The Ted Lindsay Award is presented annually to the “most outstanding player” in the NHL, as voted on by fellow members of the National Hockey League Players’ Association.
For the 2024–25 season, the three finalists for the award are Colorado Avalanche centre Nathan MacKinnon, his teammate defenceman Cale Makar, and Tampa Bay Lightning winger Nikita Kucherov, as announced by the league on Wednesday.
MacKinnon, who won the award last season, finished second in the league in points with 116 and tied for first in assists with 84.
Kucherov, also a finalist last year and the award’s winner in 2019, led the league with 121 points and tied with MacKinnon for the league lead in assists.
Makar, a first-time Ted Lindsay finalist, led all defencemen this season in points (92), goals (30) and assists (62). His point and goal totals were also both good for eighth overall in the league. He is a finalist for the Norris Trophy as well.
The winner will be announced at the NHL award show, which will take place in June, with an exact date yet to be announced.
INDIANAPOLIS — Tyrese Haliburton thought he let the Indiana Pacers down in the fourth quarter.
Turns out, he was just warming up for one of the most memorable finishes in franchise history.
Indiana forced two turnovers in the final 29 seconds of overtime, and Haliburton blew past Giannis Antetokounmpo for the go-ahead layup with 1.3 seconds left to close an 8-0 run that sent the Pacers past the Milwaukee Bucks 119-118 on Tuesday night for a 4-1 series victory.
“This one will go down as one of the all-time great Pacers wins because of the circumstances, because of what was on the line,” coach Rick Carlisle said. “Ty, obviously, authored a big part of this ending. So congratulations to him.”
The Pacers will face top-seeded Cleveland in the Eastern Conference semifinals. Game 1 is Sunday.
Haliburton finished with 26 points and 10 assists as he improved to 9-0 in home playoff games. But after missing some open shots and a layup late in regulation, Haliburton needed his teammates’ support to help the Pacers steal another series from Milwaukee.
Antetokounmpo tried to will his short-handed Bucks to victory, finishing with 30 points, 20 rebounds and 13 assists. Gary Trent Jr. had 33 points and made four of his eight 3-pointers in overtime, but he also committed the two game-changing turnovers late in OT, and his full-court heave at the buzzer was nowhere close.
The Bucks have lost three consecutive first-round playoff series, the last two to Indiana, and this increasingly chippy rivalry ended fittingly with a shoving match between the teams at midcourt. Haliburton’s father, John, sparked the fracas when he ran onto the court and started talking to Antetokounmpo.
Haliburton didn’t even realize what happened because he was celebrating on top of the scorer’s table, his arms raised, exhorting the sellout crowd wearing yellow T-shirts to scream even louder — just like former Pacers great Reggie Miller.
“I got a little down about it,” Haliburton said, referring to his misses late in regulation. “But my teammates encouraged me to stay with it. They said we would get a chance to win at the end, they would rely on me to do that.”
He delivered.
But it wasn’t just Haliburton.
Andrew Nembhard set up the decisive run by making a 3-pointer to cut a seven-point deficit to 118-114 with 34.1 seconds left. Nembhard then stole Trent’s inbound pass with 29 seconds left near the sideline to set up Haliburton’s three-point play that got Indiana within 118-117.
Then, with the Pacers pressuring the ball and the Bucks scrambling, Trent fumbled a long pass out of bounds with 10.8 seconds left to set up Haliburton’s go-ahead layup.
“I thought the turnovers obviously were huge,” Bucks coach Doc Rivers said. “Two of the three were really unforced. But I thought we had two huge defensive mistakes that we made. We came out of the timeout with a foul to give. We were supposed to use it. Didn’t use it. Those are the things that just kill you.”
Myles Turner had 21 points and nine rebounds while Aaron Nesmith added 19 points and 12 rebounds for the Pacers.
In an effort to avoid a third straight first-round exit, Rivers plugged guards AJ Green and Kevin Porter Jr. and forward Bobby Portis Jr. into the starting lineup. The Bucks were missing 10-time All-Star Damian Lillard, who tore his left Achilles tendon in Game 4 on Sunday night.
All five starters scored in double figures for Milwaukee.
“I’m not going to do this,” Antetokounmpo said when asked if he thought he could win a second NBA title in Milwaukee. “Whatever I say, I know how it’s going to translate. I wish I was still playing. I wish I was still like competing and going back out there.”
“Do you think that you can still win that second championship here in Milwaukee after a third straight first-round exit?”
The question came after the Bucks’ season ended in Indianapolis on Tuesday night. Antetokounmpo is surely asking himself the same question right about now.
Antetokounmpo didn’t have a public answer for it following the 119-118 overtime, season-ending loss in Game 5 of Round 1 against Indiana. He probably doesn’t have a private answer to it, either. But he needs that answer sometime over the coming days or weeks, because he is now officially at the crossroads that plenty of superstars have reached over the years.
Stay or go?
Yes, a fair question — though it’s not really Antetokounmpo’s decision. He’s under contract to the Bucks for multiple seasons. Even if he asks for a trade, they don’t have to accommodate him.
It could be great for Antetokounmpo; he’d pick a new spot and that team would instantly be considered a title contender. It could be great for the Bucks; most teams after years of contending have to hit the reset button at some point anyway, and they could get a haul of players and picks to begin anew.
“I’m not going to do this. I’m not going to do this,” Antetokounmpo said in response to the question. “I know … whatever I say, I know how it’s going to translate. I don’t know, man. I wish I was still playing. I wish I was still competing and going back to Milwaukee. I don’t know.”
Here’s what might figure into the answer, whenever the time comes to formulate the real one: His place in Milwaukee lore is secure, he’s brought an NBA championship to the city, he won’t have Damian Lillard for much if not all of next season because of Lillard’s torn Achilles, his team just got eliminated in the first round for the third consecutive season and the Bucks aren’t exactly loaded with draft picks or easy ways to bolster their roster.
Antetokounmpo is in his prime. He’s about to finish in the top four of the voting for the NBA MVP award — a trophy he’s won twice — for the seventh consecutive year. He just averaged 30 points per game for the third year in a row, and if he had scored eight more measly points in the 2021-22 season it’d be four straight years of doing that. He just averaged at least 25 points and 10 rebounds for the eighth straight season; only Shaquille O’Neal, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Karl Malone have more such seasons.
Antetokounmpo will want more, whether he’s in Milwaukee or elsewhere.
“There’s a lot of times that life has made me sad or frustrated since I was a kid. I never gave up,” Antetokounmpo said. “You know, I always try to find solutions in my life. I think it translates to the basketball court. I always try to, even though things might not happen the way I want it to happen. I always have class, and I have this optimistic mentality of coming back, keep on working. And there’s going to be a day that’s it going to be your turn.”
Moving someone with two years and $113 million left on his contract — not to mention a player option that could extend it by another year and tack $63 million more onto the bill — will be difficult. And players don’t always get traded where they want to go; the obvious case in point there is when Lillard wanted to be traded by Portland to Miami and wound up in Milwaukee instead.
But if it’s what he wants, teams will jump at the chance to make it happen.
“Giannis is one of one,” Bucks coach Doc Rivers said. “I think, unfortunately for all the voters, they’re tired of voting for him for stuff. But he had every bit of an MVP season this year. What I’m most proud of is he has turned into a leader. I’m not just talking about on the floor, but off the floor.”
Antetokounmpo has received tons of praise in recent years for the way he has sometimes given long, well-thought-out, from-the-heart answers to important questions in postgame news conferences. He handled a question about the postgame fracas that involved Indiana star Tyrese Haliburton’s father essentially taunting Antetokounmpo on the court seconds after the final buzzer with his traditional grace and charm. It wasn’t the first time Antetokounmpo found the right words in an important moment.
Another important moment is here. Another big question. Stay or go?
Bo Bichette will take the field alongside his brother, Dante Jr., for Brazil at the 2026 World Baseball Classic.
It will be the first time he will compete at the main event for his mother, Mariana’s, home country, after Brazil failed to qualify in 2023.
“It means a lot to our whole family that my brothers and I are playing,” Bichette told MLB.com. “We want to do our best to contribute to the team’s victory and draw some attention to Brazilian baseball.”
The son of former major-leaguer Dante Bichette is also eligible to compete for Team USA, but is stuck behind the likes of Bobby Witt Jr., Corey Seager, Trea Turner and Gunnar Henderson.
Bichette is slashing .290/.326/.363 for the Toronto Blue Jays and is an impending free agent come the end of the season.
Dante Jr. was a first-round pick by the New York Yankees in 2011 and represented Brazil during the 2017 qualifiers, also with Bo.
“I want to draw some attention to Brazilian baseball. There are a lot of great players in Brazil, and I hope that one day they will play in the majors.”
The 2026 World Baseball Classic is set to begin on March 5, 2026, and will be hosted in San Juan, Houston, Tokyo and Miami.
Brazil will compete against the United States, Mexico, Italy and Britain in Group B at Daikin Park in Houston.
NEW YORK – Ryan Yarbrough is experienced enough to know better than to take anything for granted, but the 33-year-old lefty felt he was in a good position to break with the Toronto Blue Jays as the end of spring training neared. Though he’d only signed a week into camp, the sides knew each other from two months together at the end of 2024, the club was “super cool” about not making him feel like he had to “go crazy to hit the ground running,” and there seemed to be a need for his versatility with Max Scherzer’s uncertain status.
So when the Blue Jays didn’t add him to the roster Feb. 23, leading to a major-league deal with the New York Yankees a day later, “it was definitely weird,” Yarbrough said, as “I didn’t see myself not being there.”
“I feel like I had a good camp, everything was trending in the right direction, velocity was up from the off-season,” he continued during an interview over the weekend. “And I guess from the front-office side, they just wanted to go in a different direction. I’d envisioned myself, just because of how I did last year with the team and what I brought last year, in a similar role this year. I thought it was a really good fit. I don’t know how it all worked out. But I guess from a guaranteeing standpoint, they didn’t feel that and wanted to go in a different direction.”
What Yarbrough means by “guaranteeing standpoint” is that the Blue Jays wanted him to sign an advanced consent, which would have allowed them to keep him on the roster up to 45 days without guaranteeing the entire $2-million major-league salary called for in his minor-league contract. Doing so would have left him on the roster bubble and there was no need for him to carry such risk when, as it turned out, the Yankees were willing to lock him in for the same $2-million base salary, plus performance incentives.
Even before Scherzer’s first start of the regular season lasted only three innings, leading to an injured-list stint that’s ongoing with no timeline yet for a return, the decision by the Blue Jays appeared risky. His fit on the roster as a swingman-type reliever is more apparent now that the club is again scrambling to cover a rotation vacancy that next comes up Wednesday.
MLB on Sportsnet
Watch the Toronto Blue Jays, Blue Jays Central pre-game, marquee MLB matchups, Jays in 30, original documentaries, the wild card, divisional series, championship series and entire World Series on Sportsnet and Sportsnet+.
Manager John Schneider said Sunday the current approach to filling the opening “is see what other people are doing in terms of starting, maybe rolling through it one more time and then sticking to four (starters for a stretch).”
“I know we do have a lot of off-days, but I think trying to avoid doing the four-man kind of regularly right now would be important,” he added. “So see what Easton Lucas is doing and see what Jake Bloss is doing, Eric Lauer, see how Wednesday goes and kind of go from there.”
None of that is ideal, as the Blue Jays are understandably wary of burdening their veteran workhorse trio of Jose Berrios, Kevin Gausman and Chris Bassitt.
Still, three off-days this month give the Blue Jays an opportunity to be creative in how they roll out the rotation and consider running a partial four-man that would eliminate one outing by the fifth spot through the end of May.
Here are two possible tracks:
Using a partial four-man would mean Berrios, Gausman, Bassitt and Bowden Francis each sacrifice two starts on an additional rest day during that span. Given the Blue Jays’ limited depth, is it worth it, even for a stretch?
Here’s the difference in the two tracks for each starter:
Whatever they decide, they need to settle on a starter for Wednesday.
Old friend Casey Lawrence, who made 10 appearances over two previous stints with the Blue Jays in 2017 and 2022, was claimed off waivers from the Mariners on Monday and is a new option. The 37-year-old went five innings on April 25 against Miami, allowing eight runs but only two earned, while throwing 83 pitches, leaving him on turn for Wednesday.
Lauer is also on turn and he’s coming off five shutout innings with five strikeouts for triple-A Buffalo against Rochester on Thursday. While he isn’t on the 40-man roster, the Blue Jays opened a spot Sunday when they transferred Ryan Burr to the 60-day IL, so no issue there.
Bloss, after three shaky starts to open the season, has had consecutive solid outings, following up a 4.2-shutout inning, seven-strikeout performance with 4.1 shutout innings and five strikeouts in Sunday’s 2-0 win over Rochester.
Lucas, optioned after two electric starts followed by two rough ones for the Blue Jays while covering for Scherzer, walked four and allowed two runs in 5.1 innings in his first outing back with Buffalo last week.
Scherzer, meanwhile, got back up on a mound over the weekend in New York but cautioned that though his progress was positive, he’d only taken “baby steps” forward and is unsure what will happen as he begins to rebuild volume.
All of which adds up to no clear answers, underlining how well Yarbrough, who’s logged 11.2 innings over seven outings with a 5.40 ERA for the Yankees so far, could help fill the current void, the way he and others envisioned back in the spring.
“It was a little strange because from a player standpoint and a coaching-staff standpoint, you understood where I fit in and how I helped,” said Yarbrough. “They told me when I did the offer, ‘We’re going to take it down to the deadline,’ because they had other stuff they had to go through and figure out with other roster positions. And it just literally came down to the wire. They told me 9:30 that morning. …
“Luckily I found something really quick and it’s been it’s been good over here.”
SAN FRANCISCO — With Jimmy Butler’s tailbone still hurting at the end, he came through in remarkable fashion and in every which way despite all the pain.
The Golden State star returned from a one-game absence and rejoined the starting lineup Monday night for a 109-106 Game 4 Warriors victory in their first-round series against the Houston Rockets, limping at times as he led his team one win away from advancing to the Western Conference semifinals.
“More than anything I just wanted to play. This is the best time of the year for everybody, this is why you go through what you go through,” Butler said. “So to be able to miss a game, I don’t like it, but I’m back, I’m back in a big way.”
Butler contributed 27 points, six assists, five rebounds, blocked a shot and converted all 12 of his free throws while playing 40 minutes, less than a week after he sustained a pelvic contusion in a frightening fall early in Game 2 last Wednesday.
“Tonight was great. He played through the injury, it was beautiful,” teammate Draymond Green said. “But it’s just his presence. What his presence does for this team is humongous. The first three quarters, he couldn’t move. Not sure how he started moving in the fourth quarter, but first three quarters he couldn’t move. Yet he never complained. He stuck with it.”
Butler participated in the morning shootaround earlier in the day and just needed to have a successful warmup to be deemed good to go.
“I thought it was winning time,” Butler said of his play down the stretch, thrilled he began to “move a little bit better.”
Butler played just more than five minutes during his initial stretch and nearly 18 minutes by halftime in a heated game delayed twice in the second quarter by skirmishes that featured four technical fouls and a flagrant 1.
On Sunday, when Butler spent much of the day working with the medical staff, Kerr said Vice President of Player Health and Performance Rick Celebrini couldn’t predict how many minutes Butler’s body might be able to handle until he’s actually back out on the floor in live action.
He said he’s still in “a lot of pain, I’m not going to lie to you.”
“It’s a good pain when it’s all toward winning. I feel like they got me here to help do something special and if I’m out there on the floor I’m expected to produce and help win, so I’m glad I was able to do that tonight,” he said. “… Today I woke up and I was good enough so I was able to go out there and compete.”
The star forward underwent an MRI exam on Thursday in the Bay Area that revealed he injured his pelvis and has a deep gluteal muscle contusion. The Warriors lead the best-of-seven series 3-1 and can clinch the first round when the series resumes Wednesday in Houston.
Golden State won 104-93 on Saturday without Butler. With Butler back, Kerr hoped to be able to rest Curry more regularly — but he still played 39 minutes.
Butler went down hard when fouled by Amen Thompson late in the first quarter and then missed the rest of the Warriors’ 109-94 Game 2 loss Wednesday.
Butler tried to secure a rebound when Thompson undercut him and sent the Warriors star’s feet high into the air so that he came down straight onto his tailbone. Both players thudded to the floor and Butler grimaced in pain grabbing at his backside. He stayed in briefly to shoot two free throws before going to the locker room.
In the Game 1 win against the Rockets, he had 25 points on 10-for-19 shooting, seven rebounds, six assists and five steals in 42 minutes of action. The Warriors are 27-9 since Butler made his debut at Chicago on Feb. 8, including 23-8 in the regular season, a play-in tournament win over Memphis and the games facing Houston.
The Warriors know how much they will need Butler if they want to make a deep postseason run.
“We had to have him. If this were the regular season he’d probably miss another week or two,” coach Steve Kerr said. “But it’s the playoffs, he’s Jimmy Butler, so this is what he does. The rebound at the end was just incredible, the elevation, the force then of course knocking down the free throws to clinch it. Jimmy was just amazing.”
What is the difference between the World Series favourite Los Angeles Dodgers and the tied-for-last-place in the National League East Miami Marlins? It turns out, about $406 million.
The Marlins head to Chavez Ravine Monday to kick off a three-game set against the Dodgers, for a matchup of what is considered to be the largest payroll gap in modern MLB history.
The Dodgers will dole out $325.9 million in salary this season — as calculated by MLB’s labour relations department — resulting in an estimated competitive balance tax bill of over $150 million, bringing their grand total to $476 million.
A stark contrast to the $69.1 million in guaranteed money Miami has committed to its roster.
The series is a perfect depiction of the vast disparity in financial might that exists between the big-market clubs at the top of baseball’s financial scale and those at the bottom, whose lack of resources (or unwillingness to use them) necessitate a drastically different approach to team building.
To get a better idea of how much this gap has grown and just how large it has become, we’ll take a by-the-numbers look at MLB’s biggest spenders in contrast with its most frugal clubs.
Payroll
Major League Baseball first attempted to address the growing divide between the highest and lowest spending franchises by instituting the Commissioner’s Blue Ribbon Panel on Baseball Economics after the 1999 season.
The stated goal of the panel was to come out with a report examining “the question of whether baseball’s current economic system has created a problem of competitive imbalance in the game.”
At the time, the New York Yankees paced the majors with an $88.1 million payroll, 72.9 million more than the last placed Florida Marlins at $15.2 million.
Fast forward to the present day, and it’s clear that despite modifications to MLB’s collective bargaining agreement over the years in an attempt to create more competitive balance, this gulf has only grown.
Year
Highest payroll team
Amount
Lowest payroll team
Amount
Difference
2024
Dodgers
$456 million
Athletics
$83.9 million
$372.1 million
2023
Mets
$475.5 million
Athletics
$81.8 million
$393.7 million
2022
Mets
$330.6 million
Athletics
$65.3 million
$265.3 million
2021
Dodgers
$318.2 million
Pirates
$61.8 million
$256.4 million
2020
Yankees
$239.8 million
Pirates
$69.8 million
$170 million
Data provided by Spotrac
First implemented in 2003, the competitive balance tax thresholds mean that big-budget teams have to pay for exceeding a predetermined payroll threshold. There are also additional surcharge thresholds and increasing penalties for each consecutive year a team exceeds the tax line.
Yet, this has done little to deter baseball’s high-rollers from pushing the envelope each successive season, with Steve Cohen’s New York Mets and Mark Walter’s Dodgers exceeding the superfluous spending seen by the Yankees through the 2000s and 2010s.
With the measures in place having done little to change results, commissioner Rob Manfred has publicly addressed MLB’s “massive disparity problem” with both the New York Times and discussed the possibility of a salary cap on FS1’s “The Herd.”
Attendance
While national and local media revenue make up a large portion of an MLB team’s cash flow, research from Sportico done in 2024 indicated that ticket sales were still the leading revenue stream at 31 per cent.
There is a strong correlation between spending and ticket sales, particularly when it comes to the bottom end of the spectrum, with the Athletics finishing last in both categories for three straight seasons.
Meanwhile, at the other end, the Dodgers have led in ticket sales and have been top five in payroll for five consecutive years. (Omitting the 2020 COVID-19-affected season, as there were no ticket sales).
Year
Highest payroll team
Average attendance
Lowest payroll team
Average attendance
2024
Dodgers
48,657 (1st)
Athletics
11,528 (30th)
2023
Mets
32,994 (11th)
Athletics
10,275 (30th)
2022
Mets
33,308 (6th)
Athletics
9,973 (30th)
2021
Dodgers
34,625 (1st)
Pirates
10,611 (25th)
2019
Boston
36,106 (7th)
Pirates
18,412 (27th)
Data provided by MLB attendance reports
So far this season, the Dodgers are pacing MLB in ticket sales yet again at a staggering average attendance of 52,174 per game. The Marlins sit 28th with 12,027 and have recorded eight games with four-digit crowds.
The best way to fill seats is by fielding a competitive product for fans to enjoy. So, will spending a fortune on personnel guarantee success and a return on investment?
On-field performance
As evidenced by the Dodgers, Yankees and Mets, and the Athletics, Pirates and Marlins, there appears to be a relationship between spending a lot of money on players, filling seats in the ballpark and winning games.
However, there are exceptions. The Tampa Bay Rays stand out as a modern example of a team that has eschewed this trend, finishing bottom 10 in payroll in each of the last five years while accumulating 419 wins, fourth-most in the majors, and a World Series appearance.
The 2023 Mets shattered baseball’s previous payroll record and proceeded to flounder, leading to them offloading the expiring deals of future Hall of Famers Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander at the trade deadline.
Year
Highest payroll team
Record
Lowest payroll team
Record
2024
Dodgers
98-64
Athletics
69-93
2023
Mets
75-87
Athletics
50-112
2022
Mets
101-61
Athletics
60-102
2021
Dodgers
106-56
Pirates
61-101
2020
Yankees
33-27*
Pirates
19-41*
But these big market behemoths aren’t leaving anything to chance. A losing season and missed playoff opportunity despite a gargantuan payroll certainly didn’t discourage the Mets from shelling out $765 million over 15 years to Juan Soto this past summer for the largest contract in sports history.
The Dodgers gave out $450 million in guaranteed money this past off-season, causing even Hal Steinbrenner to remark that it’s “difficult” to keep up with them.
At the same time, the Marlins are primed to potentially trade away one-third of their MLB low $69.1 million payroll if they opt to deal starter Sandy Alcántara ahead of this season’s trade deadline.
Doing so would only continue to widen the ever-growing chasm between baseball’s highest and lowest spenders.
