Struggling Edmonton Elks to review ownership structure

EDMONTON — Edmonton’s CFL team has struck a committee to review its ownership structure.

The goal of the five-person committee is to ensure professional football continues to thrive in northern Alberta, the Elks said Thursday in a statement.

Elks interim president and chief executive officer Rick LeLacheur, who serves on the committee as a non-voting member, said the “club’s financial struggles over the last several seasons can’t be overlooked.”

“The impacts of the COVID pandemic, football operations decisions, and subsequent struggles on the field have all contributed to a difficult financial situation,” he said.

The committee includes board members Tom Richards, Brent Hesje and Darryl Boessenkool, along with previous board members Diane Brickner and Bruce Bentley, who serves as chair.

The team had an operating loss of $3.3 million in 2022, which was the fourth straight year the community-owned club ran a deficit.

LeLacheur said he’s confident the Elks will operate in 2024, but new investment is needed for the future.

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What U.S. Thanksgiving standings tell us about 2023-24 NHL playoff hopes

It’s American Thanksgiving. Do you know where your team sits in the playoff race?

As most hockey fans know, the U.S. holiday — which comes about a quarter of the way into the NHL season — has long been an unofficial marker against which we can gauge a franchise’s post-season hopes. And as history tells us, it’s pretty accurate.

Of the 240 teams to find themselves in a playoff spot on U.S. Thanksgiving since the 2005-06 season*, 184 have gone on to make the post-season the following spring. That’s a 76.7 per cent success rate. Of the 56 teams that fell out of the picture after the Thanksgiving milestone, 31 were hovering within a single point of the final wild-card berth. Just two teams in the salary-cap era have found themselves outside the playoffs after sitting ahead of the final berth by 10 or more points.

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(*This statistic does not include the 2019-20 or 2020-21 seasons, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.)

So, what can we learn from the 2023 Thanksgiving playoff picture? With an assist from Sportsnet Stats, here’s a snapshot of where things stand, and some context based on previous years to help inform what it means.

EASTERN CONFERENCE PLAYOFF PICTURE AT 2023 U.S. THANKSGIVING

Here’s what the Eastern Conference looks like as of Thursday morning:

Ten points separate the conference-leading Boston Bruins and the wild-card Detroit Red Wings, who sit in the final playoff spot, while all eight teams not in the playoff picture on Thursday are within just seven points. We could be in for another fun wild-card race.

The Philadelphia Flyers bring the biggest surprise in the first quarter of the season, far outplaying expectations and tiptoeing the line separating playoff teams from non-playoff teams, while the New Jersey Devils and New York Islanders — both of whom were post-season teams last spring — have struggled to keep pace.

What about teams that fall?

Since 2005-06, 26 teams have failed to make the playoffs after being in a playoff spot by two or more points at U.S. Thanksgiving. Predictably, the vast majority of those clubs were four or fewer points ahead of the last playoff spot — but there are a few exceptions.

Most recently, in 2017-18, the St. Louis Blues had a 10-point cushion between themselves and the final playoff spot (but finished the season outside the picture). That marked the second time in three years that a team dropped double-digit points after the 2015-16 Montreal Canadiens fell out of contention after building up an 11-point lead above the last-place playoff team at the time.

WESTERN CONFERENCE PLAYOFF PICTURE AT 2023 U.S. THANKSGIVING

Here’s what the Western Conference looks like as of Thursday morning:

The most pressing question in the West is, can the Edmonton Oilers climb back into contention? Nothing has gone to plan for the club, who now find themselves 10 points behind the Seattle Kraken for the second wild-card spot.

The Oilers are no stranger to being left in the cold at Thanksgiving, only to make a run — just last year, they sat at .500 after 20 games as of the U.S. holiday, but didn’t have much ground to make up, matching the Blues’ 20 points in the second wild-card spot at the time. This year tells a much different story at this point of the season.

Thanksgiving-rule odds are stacked heavily against them, but a 10-point climb has been done before — albeit, it’s been a while …

Looking at historic outliers to the Thanksgiving rule

On Thanksgiving morning 1959, the Chicago Black Hawks woke up 10 points behind the final playoff spot. By the following spring, they’d rallied their way into the post-season. Still, 64 years later, that climb to the playoffs remains the steepest in the NHL, matched only by the 1970-71 Toronto Maple Leafs.

Of course, it’s gotten a lot harder to make the playoffs since then, with league growth over the decades and parity at an all-time high in today’s game with only half of teams making the cut.

So, let’s look at a more recent climb to contention: In the past decade, the 2013-14 Dallas Stars hold the record for the biggest point deficit overcome to make the playoffs — they were eight points back of a playoff spot on Thanksgiving Day 2013 and finished the campaign in the second wild-card spot.

Playoff success among Thanksgiving outliers

As for what happens when these Thanksgiving-rule outliers enter the playoff bracket, let’s take a look at the past decade. Over the course of eight full seasons in the past 10 years — we’re not including 2019-20 or 2020-21 — we saw a total of 30 teams make the playoffs after being outside the picture at Thanksgiving, with at least three teams jumping into the picture from outside each season.

Of those 30 squads, nine made it past Round 1, five made it to the conference final, and two advanced to the Stanley Cup Final. The ultimate success story of the last decade was the 2018-19 St. Louis Blues, who one year earlier had fallen out of the playoff picture after being in the race on Thanksgiving 2017. Before their incredible run from the league’s basement all the way up to the top of the hockey world in the spring of 2019, they’d found themselves seven points behind the second wild-card team (Dallas) at the time of Thanksgiving 2018.

Most recently, we watched as the Florida Panthers streaked from the second wild-card spot to the Stanley Cup Final, where they lost to the Vegas Golden Knights. As of Thanksgiving 2022, they’d been just one point behind that second wild-card spot in a tight Eastern Conference.

So, as is tradition, the biggest question around the NHL’s Thanksgiving table is this: Who will make a run this year?

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Celtic fined by UEFA after fans fly Palestinian flags

NYON, Switzerland — The display of hundreds of Palestinian flags at a Champions League game by fans of Scottish club Celtic cost the team a fine of 17,500 euros (US$19,000), UEFA said Wednesday.

The fans of the Scottish champions have long publicly supported the Palestinian cause and defied requests from the club not to do so on Oct. 25 when the team hosted Atletico Madrid.

UEFA charged Celtic for a “provocative message of an offensive nature” inside the stadium.

Celtic was fined 20,000 euros ($21,700) by UEFA for the same charge at its previous Champions League home game against Italian club Lazio on Oct. 4. At that time, Celtic fans showed an anti-fascist display with an image of Benito Mussolini, the World War II-era Italian dictator, and a slogan using an expletive.

Also Wednesday, UEFA added fines totaling 11,500 euros ($12,500) for fans lighting fireworks and blocking exit passages at the game against Atletico.

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Braves sign RHP Reynaldo Lopez to three-year, $30 million deal

The Atlanta Braves announced on Monday that they’ve signed right-handed pitcher Reynaldo Lopéz to a three-year, $30 million deal.

Lopéz, 29, joins his fifth MLB team ahead of his ninth season and is set to $4 million in 2024, and $11 million in the following two seasons, with a $8 million club option or $4 million buyout for 2027.

In 2023, the Dominican-born pitcher logged a 3-7 record with a 3.27 ERA over 68 appearances between the Chicago White Sox, Los Angeles Angels, and Cleveland Guardians. Lopéz also collected six saves while striking out 83 batters over 66 innings of work.

López has a 39-49 record and a 4.32 ERA in eight seasons. He has made 97 career starts but has made only one start since 2021 and worked only in relief last season.

— With files from The Associated Press

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Pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto officially posted, to become free agent Tuesday

NEW YORK — Yoshinobu Yamamoto will become a free agent Tuesday and major league teams can sign him through 5 p.m. ET on Jan. 4.

Nippon Professional Baseball notified Major League Baseball that the 25-year-old right-hander’s club, the Orix Buffaloes, was posting him for availability to MLB teams. MLB notified the 30 teams of the posting on Monday, and under the agreement between MLB and NPB the negotiating period starts at 8 a.m. Tuesday and extends for up to 45 days.

Yamamoto was 16-6 with a 1.21 ERA this season, striking out 169 and walking 28 in 164 innings, and has a 70-29 record with 1.82 ERA in seven seasons with Orix. He struck out a Japan Series record 14 in a Game 6 win over Hanshin on Nov. 5, throwing a 138-pitch complete game. Orix went on to lose Game 7.

He pitched his second career no-hitter, the 100th no-hitter in Japanese big league history, on Sept. 9 for the Buffaloes against the Lotte Marines. The game, watched by MLB executives that included New York Yankees general manager Brian Cashman, extended his scoreless streak to 42 innings.

A two-time Pacific League MVP, Yamamoto also pitched a no-hitter against the Seibu Lions on June 18 last year. His fastball averaged 95 mph and topped out at 96.6 mph in Japan’s semifinal win over Mexico in the World Baseball Classic in March. He threw 20 fastballs, 19 splitters, six curveballs, six cutters, and one slider in a 3 1/3 inning relief outing. Batters swung at 11 of his splitters and missed four.

Following hard-throwing sensation 21-year-old sensation Rōki Sasaki, Yamamoto gave up two runs and three hits in 3 1/3 innings with four strikeouts and two walks, allowing Alex Verdugo’s RBI double. Yamamoto was charged with a second run when Isaac Paredes hit an RBI single off Atsuki Yuasa.

Under the MLB-NPB agreement, the posting fee will be 20% of the first $25 million of a major league contract, including earned bonuses and options. The percentage drops to 17.5% of the next $25 million and 15% of any amount over $50 million. There would be a supplemental fee of 15% of any earned bonuses, salary escalators, and exercised options.

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Weekend Takeaways: Panthers showing no signs of regression, Blue Jackets turmoil

It sort of felt like the Florida Panthers were set up to fail.

Coming off an appearance in the Stanley Cup Final, the Panthers began the season knowing their top two defencemen would be shelved for a while. The short summer surely also meant that several players were not in peak training camp form following the quick turnaround from having your dreams dashed versus Vegas in mid-June to trying to get cranked back up again for a new season in September.

It’s a taxing task.

The extremely early returns were not great, as Florida dropped its first two games out of the gate. But after Friday’s 2-1 victory over the Ducks in Anaheim, the Cats are 11-3-1 since Game 3 of the season and have given the middle claw to anyone — guilty party, right here — who thought they might be hard-pressed to validate their status as the defending Eastern Conference champions.

Best of all, Brandon Montour and Aaron Ekblad — the stud D-men who were both waylaid by shoulder surgery — returned to the lineup in the win over Anaheim. Montour eased back in with a light night led the team with 24:02 of ice, while Ekblad also skated just over 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, the player signed partially to help hold the fort while those two were gone, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, scored his fifth goal of the year versus the Ducks. The veteran Swede has been an enormous part of Florida’s early success and figures to continue playing an important role even as he gets bumped down the lineup a bit.

Sam Bennett — limited to just four games this season before Friday because of a pair of injuries — logged his biggest night of the year (18:40) against Anaheim, a sure sign he’s getting back to his old self.

Speaking of Sams, Friday was the rare night Sam Reinhart has been kept off the scoresheet. The 28-year-old has 24 points in 17 outings this year and you could probably win a bar bet by knowing that makes him the top-scoring Canadian forward in the entire league.

(Fellow B.C. boy Cale Makar also has 24 points from the back end.)

There was reason for concern on Friday when captain Aleksander Barkov took a knee-on-knee hit from Jackson LaCombe, but to the unending relief of Panthers supporters coach Paul Maurice said the player and team dodged a bullet and Barkov — who won’t play Monday versus Edmonton — is considered day-to-day.

Hopefully, for Florida’s sake, that means Barkov can get back in the lineup sooner rather than later as the Panthers try to keep the good times rolling. And for what it’s worth, there’s little reason to believe this is a smoke-and-mirrors record as the Cats are one of the top clubs in the NHL by expected goals percentage (54.9 percent) and have the seventh-best five-on-five save percentage (.931) in the league.

Short-term, things look great. Medium-term, maybe they can be an Eastern Conference playoff contender again. Long-term, the Panthers have some things to sort out as both Reinhart and Montour (and a slew of other support players) can hit the market as UFAs in eight months, while Ekblad is eligible in 2025.

Of course, South Florida is a pretty great spot to drop anchor and, these days, your professional existence can be as sunny as the rest of your life playing for the Panthers.

Even when the seas get rough, this team has shown it has the stuff to persevere.

Other Takeaways

• Sunday’s 5-2 win by the Philadelphia Flyers over the tail-spinning Columbus Blue Jackets really punctuated the different plights of these organizations. It felt like everything Daniel Briere did and said since taking over as GM in Philly in May signaled the squad was embarking on a long, bottom-up rebuild. Yet here they are, winners of five straight and — at least for the moment — occupying second place in the Metropolitan Division.

Columbus, meanwhile, has been desperately trying to claw up from the bottom for a couple years and nothing is working. Johnny Gaudreau can’t get going in Ohio and coach Pascal Vincent — after previously benching the likes of Gaudreau and big-time defence acquisition Damon Severson — went full healthy scratch on Patrik Laine versus Philly.

It’s gruesome in Columbus right now, with the club having dropped nine straight outings and posting just a single victory in its past 15 contests. The top-three draft pick the Flyers were likely eying may make its way to a Columbus squad that wanted nothing to do with the basement this season.

• Laine certainly also had an issue or two with his old team, the Winnipeg Jets. Things are pretty sunny in Manitoba right now, though (minus a tough Grey Cup loss on Sunday, of course) as the Jets scored two weekend wins over Buffalo and Arizona and are witnessing a couple guys at different stages of their careers find new gears.

Cole Perfetti opened the scoring on Friday versus the Sabres, making it three straight games with a goal for the 21-year-old and eight straight with a point. While both streaks were snapped 24 hours later versus the Coyotes, Perfetti is clearly finding his sea legs as a second-liner in the NHL.

Kyle Connor, meanwhile, is tied with Auston Matthews for the NHL goal lead after firing his 14^th dart of the season on Saturday. With the likes of Mason Appleton, Nino Niederreiter and Vlad Namestnikov chipping in right now, too, the Jets are getting great production throughout the top 9.

Weekend Warrior

Alex Nedeljkovic might be the best two-way goalie in the game. The 27-year-old began the weekend by firing his second career AHL goal — making him the A’s all-time goalie goal leader — on Friday night in Providence during a conditioning stint appearance with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. Forty-eight hours later, the Ohio native was back up with the big club and making 38 saves to whitewash the Golden Knights in a big 3-0 victory for Pittsburgh.

Red and White Power Rankings

1. Toronto Maple Leafs (10-5-2) It’s Willy’s world — no matter what continent he’s on — we’re just marveling at his play in it. His overtime winner on Sunday against the Wild capped an incredible trip to Sweden that saw him post five points in two outings and join Connor McDavid as the only active NHLers to start a season with at least a point in 17 straight contests.

2. Vancouver Canucks (12-5-1) After Saturday’s 4-3 home loss to Seattle, the Canucks — on a two-game skid now — have allowed 19 goals in their past five outings and have just one regulation-time win in those contests.

3. Winnipeg Jets (10-5-2) Another three points for Mark Scheifele during Saturday’s 5-2 victory over Arizona. After establishing a career high with 42 goals last year, the 30-year-old has 21 points in 17 outings and is on pace to smash his previous points PB of 84.

4. Ottawa Senators (8-7-0) The Sens nudged Minnesota in a shootout on Saturday, completing a much-needed Sweden sweep. They’ve got all week to shake the travel cobwebs out and be ready to build on that success when the Islanders visit Ottawa on Friday. 

5. Calgary Flames (6-8-3) The Flames endured a shootout loss to the Islanders on Saturday, but if you’re looking for some sign of positivity it’s worth pointing out Calgary’s Corsi percentage (53.6) and expected goals percentage (53.3) since Nov. 1 have them firmly inside the top 10 squads in the league during that span.

6. Montreal Canadiens (7-9-2) The Habs have lost four straight after getting drubbed 5-2 in Boston on Saturday. With a four-game west coast road swing ahead, their record might soon reinforce the notion this is very much a rebuilding squad.

7. Edmonton Oilers (5-10-1) Just as it got to the point with former coach Jay Woodcroft where, even if it felt wrong, the Oilers had to do something behind the bench, you wonder if — after losing 6-4 to Tampa on Saturday — Edmonton gets to the same place in the crease. Even if you have to eat it in the transaction, you have to find a goalie who can help the situation.

The Week Ahead

• Thanksgiving week in American means we’ve got two days — Tuesday and Thursday — with zero games, but all kinds of action on Wednesday and Friday. Connor Bedard and the Blackhawks visit Adam Fantilli in Columbus on Wednesday for a must-see rookie showdown.

That same night the Nashville Predators will honour former GM David Poile before hosting the Flames. Poile served as Nashville’s GM for 24 seasons and has a record 1,533 career wins as a general manager during his time in Tennessee and with the Washington Capitals before that.

Wednesday will also mark banger Cal Clutterbuck’s 1,000^th NHL game, as the Isles host Philly.

• There’s lots of afternoon action on Black Friday, including Nylander and the Leafs visiting Bedard and the Hawks. The Preds take on the Blues that day, marking Ryan O’Reilly’s first trip to St. Louis since he was traded away last spring. Meanwhile, the 15-game slate also sees Connor McDavid and the Oilers visit Alex Ovechkin and the Caps, while we get a solid all-California matchup with the Kings in Orange County to tackle the Ducks.

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