Hurricanes offense stuck in neutral
The Hurricanes are struggling to beat one of the NHL’s best goaltenders and facing injuries to two players who could help them change that.
The challenge of derailing the reigning Stanley Cup champion just isn’t getting easier.
The Hurricanes trail 2-0 in the secondround playoff series against the Lightning, twice losing one-goal games on home ice. Now the Lightning are returning home for Thursday night’s Game 3, and time is running out for the Hurricanes.
The Central Division champions have managed two goals on 70 shots against Vezina Trophy finalist Andrei Vasilevskiy, losing by 2-1 margins in Games 1 and 2.
The Hurricanes have surrendered the first goal in seven of their eight playoff games, including six straight going back to the Predators series.
The problem is: two of the guys the Hurricanes would turn to for help — center Vincent Trocheck and winger Nino Niederreiter – are injured with an uncertain return.
Colleges: Former Southern California star Reggie Bush, who had his Heisman Trophy victory in 2005 vacated for committing NCAA violations, is among the players making their first appearance on the College Football Hall of Fame ballot this year. Other first-timers on the ballot included QBs Andrew Luck of Stanford and Kellen Moore of Boise State, Penn State star LBs LaVar Arrington and Paul Posluszny and former California RB Marshawn Lynch. ... Virginia Tech freshman LB Isi Etute was arrested and charged with second-degree murder, according to the Blacksburg (Va.) Police Department. Etute was immediately suspended from the team and from the university . ... Chris McIntosh, 44, will take over as Wisconsin AD when 74-year-old Barry Alvarez retires in July. McIntosh was an All-America tackle on two of Alvarez’s Rose Bowl championship teams with the Badgers and spent the last few years working under the longtime AD as an associate.
NBA: The Pistons hired John Beilein as a senior adviser for player development. Beilein, 68, spent 12 seasons at Michigan, leading the Wolverines to nine NCAA tournaments and a pair of championship game appearances. He left to become coach of the Cavaliers for part of the 2019-20 season.
NFL: The NFL pledged to halt the use of “race-norming” — which assumed Black players started out with lower cognitive functioning — in the $1 billion settlement of brain injury claims and to review past scores for any potential race bias. The practice had made it harder for Black players to show a deficit and qualify for an award. The standards were designed in medicine in the 1990s in hopes of offering more appropriate treatment to dementia patients, but critics faulted the way they were used to assess legal damages in the NFL case. The announcement comes after a pair of Black players filed a civil rights lawsuit over the practice, medical experts raised concerns and a group of NFL families last month dropped 50,000 petitions at the federal courthouse in Philadelphia, where the lawsuit had been thrown out by the judge overseeing the settlement. U.S. District Judge Anita B. Brody later took the unusual step of asking for a report on the issue.