NHL postpones 9 more games
The NHL pushed back another nine games Tuesday — all of them in Canada — citing attendance restrictions in Montreal, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa and Calgary.
The league also moved a Jan. 12 game in Montreal between the Bruins and Canadiens to Boston.
With 80 games now postponed this season, the NHL said it hopes to shift the games in Canada to later in the season “when such restrictions may be eased or lifted.”
Ohtani named top male athlete
Shohei Ohtani’s astonishing redefinition of modern baseball captured the world’s attention so vividly in 2021 — and that’s why the Los Angeles Angels’ two-way superstar is the winner of the Associated Press’ Male Athlete of the Year award.
The unanimous AL MVP put together a season the like of which hasn’t been seen in a century. Nobody has been both one of baseball’s top power hitters and best starting pitchers since Babe Ruth starred at the plate and on the mound for the Boston Red Sox in 1919.
“He’s doing something we haven’t seen in our lifetimes,” Angels manager
Joe Maddon said late in the season.
Younger brother of Maradona dies
Hugo Maradona, the younger brother of Diego
Maradona and a former pro soccer player himself, died of a heart attack Tuesday in Naples, Italy, at 52.
The younger Maradona was purchased by Napoli in 1987 on Diego’s urging and loaned to Ascoli. He also played for Rayo Vallecano, Rapid Vienna and several other clubs around the world.
Hugo’s death comes 13 months after Diego died of a heart attack at 60.
Worley victorious as Shiffrin sits
French giant slalom specialist Tessa Worley finally returned to a women’s World Cup podium after 11 months, winning her event in the last competition of the calendar year in the absence of Olympic champion Mikaela Shiffrin and world
champion Lara Gut-Behrami.
Racing in flat lights on the Schlossberg course in Lienz, Austria, Worley beat defending overall champion Petra Vlhova by three-tenths of a second.
Sara Hector of Sweden, who was second after the opening run, had two costly mistakes in her final run and dropped to third, .38 behind Worley.
Shiffrin announced Monday that she had tested positive for COVID-19, ruling the American out of the giant slalom and Wednesday’s slalom, the last two races of the calendar year.