Nick Taylor has been the most dramatic winner on the PGA Tour the last three seasons, with each of his triumphs since 2023 coming in playoffs.
But before he headed to the Sony Open in Hawaii to defend his 2025 title, Taylor told Sportsnet.ca it’s been his consistency of which he’s most proud.
“It’s certainly something I never take for granted,” Taylor said by phone before beginning his 2026 campaign on Thursday in Oahu, Hawaii. “It’s pretty wild to look back at the last three years, and to win each year has been pretty remarkable.”
Taylor defeated Nico Echavarria on the second extra hole last year at the Sony Open after chipping in for eagle on the par-5 18th in regulation to force the playoff. His Sony Open triumph was his fifth win on the PGA Tour — far and away the most among this generation of Canadian male stars.
Waialae Country Club has been a happy hunting ground for Taylor, who has now gone T7-T7-win in his last three spins around the storied venue, one of the PGA Tour’s longest-standing host clubs.
Although Taylor had just three top-10 finishes in 2025 on Tour, the other two high finishes came in signature events. He also finished just one shot back of another top 10 at the RBC Canadian Open.
For the second time in three years, Taylor also made it to the season-ending Tour Championship, where just the top 30 on the FedExCup standings get to tee it up.
“It’s close to the top of the pyramid when it comes to reflecting a great year and a consistent year,” Taylor said of earning his way into the season finale. “To keep up the consistent play and make it to the Tour Championship, it’s a feeling of satisfaction because it’s just the 30 top guys on the PGA Tour.
“It’s the cherry on top of the season knowing you put together a nice body of work from the entire 12 months.”
If there was one point of negativity on Taylor’s resume over the last half-decade, it has been his performance at the major championships. He made the cut at the 2020 Masters (the one played in November) but went on to miss eight major cuts in a row before finding the weekend again at the Masters last spring.
Taylor then missed the cut at the PGA Championship but finished T23 at the U.S. Open at Oakmont, his best-ever major result.
“It wasn’t amazing, but breaking the streak of missed cuts was Step 1 and I felt like I was borderline competitive at the U.S. Open. There were a lot of steps in the right direction, but each major I’ve played there were slightly higher comfort levels, which is important,” Taylor said. “They are difficult golf tournaments with tough fields. I’m going to enjoy them and go in with the goal to win.”
Another thing that’s back on Taylor’s radar is the potential to make the Presidents Cup team for the International side, with this year’s competition taking place at Medinah Country Club in Chicago. Taylor won early in 2024, but he struggled through the balance of the year — including missing the cut in his title defence at the Canadian Open — and was ultimately left off the team that played in Montreal and was captained by Mike Weir.
He said his motivation to play well at the majors and ultimately try to make the Presidents Cup team this time around is high.
The start of 2026, however, has been odd from a regular-routine perspective. With the regular season opener, the Sentry, cancelled due to course conditions and the ensuing extra week of winter-time holidays, this may be the latest Taylor has started his PGA Tour season, he said. It’s been a nice extended break, however. In 2025, he said, his family left for the first event of the year just three days after Christmas.
Taylor played two events in the four months following the Tour Championship last August — he missed the cut at the World Wide Technology Championship before notching a top-20 finish at the Nedbank Golf Challenge on the DP World Tour — and admitted this long time away has been “a bit foreign” to most of the guys on the PGA Tour since they’re used to being on all the time.
“It feels like a long summer break from school,” Taylor said with a laugh.
Taylor said one thing he’s eager to do again is get a few updated temperature checks about the goings on of the PGA Tour — and there will be plenty to say when the first full-field event of the year starts up Thursday. The Tour just reinstated Brooks Koepka — returning after three years with LIV Golf — and there has been plenty of smoke around what the new-look PGA Tour will be starting in 2027 under the new CEO leadership of Brian Rolapp.
“The 2027 season (will have) some pretty significant changes. I’m curious, but I can only control what I can control. If I get back to what I’m doing and if I keep playing as well as I am, I’ll be on the right side of it,” Taylor said. “But it’s not something I’m going to tune out because there is too much noise. I like to gossip about the Tour like the next person.”
This year, though, begins anew Thursday with the Canadian the first defending champion of the season. Taylor is a veteran now, and he said it’ll be nice to get his band back together and back into the same kind of routine he’s had for the last decade and a half.
He’s made a habit of winning lately, too. And he’d like nothing more than for that trend to continue.
Midway through the 2025-26 season, the league’s Eastern Conference seems nearly just as muddied as it did through the first quarter, with seven potential wild-card clubs still sitting within a handful of points, and few certainties in the standings above them.
But there might not be any club in the conference riding as tumultuous a wave as the Boston Bruins. The Massachusetts squad has been emblematic of the topsy-turvy year we’ve seen in the East, looking at times like a team destined for the conference basement, at others like the Presidents’ Trophy-winning B’s who used to dominate the league.
And this past weekend marked a particularly wild stretch of hockey for Marco Sturm’s club.
On Saturday, the Bruins turned in a dominant, high-octane shellacking of the New York Rangers, taking down the Blueshirts 10-2 under the TD Garden lights. The offensive outburst ranked as the franchise’s most prolific showing in nearly 40 years, their first 10-goal game since 1988. But even more unexpected than the 10-spot was howBoston found its way to that scoreline.
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Leading the charge Saturday was 23-year-old Marat Khusnutdinov, a second-round pick of the Minnesota Wild in 2020, traded to Boston last March in a deal that sent Justin Brazeau (now with the Pittsburgh Penguins) to the Wild. Heading into this weekend’s meeting with the Rangers, Khusnutdinov had never posted a multi-goal or multi-point game at the NHL level — Saturday night, he exploded for the finest offensive performance of his big-league career, amassing four goals and an assist.
In one game, the winger nearly tied his output from all of last season, Khusnutdinov having posted five goals over 75 games last year split between the Bruins and Wild. He’s now up to nine goals and 20 points on the season, both totals career highs by a mile.
Khusnutdinov became the eighth player in the expansion era to score four goals in a game having never posted a multi-goal game previously. The most recent before him? Auston Matthews in his NHL debut, and a rookie Sam Bennett, both in 2016.
But Khusnutdinov was only part of the chaos. There was also Pavel Zacha — whose name has made the rounds through the rumour mill for some time — scoring thrice for his first career hat trick (including a particularly odd second goal). With the trick in tow, he and Khusnutdinov became the first Bruins teammates to record hat tricks in the same game at home, and the first two to record a hat trick in the same game at all in nearly 60 years. The pair also became the first teammates to record their firstcareer hat tricks in the same game since Pascal Dupuis and Petr Sykora managed the feat in 2008 for the Penguins.
And then there was David Pastrnak, Boston’s premier offensive dynamo. Not to be left behind, No. 88 chipped in with a career-best six-point night, registering six helpers on the evening. He became the first Bruin to tally six points since Ray Bourque did it 36 years ago. Fraser Minten scored two as well, and Charlie McAvoy’s goal rounded out the 10-spot.
Perhaps just as odd as Boston pulling out 10 goals against the Rangers was the fact that, one night later, fresh off that offensive display, they scored just once.
What’s more, it wasn’t any of Khusnutdinov, Zacha, Minten or McAvoy who tallied in Sunday’s follow-up, and Pastrnak was held pointless — instead, it was Viktor Arvidsson scoring the Bruins’ only goal. Still, they earned the win, Boston’s lone goal Sunday against the Pittsburgh Penguins coming in the B’s first shutout win of the season.
The wild two-game stretch is a microcosm of what’s been a wacky, uneven season for the Bruins overall.
After missing the post-season last year for the first time in nearly a decade, a rough start to 2025-26 had the club looking destined for more misery. Then came the rollercoaster. At the end of October, they sat outside the playoff race, reeling from a six-game losing streak. At the end of November, they sat second in the Atlantic Division, enjoying the spoils of a seven-game win streak. At the end of December? Back on the outside, sunk by yet another six-game losing streak.
And now, in mid-January, the B’s have found life again. With this weekend’s wins in the bag, they’ve now won three in a row, and five of their past six, moving them back into the thick of the wild-card race — Boston sits tied with the two wild-card clubs, Buffalo and Washington, at 52 points.
Where they wind up by the end of the month, or the end of the season, seems as unpredictable as the conference as a whole. But their recent surge surely makes life tougher for the other clubs hunting for those wild-card slots. Right behind Boston sits Toronto, which is trying to ride its own recent surge back into the playoff mix. Pittsburgh’s own up-and-down campaign has it right there too, level with the Maple Leafs. Behind them sits the defending-champion Florida Panthers, and only a handful of points behind the Cats are the Devils and Rangers.
Heading into the campaign’s back half, much of the East’s playoff picture still seems very much up for grabs. And the recipe for success might simply be finding some semblance of consistency and out-waiting the rollercoaster crowd.
Weekend Takeaways
• Macklin Celebrini’s meteoric ascent continued as his San Jose Sharks split a pair of tough matchups with two of the NHL’s best. Saturday night, the Sharks went toe-to-toe with the league’s No. 2 behemoth, the Dallas Stars, pulling out the overtime win. Celebrini recorded three assists, taking his season total to 70 points.
In doing so, he became the third-fastest teenager to reach that sum in one season, doing it in 44 games — trailing only Wayne Gretzky (40 games in 1980-81) and Sidney Crosby (43 games in 2006-07). Celebrini also extended his points streak to 13 games, becoming the third teenager to amass 26 points over a 13-game span — the others, of course, were Gretzky and Crosby — and factored into his 12th game-winning goal of the season, tying reigning Art Ross winner Nikita Kucherov in that category. Although San Jose came up short against Vegas on Sunday, it remains third in the Pacific, looking firmly on track for a return to the post-season.
• The Maple Leafs reeled off a dominant 5-0 win over the Canucks on Saturday, their third straight victory and the ninth straight game in which they’ve collected a much-needed point. But the most interesting aspect of this resurgence has been their resuscitated power play.
On Dec. 23, the club parted ways with assistant coach Marc Savard, who had been tabbed with running the man-advantage. At that time, Toronto ranked dead last in the league with a 13.3 per cent success rate. On Dec. 27, the Leafs brought in Steve Sullivan to take over power-play. The 16-year NHL vet put early tweaks in place, shifting the club’s scorers to different positions and simplifying tactics. In his first game behind the bench, the Maple Leafs scored twice on the power play. They tallied a power-play goal in each of the next three games, too. Saturday, against the Canucks, they fired in two more.
Since Sullivan joined the fold, the Maple Leafs’ power play has been humming at 38.9 per cent — going 7-for-18, with zero shorthanded goals-against — good for tops in the league.
Red and White Power Rankings
1. Montreal Canadiens (25-14-6): A tough shutout loss to the Atlantic-rival Detroit Red Wings Saturday slowed the Habs after a three-game win streak that included victories over the Stars and the defending-champion Cats. Still, they’ve claimed points in eight of their past 10 games, and remain the highest-ranked Canadian club by a hefty distance. A meeting with Vancouver at home Monday offers a good chance to return to the win column.
2. Edmonton Oilers (22-16-7): Like Montreal, a Saturday-night loss to a division rival was a setback after a week of quality wins. But the Oilers still took a point out of their shootout loss to L.A., and the late tying goal from Connor McDavid that allowed them to earn that point extended the captain’s point streak to an absurd 18 games and 42 points. There are wrinkles to iron out, but Edmonton still sits second in the Pacific, and ranks as the only other Canadian team in a playoff spot at the moment.
3. Toronto Maple Leafs (22-15-7): After looking destined for misery for much of the campaign, the Maple Leafs have found some life. Saturday’s impressive victory moved Toronto into the most productive stretch of the Craig Berube era — its nine-game streak of point-collecting ranks as the longest such stretch since 2023-24. The Leafs are still on the outside looking in when it comes to the post-season, but after being last in the East just a couple months ago, a return to the playoff picture seems possible again.
4. Calgary Flames (19-22-4): It might not be the what the Flames faithful were hoping for given the potential to claim a lottery pick this season, but a 2-1 win over Sidney Crosby’s Penguins helped Calgary snap a four-game losing streak that started its new year. The Flames’ first win of 2026 was spurred by goals from youngsters Connor Zary and Matt Coronato. Up next comes a reunion with Sean Monahan as they continue their road trip with a tilt against Columbus on Tuesday.
5. Winnipeg Jets (17-22-5): After a miserable 11-game losing streak that lasted nearly a month, the Jets have managed to stop the bleeding. A statement win against L.A. on Friday was followed up with 4-3 victory over New Jersey on Sunday. They’ll have to keep stringing them together if they hope to truly flip the script this season, as the 2025 Presidents’ Trophy winners remain mired in the West’s basement. They’ll meet the Islanders next, before getting another shot at two clubs who beat them during that lengthy losing streak: Minnesota on Thursday, and Toronto next Saturday.
6. Ottawa Senators (20-19-5): The Senators have similarly struggled to match the highs of 2024-25 — after a triumphant return to the post-season last year, and a quality effort in Round 1 against Toronto, Ottawa sits well out of the playoff picture at the moment. A loss to Florida on Saturday didn’t help. The Sens have now dropped four straight, and seven of their past nine.
7. Vancouver Canucks (16-23-5): It’s gone from bad to worse for the Canucks. After losing 5-3 to Buffalo last Tuesday, Vancouver fell 5-1 to Detroit on Thursday and then 5-0 to Toronto on Saturday in what’s been an abysmal road trip. The most recent drubbing moves the Canucks to six straight losses, and eight losses in their past nine games. Making matters worse, after the Jets managed a couple recent wins, the Canucks are 32nd of 32 clubs.
The Week Ahead
• Mitch Marner will face his former team when the Maple Leafs visit Las Vegas on Thursday. It’ll be the first time the long-time Leaf will play against his boyhood club, a first taste of the odd experience before Marner returns to Scotiabank Arena on Jan. 23 for what’s sure to be an emotional first game as a visitor in his old barn. The former Leaf, who spent 10 years in blue and white, has 46 points through 43 games in his first season as a Golden Knight (two more than the Leafs’ leading scorer, William Nylander).
• Monday will mark the introduction of the new-look Hughes Bowl, with Quinn Hughes’ Minnesota Wild taking on Jack and Luke Hughes’ Devils in New Jersey, the first time the brothers will play against each other since Quinn was traded by Vancouver to Minnesota. But the siblings meet each other amid wildly different circumstances for their franchises. The Wild ride into Jersey as the third-best club in the West, a bona fide contender, Quinn having collected 16 points in 14 games since joining the squad. The Devils, meanwhile, have lost four straight and sit well outside a wild-card spot, with both Jack and Luke enduring their fair share of tumult this season.
• All seven Canadian teams will be in action Saturday as the Scotiabank Hockey Day in Canada festivities kick off in Moncton, New Brunswick. The schedule features three all-Canadian matchups — Maple Leafs vs. Jets, Canadiens vs. Senators and Oilers vs. Canucks — while the Flames will take on blue-line phenom Matthew Schaefer and the Islanders.
Canada’s skeleton team refutes accusations by American Katie Uhlaender that Canada’s coach sabotaged her chances of sliding in the Olympic Games.
Athletes from all countries are chasing qualification points for the Milano Cortina Games.
At a North American Cup race, which is a developmental event below the World Cup, Canada withdrew four of six women Sunday in Lake Placid, N.Y. The smaller field reduced the number of Olympic qualification points available.
The 41-year-old Uhlaender is third among U.S. women in world rankings. She says Canada’s decision killed her chances of competing in a sixth Olympic Games.
Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton says in a statement that the four withdrawn athletes were new to the sport and had a rough week in two of three scheduled races in Lake Placid.
The organization says its actions were appropriate and were within the rules.
Tiger Woods’ team – but not Woods himself – will make its TGL second-season debut Tuesday night as it goes up against the first season’s runner-up squad.
Jupiter Links GC will play its first match of the season – and the first of back-to-back weeks with matches – against New York Golf Club, which is eager to bounce back from a Week 1 loss against the defending champion Atlanta Drive.
Jupiter Links will be without Woods, who is still recovering from wintertime surgery. The team will have newly signed Akshay Bhatia playing his very first TGL match.
Jupiter Links struggled in the first season and is hoping a little new blood and a new year will help to find good form early.
Here’s everything else you need to know ahead of Tuesday’s tilt at the SoFi Center in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. (Sportsnet East, Sportsnet+, 7 p.m. ET / 4 p.m. PT).
The match
Jupiter Links GC: Max Homa, Kevin Kisner, Akshay Bhatia (sitting: Tom Kim, Tiger Woods)
New York Golf Club: Rickie Fowler, Matt Fitzpatrick, Cameron Young (sitting: Xander Schauffele)
Notes
• Jupiter Links is the final team to make its season two debut. It went 1-4-0 in the first season.
• Bhatia will make his TGL debut as a fill-in with Woods injured and Tom Kim missing the match due to a scheduling conflict.
• Woods will, however attend all Jupiter Links matches in a non-playing role – he will wear a mic and be integrated into the broadcasts (interacting with teammates, opponents, the broadcast crew, and even fans in the SoFi Center).
• There were several areas of improvement for Jupiter Links as it finished last in average driving distance, greens in regulation, and total points won.
• Rickie Fowler, who played every match for New York in the first season, is making his season debut for New York GC, which fell to Atlanta in a championship rematch to kick off this season.
• New York is attempting to not go 0-2 for the second year in a row.
• This week will mark the debut of The Jup Life – the signature hole for Jupiter Links. The iconic lighthouse of the Jupiter Inlet on the Atlantic side of Florida provides the direction off the tee for the teams before they have to approach the ‘island’ GreenZone.
League standings
Team
Wins
Losses
OT wins
OT losses
Points
Atlanta Drive GC
2
0
0
0
4
Boston Common Golf
1
0
0
0
2
Jupiter Links GC
0
0
0
0
0
The Bay GC
0
1
0
0
0
New York GC
0
1
0
0
0
Los Angeles GC
0
1
0
0
0
How it works
• Triples – nine holes – three players per team competing in an alternate-shot format.
• Singles – six holes – one-on-one, head-to-head competition for the entire hole. Each player from each team plays a total of two full holes during the session.
• Overtime – if the match is tied after 15 holes, the teams will play a best-of-three, closest-to-the-pin competition to decide the winner, with the hole location and orientation of the green remaining unchanged from the final/15th hole of the match.
• The shot distance in OT will be between 25-50 yards and decided pre-match by the match official. All players will play from the same spot. The ball must finish on the putting surface to be eligible.
• All matches will be played at SoFi Center with the capacity for 1,500 fans in seating that’s wrapped around the playing area — creating a ‘greenside’ experience.
Standings
For each match, teams can be awarded up to two points towards their regular-season total based on the following:
EINDHOVEN, Netherlands — United States international Ricardo Pepi was to be operated on after breaking his right arm during a game with PSV Eindhoven and is expected to be out for two months.
The recovery timeline should give Pepi enough time to regain his form and secure a place on the U.S. team for a home World Cup.
The 23-year-old Pepi was injured when he tumbled after scoring during the first half of a 5-1 win over Excelsior in the Dutch league on Saturday.
“It didn’t look good right away, and at such a moment you would prefer to look the other way,” PSV coach Peter Bosz said. “Last January, Ricardo was already out due to his knee injury. It won’t last that long now, but unfortunately, we lost him again. Pepi was on a good run, had a strong training camp and was all the way back. … All signs were green for a strong second half of the season, so this is incredibly disappointing.”
Pepi has scored 13 goals and provided three assists in 34 matches for the U.S.
The U.S. faces Paraguay, Australia and another team still to be determined through qualifying playoffs in the group stage of the June 11-July 19 World Cup, which will also be co-hosted by Canada and Mexico.
Pepi was surprisingly left off the U.S. squad for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
ADELBODEN, Switzerland — Swiss ski star Marco Odermatt is often unbeatable in the World Cup and especially at his home giant slalom classic that he won for a record fifth straight year Saturday.
Olympic giant slalom champion Odermatt raced through steady falling snow and worsening visibility to protect his first-run lead and win by 0.49 seconds from Lucas Pinheiro Braathen of Brazil. Leo Anguenot of France was third, 0.68 back.
Pinheiro Braathen led the applause in the finish area after watching Odermatt ski at his limit to exactly match the Brazilian’s time in the tough second run.
“He is really the king of this hill,” Pinheiro Braathen said of Odermatt to Swiss broadcaster RTS. “It is an honor to be able to stand as the last man up at the start gate with him and be able to fight him on arguably the coolest race that you guys have to offer.”
Odermatt has won each Adelboden giant slalom since 2022 to overtake the four-win streak of Swedish great Ingemar Stenmark from 1979 through 1982.
“Adelboden was my first love and it will always be my big love. I was here as a small kid,” Odermatt said.
Home wins once were rare and are wildly appreciated by a noisy crowd of about 25,000 fans on a signature day in Switzerland’s sports calendar.
“They really made me push harder,” Odermatt said of the home support. “This energy, this extra pressure and motivation helps.”
Racing began Saturday morning after a minute’s silence observed for the victims of the fatal fire in a bar in nearby Crans-Montana, which hosts World Cup races in three weeks’ time.
In another stellar World Cup season for Odermatt, the four-time defending overall champion has almost twice as many race points as his nearest challenger, Pinheiro Braathen.
Odermatt’s sixth race win this season was the 51st of his career, fourth on the all-time list, and 29th in giant slalom.
Pinheiro Braathen’s pride
Back when he was racing for his father’s nation Norway, Pinheiro Braathen sustained a season-ending knee injury at Adelboden in 2021 crashing over the finish line while setting a fast time in giant slalom.
One year later he stopped his giant slalom run approaching the steep final slope rather than tackle it again.
Pinheiro Braathen said Saturday he later had therapy to help him confront his issues with the storied hill.
“Words cannot describe how proud I am right now.”
Adelboden history
The Adelboden giant slalom has been a fixture on the men’s calendar since the first week of World Cup racing in January 1967. Then, the winner was another iconic ski name, Jean-Claude Killy.
The Chuenisbaergli course has signature rolling terrain over summer cow pastures. Skiers crest a rise before entering the steep final slope that funnels then down into a raucous finish area.
The course stages a slalom Sunday, that Odermatt will skip though Pinheiro Braathen will be a contender to repeat his 2023 win.
