Padres rally to stun Dodgers, advance to NLCS
SAN DIEGO — Nights like these, when the weekend arrives and the Los Angeles Dodgers are in town, don’t often feel like a home-field advantage for the San Diego Padres. So many Dodgers fans make the 125-mile drive south that Petco Park is often called “Dodger Stadium South” when the two teams match up. But that wasn’t the case on Friday and Saturday. Petco Park, which had waited 16 years to host fans for a postseason game, was stuffed with locals who rooted hard for the Padres and filled this ballpark with “Beat L.A.” chants that at times felt deafening. And when Josh Hader recorded the final out, capping a thrilling 5-3 victory in Game 4 of the National League Division Series, the place erupted in joy.
The Padres — the same Padres who have spent almost their entire existence chasing the decorated franchise to the north — are advancing to their first NL Championship Series since 1998. They’ll face the upstart Philadelphia Phillies and gain home-field advantage for the first time in these playoffs. The Padres went on the road to beat the 101-win New York Mets in the wild-card round last weekend then won three straight games against a 111-win Dodgers team that had dominated them over the previous six months.
“It took a team effort to beat a really good team,” Padres third baseman Manny Machado said, “and we did that tonight.”
The Padres held a lead throughout Game 3, but they fell behind early in Game 4. When the seventh inning came around, they trailed 3-0 and were down to their final nine outs — while facing the grim prospect of returning to L.A. and facing the Dodgers’ ace, Julio Urias, in a winner-take-all Game 5.
Then the Padres staged their biggest rally of the year.
Jurickson Profar, Trent Grisham and Austin Nola — representing a bottom of the order that has come through all month — all reached to start the inning against the Dodgers’ bullpen. Ha-Seong Kim, the every-day shortstop in place of a suspended Fernando Tatis Jr., doubled down the left-field line, making it a one-run game. Juan Soto, the big midseason acquisition, lined a base hit to the right side to tie the score. And Jake Cronenworth, who has established himself as a cornerstone player, lined a two-out, two-run single up the middle against lefty reliever Alex Vesia, giving the Padres a two-run lead they would not relinquish.
The Padres, an 89-win team that entered this postseason as the No. 5 seed, became the fifth team to win multiple series in a single postseason against opponents that accumulated 10 or more wins than they did during the regular season. The Dodgers were especially dominant against them. L.A. won its last nine regular-season games against the Padres in 2021, and it then took 14 of 19 during the regular season in 2022, scoring more than twice as many runs in head-to-head matchups.
The Dodgers’ loss marked the first time a team lost a playoff series to a division opponent after not losing a series to that team during the regular season, according to research from the Elias Sports Bureau.
In addition, the Padres closed as a +190 underdog at Caesars Sportsbook to win the series, making this the second-biggest betting upset in a playoff series over the past 10 seasons. (The Washington Nationals were +195 to beat the Houston Astros in the 2019 World Series.)
“There’s a lot of good players over here,” Soto said. “I’m happy to be part of this, and I think we have everything we need to reach our goal.”
The Dodgers spent this entire season thinking the same. They set a franchise record in wins and notched a plus-334 run differential that was tied for the fourth largest in history, but they once again came up short. The Dodgers have won the NL West nine times in the past 10 years — the only year they didn’t win it saw them capture 106 wins and fall a game shy of a title — but have come away with only one World Series championship during that stretch, at the end of the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, a former Padres player and coach, called this latest defeat “crushing.”
“Each guy gave everything they had all year long and a tremendous season,” Roberts said. “The great thing about baseball is the unpredictability, and the tough thing about it is the same thing. Things could have gone either way today to impact the result of the game. It didn’t. We got beat in a series. Nothing I can say is going to make it feel any better. Obviously, we didn’t expect to be in this position.”
This series marked the second time in postseason history that a team eliminated another after winning 22 fewer games during the regular season, last done during the 1906 World Series.
The Padres held grand expectations entering the 2021 campaign but fell off in dramatic fashion down the stretch. The ensuing offseason brought a new manager in Bob Melvin, one of the most revered in the sport, and the thought that this franchise might finally take off.
The Padres navigated through most of the ensuing season as an enigma, often following dominant stretches with poor ones. Their hyper-aggressive general manager, A.J. Preller, traded for Soto and lights-out closer Hader before the trade deadline, but those moves were followed by the stunning revelation that Tatis, the face of their franchise, had tested positive for a performance-enhancing substance. The Padres persevered, doing just enough to secure a spot in Major League Baseball’s expanded postseason field. And when the playoffs began, they suddenly played their sharpest baseball of the season. Their fans naturally rallied behind them.
“The crowd was unbelievable,” said Joe Musgrove, the local product and lifelong Padres fan who pitched six innings of two-run ball in Game 4. “It was everything I could have imagined.”
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Greg Wyshynski, ESPN
Vancouver Canucks right wing Brock Boeser is not expected to play in Game 7 of their second-round series against the Edmonton Oilers on Monday because of a blood-clotting issue, a source told ESPN, confirming a report.
There’s no timeline for his return to action. The Canucks had no comment on Boeser’s status.
Boeser didn’t skate in practice Sunday. Coach Rick Tocchet would only say at a media availability that “he needed the maintenance day.”
Boeser, 27, leads the Canucks in goals (7) and is tied for the lead in points (12) during the postseason. He established career highs in goals (40), points (73) and games played (81) during the regular season.
The Canucks winger has had some MVP moments during their playoff run. His hat trick in Game 4 against the Nashville Predators led them to a comeback win. Boeser’s three points in the first period of Game 3 led Vancouver to a win over Edmonton.
It’s the second significant injury for Vancouver in the playoffs after a regular season of relatively good health for the team’s core players. Starting goaltender Thatcher Demko, a finalist for the Vezina Trophy as the NHL’s best netminder, hasn’t played since Game 1 of the first round because of a knee injury. Edmonton won Game 6 at home Saturday night to force Monday’s Game 7, the only seventh game of the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. The winner faces the Dallas Stars in the Western Conference finals.
The Boeser injury news was first reported by Vancouver-based hockey journalist Irfaan Gaffar.
RALEIGH, N.C. — The Carolina Hurricanes re-signed coach Rod Brind’Amour and his staff to multiyear contracts, keeping one of the best in the NHL behind the bench around for the long term.
The team announced the re-signings Sunday for Brind’Amour, assistants Jeff Daniels and Tim Gleason, goaltending coach Paul Schonfelder and video coach Chris Huffine.
“Rod has been instrumental to the success we’ve had over the last six seasons,” team president and general manager Don Waddell said. “Ever since he joined the organization 24 years ago, Rod has embodied what it means to be a Hurricane. We hope to keep him a Hurricane for life.”
Brind’Amour was in the final year of a deal reached in 2021, when he was the winner of the Jack Adams Award as the league’s top coach. His status had become a talking point around the NHL as jobs changed hands, though Brind’Amour — as well as Waddell — had expressed confidence that a deal would get done.
“I never had a doubt in my mind he [would] come back,” Carolina center Sebastian Aho said earlier in the day when asked about the reports of a deal. “Not surprised, I would say.”
Brind’Amour took over in 2018 to lead a franchise that had missed the playoffs for nine straight years. The Hurricanes have gone to the playoffs six times in as many seasons under the captain of Carolina’s 2006 Stanley Cup winner. Carolina has also won at least one series in each of the past six postseasons, marking the first time a team has accomplished that since the Detroit Red Wings did it from 1995 to 2000. The Canes also reached the Eastern Conference finals twice in the past six seasons.
Carolina finished three points behind the New York Rangers for the Metropolitan Division title and Presidents’ Trophy (presented to the league’s top regular-season team), another season in which it ranked among the NHL’s top teams with an aggressive forechecking style.
The Hurricanes beat the New York Islanders in five games in Round 1 then lost to the Rangers in a six-game second-round series after falling in a 3-0 hole.
Brind’Amour, 53, arrived in Raleigh in a January 2000 trade from the Philadelphia Flyers and played there until his retirement in 2010. He then spent seven seasons as an assistant coach before taking over as a first-time head coach.
Multiple players were asked earlier Sunday about Brind’Amour’s status during end-of-season interviews. None expressed concern that he wouldn’t return or that it had been any type of distraction.
“He’s one of the main pieces that turned this organization around from where it was when I first got here,” defenseman Jaccob Slavin said. “So I think anyone would want him to stay as well. I know he wants to be here. I’m confident it’ll get done.”
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