Despite improved showing, Australia fall 48-33 to Les Bleus in Paris
Wallabies make unwanted history with first winless Europe tour in 67 years
Pressure continues to mount on the beleaguered coach Joe Schmidt after the Wallabies ended a disastrous spring tour with a damaging 48-33 loss to France in Paris.
Despite a vastly improved showing after insipid displays against England, Italy and Ireland, the Wallabies have now endured a winless four-Test tour of Europe for the first time since 1958.
For the first time since Nov. 5, the sky in downtown Sacramento is graced with a purple hue that can only mean one thing. The Kings won a basketball game.
Sacramento snapped an eight-game losing streak with a gritty 128-123 comeback win over the Denver Nuggets on Saturday night at Ball Arena, getting a vintage Russell Westbrook performance that was capped off with an exquisite fourth quarter showing against his former team.
Westbrook has 21 points, six rebounds and 11 assists on 9-of-16 shooting, with the majority of those buckets coming down the stretch as Sacramento valiantly stormed back from a 13-point deficit to snag a much-needed victory.
15 of those 21 points came in the fourth quarter, including a timeless sequence that saw Westbrook snag a rebound at one end before racing up the court for a layup. Even at 37 years old, Westbrook’s burst still is among the NBA’s best.
Westbrook’s hustle and effort were on display during a pivotal sequence with just over a minute remaining, battling on the boards with three-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokić, before making the heady decision to throw the ball off his former teammate to ensure Sacramento would gain possession of the ball.
While Westbrook stole the show with his fourth-quarter heroics, the nine-time NBA All-Star was quick credit his teammate’s faith in each other as the key to pulling out a win that ended a couple weeks of basketball misery for the Kings.
“You lean on each other. You don’t look out, you look within,” Westbrook said on “Kings Postgame Live. “You have each other’s back. This is a brotherhood, and I think through all the ups and downs all we have is each other. Going on the road, especially against a championship-caliber team, this is a big win for us.”
Westbrook’s teammates still wasted no time heaping praise on the former NBA MVP.
“How many years has he been in the league? 18? He has been doing this for a long time, nothing surprises me,” Malik Monk told reporters after the win when asked about Westbrook.
Keegan Murray also echoed praise for the 18-year veteran, citing the difficult shots Westbrook drained down the stretch to help secure the win.
“He mad some really tough shots. Obviously he played here last year, so that was big for him,” Murray said. “He’s a super confident guy, been around the block a couple times. It was a big moment for him and it helped us get the win.
Murray dropped in 19 points of his own, and more importantly made his presence felt on the defensive end, an area where the Kings missed him dearly during a prolonged injury absence.
While the win only improves the Kings to 4-13 on the season, it was the first step toward any chance at turning Sacramento’s abysmal start to the season around. The Kings have a chance to continue building momentum on Monday night when they host the Minnesota Timberwolves at Golden 1 Center.
But for now, they can take a moment and enjoy the spoils of victory. A feeling they haven’t been able to cherish for almost three weeks.
“Like I’ve said many times, this league is hard to win in every night,” Westbrook said. “Tonight we fought as a team, this is a big win for us going back home.”
Midfielder has made a big impact at Tottenham but knows upsetting Arsenal is vital to ignite team’s stop-start season
The Premier League’s ball-recovery king wants to zoom out a little, even if the theme does not deviate too far from his stock in trade. This is the thing with João Palhinha, whether in matches or in life. The Tottenham midfielder fights back.
The statistics from his time at Fulham between 2022 and 2024 are telling. The 30-year-old made the most tackles in the league in each season, winning more than anyone else in the first and coming second on the list in season two – one behind Sheffield United’s Vinícius Souza.
For the better part of the season, the Florida Panthers have hung around the bottom of the Atlantic Division standings, despite not being separated by many points.
But, a recent strong stretch with more consistent performances has reintroduced the Panthers back into the division race, and now they sit just four points back of the division-leading Detroit Red Wings with two games in hand.
There are still teams between the Panthers and Red Wings. The Boston Bruins sit in second with 26 points, three more than the Panthers, but the Panthers have three games in hand. The Tampa Bay Lightning and the Ottawa Senators sit one point ahead of the Panthers with the same number of games played.
The division is very tight, and there has been plenty of movement in the standings through the first 20 games or so, but the Panthers have the experience to take advantage of the opportunities given to them.
The Panthers are about to enter a stretch of games against teams on the outside looking in, when referring to the playoffs, and it's time they go on a run. It all starts tonight with a rematch against the Edmonton Oilers before matchups with the Nashville Predators, Philadelphia Flyers, Calgary Flames, Maple Leafs, Predators and Columbus Blue Jackets.
Sergei Bobrovsky will be in between the pipes tonight when the Panthers host Connor McDavid and the Oilers.
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Rocco Becht threw for 241 yards and three touchdowns, with two scores and 73 yards going to Brett Eskildsen, and Iowa State defeated Kansas 38-14 on Saturday.
That's how Jonathan Aspirot described his NHL debut with the Boston Bruins on October 28th, following a 5-2 comeback win over the New York Islanders.
A few weeks earlier, Aspirot had been having a fine 2025 training camp with the Bruins after signing with the organization over the summer. Some observers even felt he was a decent bet to make the team, but when the final cuts came, Aspirot was sent to the American Hockey League for his seventh straight season there.
But as he got to work again in Providence, Rhode Island, with the odds starting to stack against him at age 26, he was still hopeful that providence would smile on him.
"I try to believe in myself all the time, just trying to keep up positive thinking and just keep working and keep believing in my dream," Aspirot told the media after his debut
The NHL dream started to take shape back in his days with the QMJHL's Moncton Wildcats, where he was teammates with future Senator Jordan Spence. That's where the Sens noticed Aspirot for the first time, and while he was passed over in the NHL Draft, the Sens did sign him to a two-year AHL contract with Belleville ahead of the 2019-20 campaign.
GM Pierre Dorion liked what he saw that season and signed him to a three-year entry-level agreement with Ottawa. Aspirot spent the next three years in the organization without getting a sniff in Ottawa, and in 2023, the Sens chose not to sign him to a qualifying offer.
The same thing then happened in Aspirot's next stop.
He signed yet another AHL deal, this time with the Calgary Wranglers. The Flames liked what they saw and gave him an NHL deal for 2024-25. Last spring, they chose not to sign him to a qualifying offer.
Rinse and repeat.
But this year in Boston, Aspirot's solid performance at camp was still fresh on the mind of GM Don Sweeney, a man who spent 15 years patrolling Boston's blue line. Sweeney has been pulling his hair out with injuries this season, including the one to Charlie McAvoy, who took a puck to the face and had facial surgery this week.
But even before that, fellow defensemen Hampus Lindholm and Jordan Harris both went down in October, and Harris is still on LTIR with a right ankle fracture. When Lindholm was briefly placed on injured reserve on October 26th, Sweeney called on Aspirot to make his NHL debut.
As Aspirot can now attest, making the NHL is extremely hard. But staying in the NHL is even harder.
241 men have come and gone in NHL history with only one career game to their credit. As they lived out their dream in a perfect, glorious moment, they had no idea their first game would also be their last. Given how long it took to get here, Aspirot was certainly a candidate to join the NHL's one-and-done club.
But his debut was almost a month ago, and he's played in 10 of the club's last 12 games. He looks right at home in the show..
"He never really has chances against," Bruins head coach Marco Sturm told the media. "That's where I look a lot of times. He never really shows up in a bad way, again, because of his skating mobility and his core, because he's very, very strong and thick.
"He closes a lot quicker than other guys, and he competes. Given that he competes hard, he fights for his job every day, and that's something I really like about him."
As the Senators went shopping this week for a decent NHL defenseman who could add to their left-shot depth, it turns out they may have had a pretty good future option in Aspirot a couple of years ago. That's not to scold the team for letting him walk. He was here for four years, and at some point, you have to turn the page and take a look at other prospects.
What raises an eyebrow? He was here for the very darkest years of the Senators' long rebuild, as they rostered some very fringe NHL veterans, and they didn't bring him up for a single NHL shift in four years.
Aspirot's accomplishment is not only a fine tale of perseverance, but it's a good reminder that so-called 'older' hockey prospects who haven't made it yet aren't necessarily washed up in their mid-20s.
By Steve Warne The Hockey News Ottawa
This article was originally published at The Hockey News Ottawa. Read more:
The Flyers erupted for four first-period goals Saturday night en route to a resounding 6-3 win over the Devils at Xfinity Mobile Arena.
Their second, third and fourth goals all came within a span of 26 seconds, sending the crowd into an absolute frenzy, perhaps the loudest it has been here this season.
“I’ve lived it here, this crowd,” Rick Tocchet said. “When they get something to cheer about, it’s loud.”
Prior to Saturday night, the Flyers had been outscored 9-1 in the first period over their last six games.
Tyson Foerster took the roof off the building with back-to-back goals in 17 seconds to make it 4-1. The 23-year-old winger was asked if that was the loudest he had heard the building in his time here.
Noah Cates started the onslaught with a game-tying 1-1 goal. Matvei Michkov then gave the Flyers the lead 3:06 minutes later on a breakaway.
“Some good shots, some nice plays,” Tocchet said. “It was a good start.”
Bobby Brink added a goal in the second period. Trevor Zegras put New Jersey away with a third-period goal.
“It was nice to have that killer instinct,” Tocchet said.
Cates (one goal, two assists), Foerster (two goals) and Sean Couturier (two assists) finished with multi-point games.
“I think we worked pretty well on the forecheck and created chances off of that,” Couturier said.
The Flyers (11-6-3) have picked up at least a point in 12 of their last 16 games (10-4-2).
This was the first of three matchups between the Flyers and Devils (13-7-1) this season. New Jersey was without star forward Jack Hughes, who’s recovering from finger surgery.
• The offense was nice for the Flyers, who have struggled to score in parts of the season.
But through 20 games, the Flyers have given up just 2.80 goals per game.
“We’re hungry to learn and keep building,” Cates said. “That’s the best part about it.”
Last season, the Flyers were 8-10-2 through 20 games and had surrendered 3.50 goals per game.
The efforts defensively and in net have been huge.
“I’ve seen some really good things,” Tocchet said. “Obviously the goalies have been really good for us.
“If we can continue to play well without the puck, give our goalies sight lines, let them play half the net, then we can work on other stuff. I do like the play without the puck.”
• Dan Vladar converted 32 saves on 35 shots.
He made an excellent third-period stop to deny a 2-on-1 opportunity for the Devils. It was a big save because a goal there would have provided New Jersey some life. But Vladar kept it a 5-2 game.
“Just timely saves with him has been this whole season,” Cates said. “He has just been huge for us — in the locker room, on the ice. Just stability for us to play our game.”
The Devils scored their third goal later in the final stanza, but it came with just 6:35 minutes left. Zegras then padded the Flyers’ lead back to three.
New Jersey opened the scoring with a power play goal. It didn’t score again until the second period when the Flyers had a commanding 5-1 lead.
Devils netminder Jake Allen had a rough first period. He stopped 23 of 29 shots on the night.
• Nikita Grebenkin was a healthy scratch for the fourth time in the last five games. More on that here.
Egor Zamula entered the lineup for Noah Juulsen, who sat for the first time this season. Playing alongside Nick Seeler, Zamula was on the ice for five of the Flyers’ goals. He finished as a plus-5 and so did Seeler.
“Overall, the team played very good,” Zamula said. … “Vladdy was outstanding, some key saves.”
Andrej Stojakovic scored 20 points, Keaton Wagler had 19 and No. Illinois beat Long Island 98-58 on Saturday. David Mirkovic had 12 points and eight rebounds for the Illini (5-1), who bounced back nicely after losing to No.
John Mateer threw two touchdown passes, and No. 8 Oklahoma defeated No. 23 Missouri 17-6 on Saturday to inch closer to a College Football Playoff spot.
The Buffalo Sabres have a lengthy list of injured players and got one back in their lineup on Friday with Jason Zucker returning after missing three weeks due to a virus, but early in the second period of their 9-3 victory over Chicago, it appeared that that list would get larger. Defenseman Bowen Byram, who had scored his fourth goal of the season in the first period, fell awkwardly into the boards after checking Hawks forward Frank Nazar.
Byram had trouble getting back to his skates, and was favoring his right shoulder when he skated off the ice and down the tunnel to the Sabres locker room, but surprisingly returned after five minutes of game time and played a regular shift the rest of the game, finishing with 18:01 on the night.
"It didn't look good initially. I was pretty worried that was a guy we weren't see come back," Sabres head coach Lindy Ruff said.
Ruff said that he was cautiously optimistic that Byram was fine, saying that it was a positive sign that he returned and finished the game, but also said that they would see what tomorrow would bring. The club cancelled a scheduled practice on Saturday and will complete their four-game homestand on Sunday afternoon against Carolina,
Buffalo may get another injured forward back against the Hurricanes, as Ruff said on Friday that winger Zach Benson could return Sunday. The injured forward has been out since October 30 with a lower-body injury, but took part in the morning skate. Ruff considered the possibility of Benson returning against the Hawks, but opted to keep him out another game.
