 There's a lot going on in hockey | | | The coach of one of the NHL's signature franchises was let go today, the new Utah team unveiled some questionable name choices, and the Stanley Cup and PWHL playoffs are heating up. Here's what to know:
The Leafs fired head coach Sheldon Keefe.
After taking over for Mike Babcock in November 2019, Keefe went 212-97-40 in the regular season while guiding Toronto to five straight trips to the playoffs and its first series victory in almost two decades. Ultimately, though, his tenure was defined by the same dearth of post-season success that has plagued the franchise since its last Stanley Cup championship in 1967. After finally breaking through to the second round last year, the Leafs bowed out in five games to underdog Florida before suffering their eighth opening-round exit in nine tries when they lost Game 7 against Boston last weekend. Today, Keefe was shown the door.
General manager Brad Treliving did not name a replacement for Keefe, who tweeted a goodbye video from a pristine-looking waterfront location. The scene was fitting for a guy who can take a very long paid vacation if he chooses. The two-year contract extension that Keefe signed last August doesn't even begin until next season.
The Utah NHL team is probably going to have a weird name.
The relocated Arizona Coyotes franchise released a list of 20 options for fans to vote on over the next couple of weeks, with another round of voting and more details on the name-selection process promised for "later this summer."
The choices include Caribou, Frost, Hive, Fury, Powder, Blast, Squall, Yeti and the soccer-inspired Utah HC.
The new name, logo, colours and related branding won't arrive until the 2025-26 season because of the tight turnaround following the team's hasty departure from Arizona last month. For the upcoming season, the team's jerseys will simply have "Utah" across the chest.
The Vancouver-Edmonton series is off to a rollicking start.
The only two Canadian teams left in the Stanley Cup playoffs put on a show last night in Vancouver to open their second-round series. Edmonton built a 4-1 lead midway through the second period before the Canucks stormed back with four unanswered goals to win it 5-4. Five different players scored for Vancouver, which held Connor McDavid to just one assist. Game 2 is Friday night.
Also last night, Florida bounced back from a 5-1 defeat to crush Boston 6-1 in Game 2. 136 penalty minutes were handed out in the third period, which included a rare star vs. star fight between David Pastrnak and Matthew Tkachuk.
Tonight, the New York Rangers will try to improve to 7-0 in the playoffs when they visit Carolina for Game 3, while Colorado can go up 2-0 on Western Conference top seed Dallas.
The first-ever PWHL playoffs are underway.
Top-ranked Toronto won the women's league's inaugural post-season game last night, blanking Minnesota 4-0 at home. Blayre Turnbull scored two goals, league scoring champion Natalie Spooner potted one of her own and Kristen Campbell made 26 saves for Toronto. Game 2 of the best-of-five series is Friday night.
Tonight, No. 2 seed Montreal hosts No. 3 Boston for their series opener. Montreal is led by Canadian national-team captain Marie-Philip Poulin, who tied for second in the league in points this season. | | |  | Sheldon Keefe paid the price for the Leafs' playoff failures. (Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images) | | | Quickly… | | | Some other things to know:
1. No, Summer McIntosh did not "bail" on the women's 800m event at the Olympics.
That word appeared in an Australian headline yesterday, and some other media outlets ran with a variation of it. But you can't "bail" or "drop out" of something you were never really in. Yes, the Canadian swimming phenom competed in the 800m freestyle at the 2021 Olympics as a 14-year-old. And, true, this winter McIntosh handed American star Katie Ledecky her first 800m loss in more than 13 years. And, of course, it would have been fun to see those two battle alongside Olympic silver medallist Ariarne Titmus this summer in Paris.
But it was never going to happen. As CBC Sports' Devin Heroux pointed out, the women's 800m final is scheduled for 10 minutes after the 200m individual medley final, and McIntosh is a stronger contender in the latter. So it wasn't really a surprise when the entry list for next week's Canadian Olympic trials came out on Monday and the 800m freestyle wasn't among McIntosh's seven events. Those include the 200m butterfly and 400m individual medley (she owns a pair of world titles in each) and the 400m freestyle, where we could get the McIntosh-Ledecky-Titmus showdown everyone wants to see.
2. A pair of Canadians crashed out of one of cycling's biggest races.
Two-time Olympian Mike Woods and Riley Pickrell are out of the Giro d'Italia after being involved in separate crashes yesterday during stage 5 of the Grand Tour event. Their team, Israel-Premier Tech, said Woods showed symptoms of a mild concussion. Woods was 107th in the general classification standings while Pickrell was 169th.
Woods, 37, won a stage at last year's Tour de France and was looking to complete a trifecta of Grand Tour stage victories. He won a stage at the Spanish Vuelta in both 2018 and 2020.
3. Shohei Ohtani's former interpreter reached a plea deal.
Ippei Mizuhara has agreed to plead guilty to bank and tax fraud after prosecutors allege he stole nearly $17 million from the Japanese baseball star to pay off gambling debts, the U.S. Justice Department said yesterday.
The bank fraud charge carries a maximum of 30 years in prison, and the false tax return charge carries a sentence of up to three years. Mizuhara was ordered to pay up to $17 million in restitution to Ohtani and more than $1 million to the IRS, though those amounts could change upon sentencing. Read more here. | | | Coming up on CBC Sports | | | After helping the Canadian men's 4x100m team qualify for the Paris Olympics and win a silver medal at the World Athletics Relays in the Bahamas last weekend, Aaron Brown will race in the 200m at Friday's Diamond League track and field meet in Doha. His top opponent is American Kenny Bednarek, the 2021 Olympic silver medallist.
The only other Canadian competing is distance runner Kieran Lumb, in the men's 1,500m. Read a full preview of the Doha meet here. Watch it live from noon-2 p.m. ET on CBCSports.ca, the CBC Sports app and CBC Gem. | | | Share this newsletter | | or subscribe if this was
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