Regina's Randy Bryden golden at World Senior Men's Curling Championship
Skip Randy Bryden and his Regina-based rink are Senior Men's World Champions. (Photo Courtesy: Callie Curling Club)
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Winnipeg Free Press
a day ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Brumbies' Super Rugby playoff journey continues: Can they break the New Zealand hoodoo?
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — The ACT Brumbies will become the latest Australian team to take on the New Zealand playoff hoodoo in Super Rugby after beating the Wellington-based Hurricanes in Canberra. The record for Australian teams in playoff matches in New Zealand now stands at 0-20 after the Queensland Reds were beaten 32-12 by the Crusaders in Christchurch. The Brumbies will face the Chiefs in Hamilton in next weekend's semifinals after the Chiefs were beaten 20-19 by the Auckland-based Blues who scored and converted a try after the fulltime siren. The Chiefs still progressed to the next playoff round as the highest-ranked loser but have lost top seeding to the Crusaders. The match between the Brumbies and Hurricanes might have been a dead rubber if the Crusaders and Chiefs, the top-two seeds, both had won their playoff matches. Then, both teams in Canberra would have progressed to the semifinals either as the winner or highest-ranked loser. The Hurricanes title hopes have now foundered in Canberra in three of the last four years after they lost to the Brumbies in quarterfinals in 2022 and 2023. 'We didn't get the job done tonight. That Brumbies team really took it up a notch and showed why they've been so successful here,' Hurricanes captain DuPlessis Kirifi said. The Brumbies again are the last Australian team standing in the playoffs after reaching the semifinals for the third straight time. 'We're just looking at the Chiefs in Hamilton next week,' coach Stephen Larkham said. 'But we're hoping that the Blues can knock off the Crusaders and we come back here in two weeks for a grand final.' Crusaders beat the chill Brute force and home advantage were key factors in the Crusaders' win over the Reds. The Reds had to come from 23 degrees and fine weather in Brisbane to 4 degrees and a rain-soaked pitch in Christchurch. While they anticipated the conditions and tried to replicate them in training, they couldn't fully prepare for a match played in conditions in which the Crusaders excel. 'Typical Christchurch weather: cold, wet and dark and we love it,' said Crusaders scrumhalf Noah Hotham whose brilliant second half try spelled the end of the Reds' hopes and improved the Crusaders winning record in home playoffs to 30-0. The Reds couldn't match the power of the Crusaders' scrum and conceded penalties which gave the Crusaders a footing in Reds territory. At the same time, the Reds took too long to match the Crusaders' numbers at breakdowns. Captain David Havili was a force in the collision area which the Crusaders also dominated. 'They were all over us at the breakdown and collision area and we just couldn't get into our cycle,' Reds captain Tate McDermott said. 'They're really good at disrupting your ball and slowing it down and they did a good job of that.' Hotham may have helped his All Blacks chances with a strong individual performance behind a dominant pack. Blues beat the odds As Rieko Ioane faced the television cameras after the Blues beat the New South Wales Waratahs to qualify for the Super Rugby playoffs, the Blues and All Blacks center said 'as the saying goes, shouldn't have let us get one.' It was a nod to history. In 2004 the Boston Red Sox came from 3-0 down to beat the New York Yankees and win their first World Series in 86 years. At 3-0 down Sox outfielder Kevin Millar said 'don't let us get one.' And in the 2023 NBA Eastern Conference finals, the Boston Celtics were 3-0 down against the Miami Heat. 'Don't let us get one,' Celtics player Jaylen Brown said before his team rallied to force game seven. From Ioane, it was prophetic. After 'getting one' by making the playoffs in sixth place, the Blues have now stretched their defense of the Super Rugby title into the semifinals. The Chiefs were favored to win Saturday after beating the Blues twice during the regular season. But the Blues kept their season alive with a converted try after the fulltime siren. ___ AP rugby:
Vancouver Sun
2 days ago
- Vancouver Sun
Tom Mayenknecht: Stanley Cup and NBA finals roar out of the gate
If the opening games in the NHL Stanley Cup Final and NBA Finals are of any indication, then hockey and basketball fans are in for a real treat over the next two weeks. Game 1 for each delivered plenty on the entertainment meter, setting the stage for big world of mouth and heavy social media traffic going into their respective Game 2. Overtime games and one-point buzzer beaters result in the television ratings spikes that are pure joy to broadcast programmers, national sponsors, merchandisers, licensees and sports bars and restaurants across North America. That's exactly what we saw Wednesday in the 4-3 overtime win by the hometown Edmonton Oilers over the defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers and Thursday in the 111-110 jaw-dropper that the Indiana Pacers laid on the Oklahoma City Thunder. Indiana overcame a 15-point deficit in the fourth quarter to completely change the tone and tenor of the NBA Finals, beginning with the surge in viewers that happened in the final 12 minutes. The OCT became the first NBA team in 28 post-seasons to lose a game in which they led in the last three minutes of regulation time by seven or more points. Game 1 of the NBA Finals saw Tyrese Haliburton of the Pacers outdo MVP Shai Gilgeous Alexander — the Canadian from Hamilton, Ontario. The track record this season for Gilgeous Alexander and the Thunder has been to rebound nicely from their rare losses and that could happen here, but make no mistake that there is now no more room for error by the Thunder, a consistently dominant team all year and one anchored by the professional poise of SGA. The biggest bull market may be lining up for Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers , who could become the first Canadian-based team to win the Stanley Cup in the 32 years since the Montreal Canadiens did so in 1993. The single biggest beneficiary would be the personal legacy of McDavid, already one of the stars of Canada's win at the Four Nations Face-Off in February. He needs a Cup to cement his status as an all-time great, in much the same way stars such as Wayne Gretzky, Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin have done over the past 40 years. It's one thing for Major League Baseball to have two of its franchises — the Tampa Bay Rays and the team formerly known as the Oakland Athletics — playing in minor league ballparks or spring league venues seating about 10,000 fans. It's quite another thing for the Miami Marlins to be drawing flies to their much larger ballpark in South Florida. Television images of the Marlins playing at home are not worthy of the major league designation. They're the antithesis of what you want to attract new fans, especially when stadium employees outnumber paying customers. Those three clubs are the cellar dwellers when it comes to MLB attendance numbers as the baseball season approaches its midway mark. Playing at Steinbrenner Field — the Grapefruit League home of the New York Yankees — the Rays are drawing an average of 9,855 per game while the Athletics are averaging 10,005 in Sacramento. Yet the Marlins' average of 11,648 fans per game — which is less than one-quarter the attendance of the league-leading Los Angeles Dodgers (50,250) — is the most embarrassing of all given their stadium capacity of 37,422 at LoanDepot Park. Think of it this way: the Marlins need to play more than four games to match a single night's turnstile count at Dodger Stadium. Tom Mayenknecht is the host of The Sport Market on Sportsnet 650 on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. The Vancouver-based sport business commentator and principal in Emblematica Brand Builders provides a behind-the-scenes look at the sport business stories that matter most to fans. Follow Mayenknecht at: .
Global News
2 days ago
- Global News
ANALYSIS: It's been 32 long years since a Canadian team won the Stanley Cup
You've heard it time and time again. It's been 32 years since a Canadian-based team was able to skate around the ice carrying the Stanley Cup. And here we are, with one game done and another one to be played Friday night in Edmonton, with Canada's last hope now just three games away from the ultimate goal. Thirty-two long, frustrating years. Story continues below advertisement As a country of 40 million, we can proudly say it's our passion for hockey and for our local teams that makes the NHL tick. We have kept the NHL relevant. And even more emphatically, Wednesday's first game of the Stanley Cup final between the Oilers and Florida Panthers was viewed by 4.5 million Canadians. That's two million more viewers than watched south of the border, in a country with a population eight times larger. Get daily National news Get the day's top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day. Sign up for daily National newsletter Sign Up By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy And did you know that the TV ratings for each of the seven Canadian teams are better than any U.S.-based team? Teams like the Winnipeg Jets have better ratings than Boston, New York, Detroit and Chicago. It's hard to imagine. Oh sure, there are great franchises and great stories amongst the 25 teams based in the United States. But understand, this truly is our country's league. With almost half of the players Canadian, and so much of the business success around the NHL driven by Canadian markets and Canadian dollars, it's important to know that we treat this league differently than the other major pro sports leagues. Story continues below advertisement Yes, it's a business — big business and getting bigger all the time. But in our country, hockey is a public trust. For sure, the expectation of any or all of the fan bases in Canada is to win, but fans invest more than money. We feel the anguish of every loss, the joy of every goal, the pain of every hit. We don't watch hockey, we live it. That's why 32 years feels oh, so long. And there are still no guarantees that the streak won't get longer.
