Sport

Maybe it’s about Connor Hellebuyck, not Connor McDavid

The reflex is to point and laugh at the Edmonton Oilers once again. It’s combined with frustration that the game’s best player is leashed to such a clown car of an organization, one of the most brilliant individual seasons going completely to waste. And if you’re a long-term hockey writer or analyst who spends your… […]

Sport

Obligatory ‘Is This It For The Capitals?’ post

In a sport as random and silly, and at times downright stupid, as hockey, it’s oxymoronic to try and weave some overarching narrative from a playoff exit. Games and series are decided on a few bounces and deflections most of the time. Change any one variable, and you can get a completely different result, and […]

Sport

Basketball returns home

Even as just a casual basketball fan, I have not missed out on the schadenfreude of the New York Knicks the past decade. It’s always affirming when a place that considers itself essential to a sport, perhaps to the world through that sport, is rendered irrelevant. Watching the Knicks’ sense of self become a house […]

Sport

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 what can still be a… Read […]

Sport

The 21 best multi-sport athletes of the 21st century (yes, there are that many!)

Tim Tebow is attempting a return to football, attending minicamp with the Jacksonville Jaguars, this time as a tight end after he ran out of chances as a quarterback in 2015 when the Philadelphia Eagles cut him. In the interim, Tebow pursued a baseball career, making it as far as Triple-A in the Mets system. […]

Sport

Hockey is the dumbest sport

It’s funny (but not), and fitting, that in a week where we’ve spent a great deal of time talking about baseball’s old, drunk, incontinent demons still plaguing the youthful and logical, hockey strolls into the saloon, hitches up its belt, and says, “Oh, you think you’re stupid? I’ll show you stupid.” Read more…

Sport

Nathan MacKinnon is unplayable

Everyone knows that after his 105-point-in-a-56-game season that Connor McDavid is the best player in the world. But what my book presupposes is… maybe he isn’t? (an old joke, and I’ve come to have no use for Wes Anderson over the years and you likely have to, but it’s still a good one). Read more…

Sport

LeBron cements the continued existence of a game he hates

Look, the Play-in Tournament is stupid. Everyone pretty much knows it. The players certainly hate it, and even the ones who get to participate in it probably don’t like it much more. It’s manufactured drama. We’ve had 72 games this year, and in normal times we’ll have 82, and if you’re not in playoff spots […]

Sport

Joe West’s ‘record’ is a testament to inertia

I wasn’t aware that the Major League Baseball Umpires’ union had a Twitter feed. I mean, why wouldn’t they? You also might, for a very brief moment, ask if it’s an outlet where the union might help explain some controversial calls or the like. But then you’ll quickly remind yourself that this these are MLB […]

Sport

Hey, the NHL playoffs are actually pretty great

Playoff hockey is really cool, and my Twitter timeline seems to agree. It was littered yesterday with tweets echoing the sentiment that playoff hockey is the best of sports. I have to be honest — even my football-loving heart would agree. Seemingly every year, there’s a physicality and an intensity that other sports… Read more…