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.
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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.
AP FILEIf all goes according to plan, a scaled-down draft is expected to be held later this month and training camps will open in September from Vancouver to Miami. NHL games will be back on the schedule in October.
“It’ll be a great thing to get the game back up,” Columbus Blue Jackets coach Gerard Gallant said.
Selling the sport might take a while longer.
During the lockout, disgruntled Buffalo fan Doug Sitler sold more than 15,000 magnetic car ribbons that read: “I need my hockey fix(ed).”
“I think it’s going to take a little bit of time for people to get back in the swing of things,” he said. “But sports fans are pretty fickle. They have short memories. They really do.”
It took all night and then some for the final round of negotiations to produce an agreement.
The sides met for 10 straight days in New York, and it became clear Wednesday morning — the 301st day of the lockout — that they weren’t going to leave the room without an agreement.
The expected salary cap probably will have a ceiling of $39 million and a minimum around $22 million.
Player salaries will not exceed 54 percent of league-wide revenues, expected to be around $1.8 billion. Players will also put money into escrow, and after each season that will be used to balance out the set percentage based on actual revenues.
Bettman warned in February that offers the union passed up were better than any it would see once a year of hockey was lost.
Just days before the season was wiped out, the players’ association said for the first time it would accept a salary cap if the league dropped its desire to link player costs to revenues.
That started a wild week that included the cancellation of the season Feb. 16 and a false hope three days later that it would be saved. Even Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux — superstars turned executives — couldn’t resurrect it during an emergency bargaining session in New York.
Negotiations resumed in mid-March.
Bettman promised “cost certainty” in the form of a hard salary cap to the owners and he has gotten it.
The landscape of the NHL will be quite different than it was in June 2004 when the Tampa Bay Lightning skated off with the Stanley Cup in the league’s last game before the lockout. For the first time since a flu epidemic in 1919, there was no Stanley Cup champion in 2005.
When the league relaunches in the fall, it will do so with a new salary structure that keeps high-spending teams such as Detroit, Toronto, Philadelphia and the New York Rangers in check.
The first order of business after ratification will be to get a majority of the players signed. The belief is that last season’s contracts will be wiped from the books, leaving many players without deals.
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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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.
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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.