Silva: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for NFC teams.
SportsTalk: Albert Pujols signs with the Angels and Prince Fielder joins the Tigers. Which team is better now?
Ryan Callahan scored for the fifth time in four days and defenseman Ryan McDonagh snapped a second-period tie to lift the New York Rangers to a 3-2 victory over the Washington Capitals on Sunday.
Kobe Bryant hit a baseline jump shot with 4.2 seconds left and the Los Angeles Lakers wrapped up a six-game road trip by holding on to beat the Raptors 94-92 on Sunday, their eighth victory in nine meetings with Toronto
Arc's five up, five down: After No. 11 Michigan State's 58-48 upset of No. 3 Ohio State, you'd be a fool to discount the Spartans' national title chances now.
Miami coach Al Golden says the worst is behind him, but his headaches figure to continue now that former booster Nevin Shapiro, now in jail, says his involvement with the Hurricanes program will result in stiff penalties.
Golf's dream pairing - Woods and Mickelson - is on the course in the final round at Pebble Beach. Jason Sobel has hole-by-hole reports.
The United States completed a 5-0 rout of Switzerland in the Davis Cup on Sunday, with 19-year-old Ryan Harrison and John Isner winning closing singles matches.
Euro Roundup: First-place Manchester City won 1-0 at Aston Villa on Sunday on Joleon Lescott's goal in the 63rd minute, maintaining its two-point lead over Manchester United in the Premier League.
Tessa Worley of France fought off gusting winds to win a second consecutive World Cup giant slalom Sunday in the Andorran Pyrenees. Overall leader Lindsey Vonn was more than a second behind and finished eighth.
Robins: It’s the Year of the Dragon on the Lunar calendar, and this Chinese influence could extend to it also being the year of the Pekingese on the green carpet at the 136th Westminster Dog Show on Tuesday.
ASSOCIATED PRESSFour years ago, the NHL signed on with NBC for a limited number of regular-season games and a few more playoff games, including the Cup finals. Most of its games — both regular- and postseason, were sold to Versus, the network formerly known as OLN. It wasn’t on every cable package in the land, and anyone who joked that no one would find the games wasn’t getting any arguments.
The ratings have been miniscule the past two years. But that was before Sid the Kid, the best young player to hit the league since Mario Lemieux, started to make a name for himself. He’s young (turning 21 in August). He’s personable. He’s good looking. He’s a good kid. And he’s supremely talented, a playmaker you don’t have to watch more than a couple of times before you decide you want to stay in front of the tube and watch him again.
He’s got a great young teammate, Evgeni Malkin, who plays Mark Messier to Crosby’s Wayne Gretzky. Together, they’ve been riding roughshod through the playoffs, an impressive 12-2 mark to win their first conference title in 14 years.
With the Red Wings in the finals, it will be the veterans against the kids, the Red Wings, winners of three Cups since 1997, and the Penguins, who won two in a row in the early 90s and have finally returned to hockey’s promised land.
There will be no shortage of offense. In addition to Crosby and Malkin, Marian Hossa is quite capable of lighting the lamp for the Penguins. The Red Wings' Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg make up arguably the most lethal scoring tandem in the league. Teammate Johan Franzen is the surprise of the playoffs, scoring a postseason-high 12 goals despite missing several games with a concussion.
While attendance figures are better than you'd think (average per game of 17,265 this season), the sport, which should get a further boost in two years thanks to the Winter Olympics, being on North America soil (Vancouver), still has problems translating to television. Sometimes I think Bobby Orr, probably the greatest defenseman ever to play the game — before he's done the Red Wings' Nicklas Lidstrom may have a say in the matter — is right when he says the game would be a lot better if the players skated without helmets, like they did in the old days when you didn’t need to see a number to know who had the puck.
But it’s still great theater, a blur of speed and strength and skill and collisions and the incredible reflexes of goalies. And the prize is the only trophy in major sports that a team doesn’t get to keep, but rather has on loan for the year during which it is champion.
A lot of people haven’t bothered over the years because the sport didn’t have a young superstar — a Kobe or LeBron — who everybody had to watch. Well, the game’s got him now in the person of Crosby, and he’s in the Cup finals.
And hockey finally matters again.
Ryan Callahan scored for the fifth time in four days and defenseman Ryan McDonagh snapped a second-period tie to lift the New York Rangers to a 3-2 victory over the Washington Capitals on Sunday.
Check out highlights from the Rangers 3-2 win over the Capitals.
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Hyping the Stanley Cup May 20: Mad Dog goes on an NHL rant and picks the Red Wings to beat the Penguins in seven games. |
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 NHLI via Getty Images |
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 | NHL All-Stars Take a look at the players who competed in Team Chara's 12-9 victory over Team Alfredsson. more photos |
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Wesseling: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for AFC teams.
Ryan Callahan scored for the fifth time in four days and defenseman Ryan McDonagh snapped a second-period tie to lift the New York Rangers to a 3-2 victory over the Washington Capitals on Sunday.
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