Coming back for a knee operation is no easy task; coming back from a second one is even worse. Still, Montreal Canadiens’ center Kirby Dach saw his second rehab as an opportunity to do things the right way. On the first day of on-ice sessions in Brossard on Thursday, he faced the media, implying that he had learned his lesson and worked harder this offseason to be fully ready. Teammate Kaiden Guhle spoke about how he worked out with Dach all summer and how he never took days off or made excuses to skip a day. As the center himself said, he stacked the days.
On Friday morning, the former Chicago Blackhawks third overall pick at the 2019 draft was the first forward on the ice, before the kids, before the guys who were in the AHL and who hope to win a spot this season, Dach was on the ice working on his passing skills with a coach.
When the whistle blew, he took part in all the drills with the pedal to the metal, hustling and battling for every puck. Dach didn’t just say the right things on Thursday; for the last two days, he also did the right things. He’s yet to take part in a scrimmage, but on Friday, his two linemates, Ivan Demidov and Patrik Laine, showed that there was already some chemistry between the two. The way the Russian can dangle with the puck as if it were tied to his stick on an elastic is impressive, and his skating has also improved this offseason. Jeff Gorton said at the end of last season that a winger could drive a line just as well as a center in some cases, and Demidov really looks up to the task.
In past years, Dach was asked to be the driver of the second line. It worked in his first season, and he looked primed for an even better season in year two before he sustained a season-ending injury in the second game of the 2023-24 campaign. Last season, he was slow out of the gate and out of shape, but he still managed to participate in 57 games before the injury struck again. In those 57 games, he put up 22 points and had a minus-29 rating, the worst on the team.
This season, it’s clear that the pressure isn't on him to drive the line or earn the right to center the second line; Martin St-Louis has already said it’s his spot. All Dach has to do is focus on doing things right, and so far, he has. Once he gets to play in a preseason game, he’ll do so with two highly talented players on his wings. There’s no denying that he’s been put in winning conditions as he enters the last year of his contract. Will he be able to convince the organization that he is their second-line center of the future? The answer is unclear, but what’s crystal clear is that the Habs’ brass really wants to be convinced. The ball is in Dach’s hands, and something tells me that he’ll shine with a little bit of help from his friends.
Nicho Hynes spent the week pondering why Cronulla are not given more respect, then helped the Sharks take their biggest step to earn it in the Craig Fitzgibbon era. For the first time since their finest hour – the 2016 premiership season – the Sharks won consecutive finals games by ending the NRL season of Canberra, the minor premiers, with a stunning 32-12 victory on Saturday.
Cronulla had won one of their past nine finals matches before this year and were assumed once again to be making up the numbers as they finished fifth. The bookmakers had them the seventhout of eight to win the premiership before the finals began, despite a good run of form heading into the business end.
Clayton Kershaw will retire at the end of this season, his 18th with the Dodgers. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Congratulations to class act Clayton Kershaw on a great career now that he's decided to retire. Hopefully Kersh goes out on top the way John Elway did in his final season — leading the team to a championship.
Ken Feldman Tarzana
I have been a know-it-all Dodger fan since the late 1950s and after last season I thought, and hoped, Clayton Kershaw would retire. I was wrong.
Paul Burns Granada Hills
I am so happy with Clayton Kershaw's decision to finally retire. Now I hope the Dodgers make the right decision and make him an offer he can't refuse by making him the highest-paid pitching coach of all time, Whom better?
Russell Morgan Carson
Clayton Kershaw’s retirement is bad timing for the Dodgers and manager Dave Roberts. Obviously, they will need three or four starters in the playoffs and Kershaw is now fifth or sixth in the rotation. If Roberts does not use Kershaw, the manager will be called a heel, and if he does start Kershaw and he’s bombed, then Roberts will be considered a bad manager.
Utilizing the pitch count as a preventative measure may or may not work. After all, three lights-out pitching prodigies in Walker Buehler, Dustin May and Tony Gonsolin were on restricted pitch counts. They were lights-out prospects, now they're just out.
It's impossible to predict when an injury will occur. And there may be something to the theory that more pitches will make for stronger arms, provided they have adequate rest between starts.
Ron Brumel West Los Angeles
If the Dodgers manage to get to the World Series this year, it will be in spite of Dave Roberts' obvious incompetence that was fully on display in Tuesday night's game against the Phillies.
Not only won't he let Ohtani pitch more than five innings, despite a low pitch count, but, as he has done on eight other occasions, completely ignores the fact his pitcher was pitching a no-hitter. With his bullpen in shambles, why does he pull his starter so early?
Ken Blake Brea
Finally, Dave Roberts showed confidence in a pitcher and Blake Snell responded. Roberts has spent his whole managerial career pulling pitchers every time they throw high. Pitchers build arm strength by pitching, not by growing splinters on their collective butts.
Steve Trocino Simi Valley
No relief needed
The first two games of the recent series against the Phillies said it all. The Dodger bullpen is a five-alarm fire, an unmitigated disaster, a total catastrophe. I side with the recent letter writer who offered a solution to this mess: a two-starter approach. Please instigate a “no call zone” that covers the Dodger bullpen. For two starters to work the playoffs in a three-game rotation, the team needs six quality arms. We have them: Tyler Glasnow, Clayton Kershaw, Shohei Ohtani, Emmet Sheehan, Blake Snell and Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
Craig Rosen Los Angeles
Most of the time only a four-man pitching rotation is necessary for the MLB playoffs. If the Dodgers make the playoffs, I have a suggestion for their rotation: Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and the combination of Shohei Ohtani and Clayton Kershaw. You would still have Emmet Sheehan for long relief and spot starting for injuries.
Neal Rakov Santa Fe, N.M.
Bill Plaschke’s column on the bullpen brought to light in my mind, a notable quote by the late Howard Cosell. Although I never met the man, “Plaschke tells it like it is.” I’m amazed by the way Bill summarized Dodgers weaknesses.
Patrick Kelley Los Angeles
A fond farewell
There is an obituary in Sunday's sports section. It is about Mike Kupper, written by Mike Kupper.
A few additional things need to be said, because Kupper wouldn’t say them himself.
He was hired because the massive Times sports section during the 1984 Olympics needed a master word editor. Once he arrived, you dared not use “that” when “which” was correct. Restrictive and unrestrictive clauses were mostly interchangeable for the rest of us. Not for Kupper.
His title was senior assistant sports editor. It could have easily been Staff Conscience Editor. We were not allowed shortcuts, lazy phrases, vague sources and insufficient attribution. He made all of us better in a quiet, firm way. When he fixed a story, we remembered how and why and dared not repeat the mistake.
He knew sports, loved its stories, loved writing many of them himself. He covered and wrote about everything. Each story was to the point, accurate, entertaining and without a whiff of the current “look at me” approach of so many writers. His specialty was auto racing. When he arrived at The Times, that specialty was already being handled by Hall-of-Fame auto writer Shav Glick. Without a hint of jealousy, Kupper walked side by side with Glick in the best one-two punch racing journalism has ever seen.
In retirement, he wrote dozens of obituaries, each entertaining and meticulously reported. Today, the one about himself, is the same. Those of us who worked with him would have expected no less.
Bill Dwyre Baltimore, Md.
Conflicted much
It’s amazing that it took a shot of Tom Brady in the coaches booth at the recent Raiders game for most to understand that the NFL and Fox have a serious conflict of interest on their hands. This seemed glaringly apparent from the get-go, but now that it’s finally come to the forefront, it should allow Fox to rectify a wrong when they demoted Greg Olsen in favor of Brady.
Dump Tom and his mediocre broadcasting abilities and bring back Greg and his superb in-game analysis.
Axel Hubert Santa Monica
Lock him up
Dear Chargers,
Can we please lock up defensive coordinator Jesse Minter with a lucrative contract and keep him paired with coach Jim Harbaugh for the long run? Do not let this man out of the building.
Chip Kelly left UCLA in a bad position in February 2024. The coaching carousel had already stopped. DeShaun Foster, who had a nice gig as running backs coach for the Raiders, fell on the grenade that was UCLA football. He probably won’t be remembered for that sacrifice, but he should be.
Hans Ghaffari Encino
The Los Angeles Times welcomes expressions of all views. Letters should be brief and become the property of The Times. They may be edited and republished in any format. Each must include a valid mailing address and telephone number. Pseudonyms will not be used.
Clayton Kershaw acknowledges the crowd after pitching in what might have been his final start at Dodger Stadium during a 6-3 win over the San Francisco Giants on Friday night. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
On the scoreboard in right field, it was 7:08 p.m. in the City of the Angels: Los Angeles, California. And a crowd of 53,037 was just sitting in Friday to see the greatest pitcher of his generation take the mound at Dodger Stadium, perhaps for the final time.
Tonight
We are young
So let’s set the world on fire
We can burn brighter than the sun
The band Fun. released what would become Clayton Kershaw’s signature song on Sept. 20, 2011. That night, he beat Tim Lincecum and the San Francisco Giants 2-1 to become a 20-game winner for the first time, in the year Kershaw would become a Cy Young Award winner for the first time.
If success means leaving someplace better than you found it, Kershaw triumphed spectacularly.
On Friday, the day after Kershaw announced he would retire at season’s end, the Dodgers beat the Giants again. For good measure, the Dodgers clinched a postseason berth for the 13th consecutive season, and with it the chance for Kershaw and Co. to win a third championship in six years.
Fun. broke up 10 years ago. Kershaw played 18 years, all in Dodger blue.
“Eighteen years of memories you can’t just put into words in one night,” Kershaw said, “or feel all the feels that you can possibly feel.”
What distinguishes Kershaw in the pantheon of Dodgers greats is that he was the guiding light through the darkest of times.
“The Dodger culture has been established long before me, and it will be established long after I’m gone,” he said. “That’s the cruel thing about baseball: your career will be gone in an instant, and the game keeps going. But that’s also the beautiful thing about it too.
“This game doesn’t need anybody. I’m so grateful I got to be a small part of Dodger history for as long as I’ve been here.”
In the 1960s, the Dodgers had Koufax, Drysdale and Wills. In the 1970s: Garvey, Lopes, Russell and Cey. In the 1980s: Valenzuela, Hershiser and Gibson. In this run of success: Seager, Bellinger and Turner; and now Ohtani, Freeman and Betts.
In between: Kershaw, a metronome of excellence every fifth day, and not nearly enough else. When he made his major league debut on May 25, 2008, the Dodgers had not won a postseason series in 20 years.
The Dodgers! Twenty years!
That is what can happen when you trade away Pedro Martinez and Mike Piazza, and when Rupert Murdoch buys your team for television content, not championships.
That is what can happen when Frank McCourt buys your team and returns the Dodgers to the league championship series but pays for advice from a Russian physicist who knew next to nothing about baseball but claimed he had “diagnosed the disconnects” in the organization while watching on television and channeling his energy toward improving the team.
That is what can happen when McCourt takes the Dodgers into bankruptcy court to take on Major League Baseball and — three days after Kershaw beat Lincecum for that 20th win — the commissioner’s office threatens to kick the team out of the league.
Those 2011 Dodgers had no chance, outspent by the Minnesota Twins and outdrawn by the Milwaukee Brewers. Kershaw pitched well enough to endure, and Mark Walter and the Dodgers’ current ownership group made sure he did not have to endure Octobers in which he pitched on short rest because the team had little choice.
“It is great that he has been a stalwart,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “He has seen the organization where it was, and there were some lean times 18 years ago.
“To see where we’re at the last 10, 12 years and where we’ve been, he’s been right there in the middle of it.”
Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw delivers against the Giants on Friday night. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
It is easy to glance at the back of Kershaw’s baseball card, or at his Baseball Reference page, and pick whatever statistic you like to illustrate his greatness. He led the league in earned run average four years running. He won the Cy Young award three times and finished in the top five for seven consecutive years.
That might have been the only thing he did not do. His career 2.54 earned-run average is the lower than the career ERA of Cy Young himself. No pitcher in the last 100 years has thrown as many innings with a better ERA.
In his final season, when a 90 mph fastball was a rarity, Kershaw (10-2) still led the Dodgers’ starters in winning percentage. He did not win on Friday, but the Dodgers did.
These Dodgers, unlike the Dodgers of his early years, had superstars to pick him up. After Kershaw left the game in the top of the fifth, with the Dodgers trailing by one run, Ohtani and Betts homered in the bottom of the inning to put the Dodgers ahead to stay.
When a reliever enters the game, Dodger Stadium public address announcer Todd Leitz simply introduces the new pitcher. On Friday, before introducing Edgardo Henriquez, Leitz delivered a proper preface and farewell all in one.
“On in relief,” he said, “of the great Clayton Kershaw.”
Reigning premiers Brisbane will meet Geelong in next Saturday’s AFL grand final after blowing away Collingwood in the last quarter of their preliminary final.
Lachie Neale watch will now be a key feature of grand final week after the Lions kicked away in the last quarter on Saturday at the MCG and won 15.10 (100) to 11.5 (71) before a crowd of 96,033.
