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Wednesday, 17 December 2025
Tuesday, 16 December 2025
Back from injury, Rangers’ Matt Rempe says he won’t be deterred from dropping gloves
NEW YORK — Matt Rempe kept jabbing away at Ryan Reaves not knowing his left thumb had already broken from getting tangled up in his combatant’s jersey during their heavyweight fight.
“I just kept going bang, bang, bang, and I guess I was just kind of breaking it and breaking it,” Rempe said. “But when you’re in a fight, you don’t feel anything, so you had no idea.”
After he and Reaves told each other, “Good fight,” in the penalty boxes, Rempe looked down and realized something was very wrong. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, this thing’s not right,’” he recalled.
That was Oct. 23, and Rempe finally returned to the New York Rangers‘ lineup Monday night after missing the past 24 games. With his team struggling, coach Mike Sullivan is glad to have the imposing 6-foot-9 winger back on the ice
“When he’s in the lineup, he makes an impact,” Sullivan said. “He creates anxiety for our opponents. That’s an area where I think he can help us. He gets in on the forecheck, he leans on people, he goes to the net front, he makes it hard on people. He makes an impact on the game with the way he plays.”
Rempe is just glad he can make an impact again. The injury occurred the day before he was supposed to fly to his hometown of Calgary, which was a downer for the 22-year-old respected teammate and fan favourite.
Knocking on the side of his wooden locker, Rempe pointed out that he has been in over a dozen fights in the NHL and nearly 50 in his life and never got hurt.
“That was bound to happen eventually, and it’s a part of the game,” Rempe said. “Just a couple months. The season’s long. It happens.”
Rempe is a throwback kind of enforcer in hockey, which has seen fighting decrease substantially over the past couple of decades. He does not plan to let a broken thumb deter him from dropping the gloves moving forward.
“Not at all,” Rempe said, acknowledging he’s on the no-fight list for the time being. “I can’t for a little while because I can’t really bend it correctly yet. A couple more weeks and it’ll be golden, but I can’t for a little bit, which sucks, but it’s all right because you just go play hockey and stuff.”
Anaheim’s Ross Johnston asked Rempe to fight in his return, but the circumstances made that not doable.
“He doesn’t know what’s up with the thumb and stuff, and he’s doing his job,” Rempe said. “I was like, ‘Hey I can’t go,’ and he understands that and he’s probably been there before.”
Just the opportunity to skate in a game again completed a relatively quick comeback for Rempe, who had to go through weeks of power skating without a stick, then progressed to light stickhandling and passing and into full practices. Sullivan would have liked to get Rempe into more battle drills in practice but lamented the lack of chances to simulate game-like activities.
“His conditioning is great,” Sullivan said. “He’s worked extremely hard to get himself in the position where his fitness level is really high.”
Rempe felt good about his nine minutes as he eases back in.
“I can’t thank all the trainers and the team staff and everyone and all the docs who worked on the surgery enough because they did a great job and got me back quicker than I thought originally, so it was really good,” Rempe said. “It was a lot of fun being back after a long time.”
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Monday, 15 December 2025
Canada’s Shelina Zadorsky undergoes ankle surgery, West Ham says
West Ham United Women have confirmed defender Shelina Zadorsky has undergone successful surgery after sustaining an ankle injury earlier this month.
The club announced the update via X, revealing that the centre back was injured during training ahead of West Ham’s Barclays Women’s Super League fixture away to Manchester United on Dec. 7.
The surgery was described as successful, with the Canadian defender now set to begin her recovery process.
Zadorsky has been a mainstay in West Ham’s lineup since first arriving on loan in January 2024 from Tottenham Hotspur. After spending the remainder of the 2024 season with the Hammers, she then signed on a free transfer to stay at the club and was made vice-captain that same summer.
This season, she has started nine of the 11 games in what has been a disappointing year for West Ham, who currently sit 11th in the WSL.
Zadorsky has been a Canadian international since 2013, earning herself 117 caps. She was also a part of the gold medal-winning Olympic side from 2021.
West Ham will now look to reorganize at the back while Zadorsky begins her rehabilitation. No return timeline has been announced, but the focus remains on a full and healthy comeback.
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Jets fire defensive co-ordinator Steve Wilks after blowout loss
Aaron Glenn finally had seen enough from his porous, underachieving New York Jets defence after 14 games.
The first-year head coach fired defensive coordinator Steve Wilks on Monday, a day after the team gave up 48 points in one of its worst losses in a 3-11 season.
Glenn announced that Chris Harris, the team’s defensive backs coach and pass game coordinator, would take over for Wilks. Glenn added that he would assist Harris in the play-calling duties this week.
Glenn said during a video call with reporters that he made the decision late Sunday night — a few hours after New York’s 48-20 loss at Jacksonville. He said he spoke to Wilks on Monday morning to inform him that he was relieving him of his duties.
“I felt like it was the best decision for the organization at this time,” Glenn said. “I’ve said this all along, that I’m evaluating players, I’m evaluating coaches, I’m evaluating myself, and I just felt like this was the best decision for right now, for the team and for this organization.”
The 56-year-old Wilks was the first of the Jets’ three coordinators hired by Glenn after he took over as head coach in January. Wilks was out of the NFL last season while serving as a volunteer adviser for Charlotte’s football team. He was San Francisco’s defensive coordinator in 2023, but was fired after the 49ers’ loss in the Super Bowl to the Kansas City Chiefs.
Wilks’ defence with the Jets struggled all season, ranking among the league’s worst against the run and points allowed. New York set an NFL record with no interceptions through its first 14 games, which also tied a league mark for any 14-game stretch in a season.
The Jets had expected their defence to be a strength for a team that was adjusting to changes to its coaching staff and with a new general manager in Darren Mougey. But the unit struggled all season under Wilks. As of Monday, the Jets’ defence ranks 20th overall, 29th against the run and 30th in average points allowed. The pass defence has been serviceable, ranking 12th in the league.
New York, which failed to make the playoffs for the 15th straight year, dealt two of its top players — cornerback Sauce Gardner and defensive tackle Quinnen Williams — at the trade deadline. That further weakened an already inconsistent defense under Wilks.
Two weeks ago, the Jets gave up 167 yards rushing in a 27-24 victory over Atlanta. They followed that up by allowing 239 yards on the ground last week in a 34-10 loss to Miami. On Sunday, Trevor Lawrence threw five touchdown passes and ran for another score in the blowout loss at Jacksonville, during which the Jaguars scored on eight of their first nine possessions.
After the game, Glenn brushed off questions about whether he might consider pulling play-calling duties from Wilks, saying he brought the veteran coach to New York “for a reason, and I want him to run his system.” A few hours later, Glenn decided to move forward without Wilks for the final three games of the season.
“I just thought that from last week going into this week, the improvement wasn’t there,” Glenn said. “And I thought it was time to make a change.”
The 43-year-old Harris had 16 career interceptions while playing safety for eight NFL seasons during two stints with Chicago, along with stops in Carolina, Detroit and Jacksonville. After retiring from playing in 2013, Harris began his coaching career as a defensive quality control coach for the Bears before joining the Chargers as an assistant defensive backs coach in 2016.
He served in the same role for Washington from 2020 through the 2022 season before being hired by Tennessee as the defensive pass game coordinator and cornerbacks coach.
Glenn said Harris has experience calling defensive plays in the preseason, so he expects him to get up to speed quickly.
“This is a league of change,” Glenn said. “And with change comes opportunity, and this will be a good opportunity for him to get a chance to call it.”
The Jets actually got their second defensive takeaway of the season against Jacksonville, a fumble recovery by Malachi Moore — just over two months after Andre Cisco’s fumble recovery against Denver on Oct. 12. New York ranks last in the NFL with a minus-17 turnover differential.
“I want to see consistent improvement,” Glenn said. “I want to see structure that’s consistent. I want to see play that’s consistent. And I want to see the culture of this football team come together.”
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Senators piling up losses on self-inflicted mistakes
OTTAWA — The Ottawa Senators keep finding ways to lose.
The Senators are 2-6-0 in their last eight games, moving themselves six points out of a playoff spot.
A poor penalty kill and a botched clearing attempt by Tyler Kleven in the final minute of regulation prevented the Senators from earning a point in Saturday’s 3-2 loss to the Minnesota Wild.
“(I) like our team game right now,” said head coach Travis Green after the Senators outshot the Wild 36-25. “We played three strong games at home that we didn’t win, and the league’s tight right now. One little mistake here and there can cost you and tonight it did.”
Panic buttons are being hit in the nation’s capital, and this time it’s not the politicians.
Of those six losses, five have been by a single goal (discounting empty netters). The Senators lead the league with seven one-goal defeats in regulation, a trend that harks back to the D.J. Smith era of moral victories.
The Senators’ 11 one-goal losses so far this season are tied for second in the NHL behind the Blackhawks.
Every loss makes the journey back up the standings that much harder.
The season is far from over, but when teams are grabbing Ls from the jaws of victory, there are inevitably many reasons.
The biggest issue right now is the Senators’ inability to score at five-on-five. They are middle of the pack at 2.49 goals per game at five-on-five this season, which ranks them 16th in the league. But lately the Senators have not just made Vezina-winner Igor Shesterkin and league-beater Jesper Wallstedt look like prime Patrick Roy; they’ve even done it to Joel Hofer.
Some of that may just be bad luck. The team has a 6.7 shooting percentage in their eight-game funk, but that illuminates the biggest question mark with the Senators’ forward group.
Who’s their sniper?
No one on the current Senators roster has ever scored 40 goals. Tim Stutzle was the closest with 39 in 2022-23, and he’s on pace for 39 this season. Internally, the organization knows they do not have enough elite scorers who can turn games in their favour, even if they haven’t played particularly well.
“You can watch a guy, just trying to think of a name like Artemi Panarin the other night,” Green told Sportsnet.ca last week. “He does some things that quite honestly, we might not have a player that can do that as a winger and play that way. So you can’t just say, ‘Hey, we’re going to play like him.’ So you have to be mindful of all that as a coach and also understand that there’s a certain identity that you want to have within your team as well.”
The Senators are short offensively, despite acquiring Fabian Zetterlund and Dylan Cozens last season to improve their five-on-five offence. Neither player is going to score 40 goals, so the Senators are still missing a star sniper. And Brady Tkachuk has only one goal this season after missing 20 games with a wrist injury.
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32 Thoughts: The Podcast
Hockey fans already know the name, but this is not the blog. From Sportsnet, 32 Thoughts: The Podcast with NHL Insider Elliotte Friedman and Kyle Bukauskas is a weekly deep dive into the biggest news and interviews from the hockey world.
The issue for GM Steve Staios is that it’s not easy to find and acquire a star goal-scorer.
The Senators lack their first-round pick in 2026 and have few elite prospects outside of Carter Yakemchuk and Logan Hensler. That makes a Quinn Hughes-esque trade harder to pull off.
To be fair, in the last eight games, the Senators have the best expected goals share in the league at five-on-five. Combine that with the ninth-worst shooting percentage and fourth-worst PDO (which is generally known in hockey circles as a measure of poor puck luck). In other words, eventually good process should lead to good results. But where the Senators are in the standings, they need great results. The Senators are a five-game winning streak away from being in a playoff spot, and a five-game losing streak away from being out of playoff contention.
Meanwhile, the Senators have the second-worst penalty kill in the league. How many times has the Senators’ penalty kill unit left the backdoor wide open? Allowing even one goal down the man-advantage sometimes means zero points on the standings table.
Look at Dmitri Voronkov and Ryan Hartman’s goals in successive games when Ottawa’s diamond formation was picked apart for easy tap-ins.
If the penalty kill doesn’t improve, the Senators’ pathway to the playoffs may be moot.
Mind you, goaltending hasn’t helped the penalty killing or the results.
The Senators have been “goalied” of late: Wallstedt made 33 saves on Saturday in Minnesota, saving 2.49 goals above expected. The Senators, by contrast, have the worst save percentage in the NHL at .871.
They’ve consistently had the second-best goalie on the ice, whether it’s Linus Ullmark or Leevi Merilainen. The Senators are fourth with an expected goals allowed rate of 2.87 per 60 minutes, yet they’ve allowed 3.24 goals per game.
Remember when the 2023-24 Ottawa Senators had the worst team save percentage in the league? How did they do?… Ottawa may be the ultimate goalie graveyard.
It also doesn’t help when a defensive pairing is struggling mightily. That’s been the case with Tyler Kleven and Jordan Spence, who have been drowning in an elevated second-pair role since Thomas Chabot has been out with an injury. Against New Jersey, three of the goals allowed were a direct result of a turnover by this pair. Then against the Wild, Kleven’s turnover led straight to Minnesota’s winning goal with 22 seconds to play. Analytically, both have been fine, but major mistakes have plagued them. They look overwhelmed playing against second-pair competition and it led to Green splitting the two up against Minnesota at times.
Chabot cannot return to the lineup soon enough.
The defensive prowess that allowed the Senators to be tied for the most shutouts in the league last season has evaporated due to poor penalty killing, poor performances, and poor goaltending. The Senators have allowed one or fewer goals this season three times through 31 games with no shutouts. Meanwhile, Ottawa has allowed the opening goal 19 times this season, tied for the third-worst in the league.
It’s too easy to ask what if? But if the Senators replayed the last eight games they’d probably have a record above .500 nine times out of 10. They outshot teams 245-211, had an advantage in high-danger chances of 114 to 81 and rank fifth in expected goals over that time period.
It’s not that the Senators have been brutal of late, but they are losing the narrow margins enough to lead to brutal outcomes. The Senators could easily go on a reverse 6-2-0 streak with a few adjustments but it’s up to them to turn moral victories into winning streaks. Otherwise, all the goodwill from last season’s playoff appearance will be lost with another season ending after 82 games.
Adams’ Apples
Senators owner Michael Andlauer spoke about the project at LeBreton Flats on the Coming in Hot Podcast Saturday.
“There’s no doubt I can’t fund this by myself,” Andlauer said. “We have one chance to do this right.
“We have to make sure that we cross the T’s and dot the I’s…At the end of the day, I want everybody in the same room. If we all want this, we will do what’s right.”
The owner said there is no timeline on the arena but he doesn’t expect it to open in the next three years. The Senators signed an agreement of purchase and sale for land parcels totalling approximately 11 acres at LeBreton Flats this summer with the National Capital Commission. The Senators have hired StrategyCorp. Inc. to lobby the provincial and federal governments to help fund the project. The questions that await a downtown arena are: Who will pay for the downtown arena? And how?
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Sunday, 14 December 2025
Premier League Roundup: Man City, Aston Villa earn key victories
MANCHESTER, England — Manchester City and Aston Villa kept the pressure on Premier League leader Arsenal with wins on Sunday.
Nottingham Forest pulled further away from the relegation zone with a 3-0 against Tottenham and Sunderland beat Newcastle 1-0 in the Tyne-Wear derby after an own goal from Nick Woltemade.
Arsenal had extended its lead at the top of the standings to five points with a 2-1 win against Wolves on Saturday. But a day later its closest rivals both responded with victories – second-place City winning 3-0 at Crystal Palace and Villa, in third, twice coming back to beat West Ham 3-2 at the London Stadium.
City is two points behind Arsenal and Villa is a point further back.
Revenge for City
Beaten by Palace in the FA Cup final last season, City exacted some revenge to take all three points at Selhurst Park.
Erling Haaland scored his 101st Premier League goal to put City in front late in the first half and he got his second of the match with an 89th-minute penalty. The Norwegian has 36 goals in 27 appearances for club and country in another remarkable scoring season. He is the league’s leading scorer with 17 goals.
Phil Foden got City’s other goal in between Haaland’s double.
Rogers leads Villa fightback
Morgan Rogers scored twice in the second half to extend Aston Villa’s winning run to nine-straight games and keep Unai Emery’s team on the heels of Arsenal and City.
Villa has lost just one of its last 13 games in the league and won 10 of its last 11, but twice had to come from behind at relegation fighting West Ham.
Mateus Fernandes scored the fastest goal in England’s top flight this season when putting the home team 1-0 up after just 29 seconds. But Konstantinos Mavropanos’ own goal leveled the game eight minutes later.
Jarrod Bowen then gave West Ham the lead at halftime with his second goal in as many games in the 24th.
Rogers levelled the game again five minutes after the break and struck the winner in the 79th.
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Saturday, 13 December 2025
Devils’ Simon Nemec out vs. Ducks with undisclosed injury
The New Jersey Devils continue to get banged up, particularly on the right side of the blue line.
Already without Brett Pesce and Johnathan Kovacevic, the team will also be down blue-liner Simon Nemec for Saturday’s game against the Ducks, head coach Sheldon Keefe announced.
Dennis Cholowski is slated to step in on the third pair for Nemec.
Nemec was hurt in practice on Friday and is expected to miss time. “It’s not day-to-day,” said Keefe, per the team’s reporter Amanda Stein.
Nemec, 21, has enjoyed his best season so far in his young NHL career. Through 31 games, he’s posted seven goals and 11 assists while averaging just over 20 minutes of ice time a night.
The 2022 second-overall pick is just one point shy of matching his career-best point total of 19, which he set during the 2023-24 campaign.
Over his career, Nemec logged 41 points (12 goals, 29 assists) in 118 games.
New Jersey also announced on Saturday that forward Timo Meier was placed on the non-roster list on personal leave, while Calen Addison was recalled from Utica of the AHL.
Addison, a 25-year-old right-shot defenceman, last played in the NHL during the 2023-24 season. In total, he’s recorded 50 points (six goals, 44 assists) in 152 games.
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