Golden Knights' Stanley Cup win was eerily similar to their championship loss five years ago
As much as the party never stopped outside of T-Mobile Arena, the Las Vegas Golden Knights got to celebrate on The Strip with a Stanley Cup of their own. In Vegas’ inaugural season, a team lifted the Cup in Paradise and it wasn’t the NHL’s 31st franchise. It was the Washington Capitals, who the Gold...
The NHL Playoffs have turned players from heroic to selfish
It’s now an NHL playoffs tradition right up there with the handshake line. Right after a team is eliminated, usually starting with the second round, and beyond, the losing team’s coach or beat reporters or both will start to announce what injuries various players had been carrying throughout the spr...