MIAMI — Don Mattingly wants what’s best for the Miami Marlins, what’s best for him and what’s best for his family.
And he decided that means it’s time to move on.
Mattingly will not be back as manager of the Marlins next season, announcing Sunday that he and team officials have decided a new voice is needed to lead the club going forward.
Mattingly’s contract expires when the season ends. He said he met with Marlins principal owner Bruce Sherman and general manager Kim Ng to talk about the future, and “all parties agreed” it’s time for a change.
“I think always, you try to follow your heart,” Mattingly said Sunday. “And that’s what I do. Honestly, you know what’s inside of you and you try to be deliberate and let things work through, and you just follow your heart and you know when it’s the right thing.”
His short-term plan, after the season ends: Spending time with family at his home in Evansville, Indiana. After that, whatever happens, happens.
“I am proud and honored to have served as manager of the Marlins for the past seven years and have enjoyed my experiences and relationships I’ve developed within the organization,” Mattingly said.
Mattingly, the club’s all-time leader in managerial wins by a wide margin, is finishing his seventh season with the Marlins. He’s 437-584 in Miami, with one winning season in those seven years — a 31-29 mark in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, when the team made its first playoff appearance since 2003.
“In general, the clubs I’ve had have always played hard,” Mattingly said. “I’ve always felt proud of that.”
His decision means a season that started with a big shakeup for Miami now ends with another. In February, Hall of Famer Derek Jeter — who had been Miami’s CEO, the first Black person in baseball history to hold that role with a franchise — announced a surprise departure after 4½ mostly unsuccessful years that didn’t come remotely close to matching his success as a player for the New York Yankees.
Now comes the Mattingly move, which means someone else will be in charge when the team gathers for spring training.
“Donnie is one of my favorites,” Washington manager Dave Martinez said Sunday. “We go way back, played against him. He’s just a really good baseball man. I love him to death. I learned a lot from him, watching and competing against him for many years.”
The 61-year-old Mattingly has managed for 12 seasons, the first five with the Los Angeles Dodgers. All five of those Dodgers clubs had winning records, three of them making the playoffs.
The Marlins were hoping for similar success, but it didn’t happen as planned. Mattingly was the NL Manager of the Year in 2020 after getting Miami to the playoffs, but other than that, the franchise has been in a mode of constant rebuilding.
“We are fortunate to have had Don Mattingly leading our team on the field over the last seven years,” Sherman said. “He has represented the Marlins, our players, our fans, and the South Florida community with unmatched dignity and pride.”
Sunday’s news came on the sixth anniversary of the darkest day in team history, when Marlins ace Jose Fernandez and two other people died when their 32-foot boat slammed into a jetty off Miami Beach on Sept. 25, 2016.
The charismatic, exuberant Fernandez, who was beloved in Miami’s Latin community and touted as the future of the franchise, went 38-17 in his four seasons with the club, winning the NL Rookie of the Year award in 2013 and being named a two-time All-Star.
Fernandez’s death, which came at the end of Mattingly’s first season, set the Marlins back. But Mattingly guided them through, ending what was a 17-year playoff drought in 2020.
“Donnie’s just the consummate professional and a tremendous person,” Ng said during Sunday’s game. “He’s led the organization through some pretty tough times, particularly early in his tenure, then in the last couple of years with the pandemic and the lockout.”
Ng said the decision came after a series of conversations between Mattingly and the front office, with the soon-to-be-former skipper deciding not to pursue a new contract and the team deciding it wouldn’t be offering one.
“This year was very disappointing,” Ng said. “We had a lot of bad luck in terms of injuries. The record is not indicative of the talent that we have. We have to do a lot of introspection in terms of our processes and operations on how we fix that. I’m still optimistic about what we’ve got here.”
The Marlins haven’t spent a day in first place since Aug. 16, 2020. Outside of a few random April days, they haven’t seen first place in a regular 162-game season since June 2014. And this season will mark the 12th time in the past 13 years that they’ll finish with a losing record.
“I don’t know what his plans are moving forward, but he will be missed,” Martinez said. “I wish him all the best.”
This much is clear: Mattingly’s revelation on Sunday wasn’t a retirement announcement.
“I feel great,” Mattingly said. “My mind still works. Some of you guys might argue differently at times, but I feel like my mind works good. My body feels great, still feel good. So, I don’t want to go sit on the couch, that’s for sure.”
Boston’s Tanner Jeannot and Montreal’s Josh Anderson dropped the gloves at the opening faceoff of Tuesday night’s game. Another first-period fight helped set the tone for the Bruins, who had beaten Montreal in eight of the previous 10 meetings.
But after falling behind 2-1, the Canadiens scored five straight goals — four of them in a five-minute span in the third period — to win 6-2 and put some distance between the two Original Six teams who are jockeying for position in the Eastern Conference standings.
The Bruins lost the past four games on their homestand after winning five of their previous six. They have three days off before heading to a five-game road trip.
“We all recognized it was the last game before break — against the Habs, at the Garden,”Bruins forward Alex Steeves said. “We were down early, but we bounced back. Energy was good. And then it just got away from us.”
Five weeks after starting a fight from the opening faceoff in Montreal, the teams did it again. Jeannot, who has 53 goals and 435 penalty minutes in his career, and Anderson, who has 154 goals and 582 penalty minutes, fought for about a minute while teammates on both benches banged their sticks against the boards in approval.
The Bruins forward landed several blows before his Canadiens counterpart went to the ice, drawing a big roar and a chant of “U-S-A!” from the TD Garden crowd. Midway through the first period, it happened again, with Boston’s Nikita Zadorov and Montreal’s Arber Xhekaj dropping their gloves off a faceoff in the Bruins’ end.
“It had everything to me: Guys winning fights; guys laying their body on the [line],” Bruins forward David Pastrnak said. “It’s easy to get into the game when you have guys like this.”
In all, there were nine penalties for 30 minutes in the first, with Boston taking a 2-1 lead on Steeves’ power-play goal with 18 seconds left in the period.
“It gives the whole building energy — not just us players,” Steeves said. “Some guys on the bench just said it was the loudest we’ve heard the building. So it’s awesome. Those guys lay their bodies on the line every night. It’s up to us as a team to galvanize around that and really use that.”
But the penalties in the third were costly, with the Canadiens twice capitalizing on 5-on-3 advantages to pull away. Montreal ended the night with 45 points, four more than Boston and good for third in the Eastern Conference. The Bruins are currently out of playoff position.
“I still can’t believe that the game actually ended 2-6,” Bruins coach Marco Sturm said. “Even after the first period, guys came ready to play today. They were very excited.”
The Bruins had won eight of the past 10 matchups between the teams, including a 3-2 win in Montreal on Nov. 15. That game also featured several scuffles, including a fight at the opening faceoff. But the bigger problem for the Bruins had nothing to do with the fisticuffs: Star defenseman Charlie McAvoy was hit in the face by a slap shot, which could make him miss almost a month.
Members of the Professional Hockey Players’ Association are on the verge of staging a strike in the ECHL if the union and the league cannot come to an agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement.
The PHPA announced Monday that its ECHL membership has served a strike notice that would be effective Friday, when play is scheduled to resume following the holiday break. Players voted Friday to authorize their bargaining committee to call for a strike, executive director Brian Ramsay said Monday.
“Our members have made it very clear that they’ve had enough,” Ramsay said on a video call with reporters. “Unfortunately, this is a league that would rather bully us than bargain.”
The sides appeared no closer to a resolution Tuesday based on an update from Ramsay, even after he said the PHPA offered the option of reaching a settlement through mediation or arbitration.
“The ECHL responded within minutes, rejecting any interest in this solution and demanding ‘significant movement’ and concessions from the players,” Ramsay said in a released statement. “This approach continues to align with the increased threats our membership has faced over the past 18 hours.”
CBA talks began in January, with Ramsay accusing the league of unfair bargaining practices, including most recently contacting players directly with proposals, which have been reported to the National Labor Relations Board.
“This is a league that has taken almost a year to concede that we should be entitled to choose helmets that properly fit us and are safe,” Ramsay said. “This is the league that still supplies our members with used equipment. This is a league that shows no concern for players’ travels and in fact has said the nine-hour bus trip home should be considered your day off. We have had members this year spend 28 hours-plus on a bus to play back-to-back games on a Friday and Saturday night, only to be paid less than the referees who work those very same games.”
The ECHL posted details of its latest proposal on its website Monday, saying it calls to raise the salary cap 16.4% this season, with retroactive pay upon ratification, and increases in total player salaries in future years to pay players nearly 27% more than the current cap. The league said it has also offered larger per diems, mandatory day-off requirements and a 325-mile limit for travel between back-to-back games.
“Our approach will continue to balance the need to best support our players and maintain a sustainable business model that helps ensure the long-term success of our league so it remains affordable and accessible to fans,” the ECHL said, adding that the average ticket price is $21. “Negotiations have been progressing but not as quickly as we would like.
“We have reached a number of tentative agreements and remain focused on reaching a comprehensive new agreement that supports our players and the long-term health of every team in our league.”
Taking issue with the ECHL’s offer numbers, Ramsay said inflation would have players making less than the equivalent amount in 2018, prior to the pandemic. The league said a work stoppage would result in some games being postponed and players not being paid and losing housing and medical benefits that it pays for.
Ramsay called threats of players losing their housing if there’s a strike an unfair labor practice in itself.
“Consistently in the last six or eight weeks, teams trying to intimidate and bully our members, threaten our members with their jobs, with their housing, with their work visas if they’re from out of country — different tactics like that,” Ramsay said.
Jimmy Mazza, who played several seasons in the ECHL and is now on the negotiating committee, argued that owners do not know what it’s like to travel 29 hours in a bus or to be given a used helmet.
“The top level, you know that those players aren’t being treated that way, so why are they treating us that way?” Mazza said. “To us, it’s a little bit of a slap in the face with the way these negotiations have gone for a year, when only five days ago, we get a little bit of movement on a helmet issue when it should have been done a year ago.”
The ECHL, formerly known as the East Coast Hockey League and now going just by the acronym, is a North American developmental league that is two levels below the NHL, with the American Hockey League in between. There are 30 teams, 29 of which are in the U.S. and one in Canada in Trois-Rivières, Quebec.
The AHL and PHPA have been working under the terms of their most recent CBA, which expired Aug. 31. An AHL spokesperson said the sides are very close to a new agreement.
The NHL and the NHL Players’ Association earlier this year ratified a deal that ensures labor peace through 2030.
TORONTO — Max Domi scored the winner with 8:25 remaining to snap a 23-game goalless streak and added an assist to end the Toronto Maple Leafs‘ three-game slide with a 6-3 win against the Pittsburgh Penguins on Tuesday.
Domi danced around Pittsburgh newcomer Brett Kulak for the deciding goal, a few hours after Toronto general manager Brad Treliving gave coach Craig Berube a vote of confidence for the second time this season.
“I support Craig fully. When you go through rough stretches, that’s part of the business,” he said. “There isn’t a disconnect. We all need to be better, we all recognize that, but I think we got a really good coach.”
Treliving spoke a day after the club fired assistant coach Marc Savard following two losses in two days over the weekend.
“The players have responsibility and this doesn’t absolve anybody. This is not we throw somebody out and blame that person,” he said. “It’s a change that we could make to change the dynamic, change maybe a little bit of the play.”
Nylander scored the icebreaker for his first in 11 games, midway through the first period. But Rust drew the Penguins even 44 seconds later, getting behind Nicolas Roy and Chris Tanev for a successful breakaway.
Tanev returned after a 23-game absence. He was stretchered off the ice after a collision on Nov. 1 in Philadelphia.
Toronto fired 31 shots on goal while the Penguins registered 32, with Joseph Woll picking up his sixth win in 11 starts. Pittsburgh goalie Stuart Skinner has yet to win in three starts, with 12 goals against since being traded by the Edmonton Oilers on Dec. 15.
Savard steered the Maple Leafs to the NHL’s worst power play (12 for 90 with four short-handed goals against), and on Tuesday, Toronto went 0 for 2 against Pittsburgh. Assistant coach Derek Lalonde has been tasked with fixing the team’s power-play struggles.
