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Matty Beniers won’t read this or any story about himself. Beniers is so serious about this edict that he asked his parents to stop sending him articles that had anything to do with him.

Humility means everything for Beniers. That is why he feels it is better to concentrate on other items in life other than what people say about him.

It’s also ironic given people can’t stop talking about Beniers. His name is always mentioned whenever someone talks about the Seattle Kraken‘s early success. Start talking about the Calder Trophy race and his name is one of the first that gets said. Beniers is only 27 games into his NHL career, yet he is already popular enough in Seattle that he is starting to get stopped for autographs and pictures when he is in public.

His teammates joke they are tired of talking about him. But they all have so much to say about what has allowed him to excel as a 20-year-old in the NHL while also expressing what makes him a special person who wants to do right by those around him.

The affinity for Beniers is so strong that the Kraken’s pre-game introduction video has 30 seconds that are solely dedicated to Beniers. It talks about how he is the future and how he is part of “The Next Wave” of players expected to lead the franchise for years to come.

Of course, Beniers won’t know about a lot of this because he will never read about it.

“I’ve just never liked seeing stuff about myself,” Beniers said. “I don’t really know why. I think I might have seen other people around me todo the opposite and I just didn’t like it. So I started doing that when I was young.”

Beniers has been managing expectations since the Kraken drafted him with the second pick in the 2021 NHL Draft. Selecting Beniers came with the belief the Kraken were getting a prospect who projected as a top-line, two-way center who could potentially become one of their franchise cornerstones for years to come.

Going 27-49-6 in their inaugural season meant the Kraken had to make the prospect of a better future a selling point for fans. Everyone got a glimpse of that future last season when Beniers left the University of Michigan after his sophomore year to sign an entry-level contract and scored nine points in his first 10 NHL games.

“The first practice he was on the ice, I was like, ‘Oh my God is he good!,” Kraken forward Yanni Gourde said. “It was at that point when you’re like, ‘This kid’s a player.’ A lot of guys come out of college, they come out of juniors and you don’t know if they have it right away. He’s that kid who really stepped on the ice and you knew this kid is going to be good right away.”

Beniers already had a point — an assist — in his first NHL game. What he achieved in his first game at Climate Pledge Arena only heightened expectations. He was active in both zones while making the plays the casual fan or a more keen observer could appreciate.

He also scored his first NHL goal in that same game which went into overtime. Kraken coach Dave Hakstol trusted Beniers enough to deploy him for three minutes of ice time in the extra frame. What was arguably Beniers’ strongest display came when he tried setting up the game-winning goal in OT with a no-look, between the legs pass. The confidence he showed was so strong that he was one of the three skaters selected in a shootout the Kraken ultimately won.

“You’re not overly surprised about anything he does,” Kraken forward Jordan Eberle. “You’re shocked at the confidence level to do that to come in off a college season and come into the NHL and go right to it. He’s a very confident kid but he handles it in a very good way.”

Skill is only one part of the package. Eberle, an alternate captain, said Beniers has shown the maturity and personality needed to thrive in an NHL dressing room. What stood out most to Eberle was the fact Beniers did it late in the season at a time when the team already had its identity.

First-year players are usually more reserved at first. They take time trying to figure out the dressing room before speaking up and displaying their personality. Not Beniers. Eberle said Beniers had no problems fitting in with the rest of the team.

“He’s sociable. He likes to talk. He likes to chirp,” Eberle said. “I think when you have a kid, who at a young age like that, you can get under his skin and he is able to have confidence to give it back, it is a good thing. That means you fit right in.”

Another way Beniers has fit in is with his contributions. He is second on the team in goals and is tied for the third in points (11). He is third among forwards in total ice time, second in 5-on-5 ice time, and second in power-play ice time.

As for rookie stats: Beniers leads all rookies with 11 points, is second with five goals and sixth with five assists. He also ranks second in ice time among rookie forwards and 11th among all rookie skaters.

There is also the trust he has been shown in the defensive zone. He is sixth among Kraken forwards in defensive zone faceoffs and is fourth in defensive zone starts, per Natural Stat Trick. Those numbers help create a composite that shows Beniers is developing into the all-around player the Kraken believe is a strong part of their future.

Beniers is showing even at this stage of his career he can be that top-six center capable of impacting a game in several ways. Having someone like Beniers, among others, is one of the reasons why the Kraken have emerged to be one of the NHL’s more notable surprises through the first quarter of the season.

“He’s a great player and a great human being which makes him a very special and important person in this organization,” Gourde said. “Not only are you trying to build an organization that has a good team every year, but you’re trying to build a team with good character and good people. That’s how you build a foundation in an organization.”

Good people. That is all Bob and Christine Beniers ever wanted their three children to be when they got older. They saw early signs of that in their youngest child when he was playing youth league basketball back home in Hingham, Mass., a Boston suburb.

Beniers had a teammate who was not the best at basketball. But Beniers kept passing him the ball to make sure that particular teammate got a chance to take a few shots in the game.

“After the game, that kid’s mother thanked me for what Matty did,” Bob recalled. “She said, ‘My son never touches the ball. … That’s the way any parent should want their son and daughter to be. That’s to be humble and nice to people and be aware of other people’s feelings. That’s a lot more important than hockey.”

Then Bob learned about another story. It was Halloween when Gourde and his family went to visit Beniers and Will Borgen, who share a house together. The Gourde’s arrived only to find Beniers and Borgen were dressed in costumes so Gourde’s two daughters could have Halloween with them before going trick-or-treating later that night.

“Stuff like that is how you know they are genuine, super good, super nice and we appreciated that,” Gourde said.

Beniers and Borgen are housemates who have bonded over watching games, watching Game of Thrones, playing video games and debating over who is worse at Mario Kart.

“They text each other from their rooms,” quipped Carson Soucy, who sits next to Borgen in the dressing room at the team’s practice facility.

Borgen said Beniers is a clean housemate who is also guilty of leaving his laundry in the dryer for a few days. He says they don’t cook much. But when they do, Beniers is the better cook of the two. Borgen says Beniers’ specialty is his garlic bread. It’s possible Beniers displayed those skills the weekend before Thanksgiving when his parents and two siblings flew to Seattle to do their version of Thanksgiving along with Borgen.

Going out to dinner gives them a chance to hang out even more, explore different restaurants and also see more of Seattle. It’s just that going out to dinner also means Beniers is learning what it means to be a professional athlete in a public setting.

“Some people might want a picture with him, some people might want to say hi, some people just stare and look at him a little bit,” Borgen said. “It’s probably his first year getting that quite a bit but he is a really nice person who was raised right and that is why he handles things so well.”

What’s it like to be Beniers? How does he handle what comes with being a first-line NHL center, who could win the Calder and help the Kraken now and in the future, all while doing it in a market that is still new to hockey?

“I have no idea!” Beniers says in a way that makes everyone around him laugh. “I don’t even think about it. I think I have high expectations that supersedes what everyone else’s expectations are. I think for a lot of guys on this team someone might say, ‘You played a great game’ and you might think you played awful. I feel like I am the same way.”

Bob, however, does have a way to describe it: It’s surreal. For their family, they realize it was just a few years ago when Matty moved from home to go play for the National Team Development Program. The lessons he learned at the NTDP are still ones he carries with him to this day. Bob said the reason Matty takes a nap before every game is because that is what they did at the NTDP to help players understand how sleep can impact a routine.

Bob and Christine watch Matty’s games on TV. They also try to see him in person when time allows. They flew to Pittsburgh to not only watch the Kraken play the Penguins. But they flew to make sure they could celebrate their son’s 20th birthday. Bob said Christine made sure their son got his presents and “a big hug from mom” because those things are still important.

“I tell him all the time he is a very lucky young man,” Bob said. “I have also told him to take a lot of pictures so he can remember the ride.”

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Passan: Jorge Polanco has the Mariners on the way to a Hollywood ending

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Passan: Jorge Polanco has the Mariners on the way to a Hollywood ending

TORONTO — Every so often in the Seattle Mariners clubhouse, the “Top Gun Anthem,” full of soaring guitar notes and pick-me-up vibes, will randomly blast from inside a locker. Everyone knows the culprit. Jorge Polanco, the Mariners’ veteran second baseman, is not a fan of silencing his phone.

“But he loves Maverick and Iceman,” Mariners star Cal Raleigh said.

Nobody really minds. When a player is doing what Polanco has done this postseason — rescuing the Mariners from the danger zone seemingly daily, with his latest trick a go-ahead three-run home run that paved the way for Monday’s 10-3 victory — his ringtone could be Limp Bizkit and nobody would utter a peep.

Instead, it’s the perfect soundtrack for this Mariners run, which currently sees them up two games to none against the Toronto Blue Jays in the American League Championship Series. The “Top Gun Anthem” is an epic ballad filled with the sorts of ups and downs that personify an organization that has spent 49 years alternating among the desolation of mediocrity and the heartbreak of underachievement. The only team in Major League Baseball to never to play in a World Series, Seattle is two wins away from capturing its first American League pennant and is heading home to T-Mobile Park for Game 3.

The Mariners’ dominant position is in large part thanks to a 32-year-old infielder whose feats have earned him the right to be called Iceman himself — and yet that’s not the nickname Polanco wears these days.

“He’s George Bonds,” M’s catcher Mitch Garver said.

Yes, Polanco’s alter ego is the anglicized version of his first name and the surname of Major League Baseball’s all-time home run leader. He earned it earlier this season, Garver said, when “everything he hit was 110 [mph] in a gap or over the fence. It was unbelievable.”

Particularly when considering that last winter, Polanco didn’t know whether he would be healthy enough to keep hitting major league pitching. Polanco, who had struggled for years with left knee issues, underwent surgery in October 2024 to repair his patellar tendon. A free agent, Polanco drew limited interest on the market and wound up re-signing with the Mariners for one year and $7.75 million.

“It’s been a journey, man,” Polanco said. “That’s the way I can put it. I wouldn’t say it’s been bad. I wouldn’t say it’s been easy. I think God just prepared me for this year. I’ve been hurt a little bit, so yeah; but now we here, and I’m glad to be back.

“You just have to have faith. You overcome. Come back stronger.”

Polanco’s strength has been on display all October. It first appeared in the second game of Seattle’s division series against the Detroit Tigers when he hit two home runs off ace Tarik Skubal, who is about to win his second consecutive Cy Young Award. It continued three games later in a winner-takes-all Game 5 when he lashed a single into right field in the 15th inning that advanced the Mariners to their first ALCS since 2001. It didn’t stop there, with Polanco’s go-ahead single in the sixth inning of Game 1 against the Blue Jays on Sunday.

Then came Monday’s fifth-inning blast off Toronto reliever Louis Varland, who fed a 98 mph fastball over the plate and watched it leave the bat at 105.2 mph, flying 400 feet to turn a 3-3 tie into a 6-3 Seattle lead.

“He’s always been a great hitter,” Mariners manager Dan Wilson said. “His swing right now is very short. That ball tonight, I wasn’t sure it was going to go out of the ballpark, but I think he’s just getting that kind of spin on it right now where it stays up.”

That is no accident. Polanco arrived in the major leagues with the Minnesota Twins in 2014 at age 20, a bat-to-ball savant whose ability to hit from both sides of the plate carved him out a regular role with the team.

“He wasn’t George Bonds before,” Garver said. “He was Harry Potter. Because he was a wizard. He’d just make hits appear.”

Polanco found power five years into his career, and he maxed out with 33 home runs for the Twins in 2021. But the degradation of his knee sapped the juice in his bat and left him flailing too often at pitches he’d have previously spit on. Last year, in his first season with the Mariners, his numbers cratered, but the organization appreciated Polanco’s even-keeled demeanor and believed fixing his knee would fix his swing too.

The Mariners were right. George Bonds was born during a ridiculous first month of the 2025 season when he whacked nine homers in 80 plate appearances. Polanco had embraced the M’s ethos of pulling the ball in the air. Raleigh led MLB with a 1.594 OPS on balls pulled. Third baseman Eugenio Suarez was second at 1.497. Polanco hit 23 of his 26 home runs this season to the pull side, and both of his homers off Skubal (hit from the right side) and the one against Varland (left) were met in front of the plate and yanked over the fence.

“Throughout the years, I hated going to Minnesota just solely because of him,” said shortstop J.P. Crawford, the longest-tenured Mariner. “The guy single-handedly beat us so many times. We all know the type of player he is when he is healthy, and it’s clearly showing right now.”

Never in the game’s 150-year history had a player logged three consecutive game-winning hits after the fifth inning in the postseason. It’s the sort of performance teams need to win pennants — and championships. As brilliant as Raleigh has been in a could-be-MVP campaign and as conflagrant as Julio Rodriguez was in the second half and as dominant as Seattle’s pitching has been en route to this point, winning playoff baseball takes more.

Like, say, a guy who over the winter was an afterthought hitting cleanup and never wavering, even in the highest-leverage situations.

“What’s most impressive is bouncing back after a rough year last year,” said Bryan Woo, who will start Game 3 on Wednesday against Toronto’s Shane Bieber. “Especially for a guy on his second team, back half of his career. To do what he’s doing — get healthy, come back, help the team like he has — is even more impressive than just playing good baseball.”

Playing good baseball helps too. Polanco has helped get Seattle in a place that barely a month ago looked impossible to conceive. From mid-August to early September, the Mariners lost 13 of 18, trailed Houston by 3½ games in the AL West and held a half-game lead on Texas for the final wild-card spot. From there, the Mariners went 17-4, won the West, earned a first-round bye and charted a course for history.

They’re not there. And yet even Polanco admitted that Mariners players can’t ignore the team’s history and recognize what it would mean to get to the World Series.

“Yeah, we think about it,” he said. “We’ve heard it a lot. We know.”

The knowledge hasn’t deterred them. Raleigh is raking. Rodriguez is slugging. Josh Naylor, who grew up in nearby Mississauga, blasted a two-run home run in Game 2. And George Bonds has shown up in style, cold as Iceman, cool as Maverick, perfectly happy to eschew silent mode in favor of loud contact.

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Snell joins elite company as Dodgers take opener

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Snell joins elite company as Dodgers take opener

MILWAUKEE — Few teams have a lineage of great pitching as long as that of the Los Angeles Dodgers franchise. With this postseason, Blake Snell is making that star-studded line longer by one.

Snell dominated the Milwaukee Brewers over eight innings Monday, leading Los Angeles to a 2-1 Game 1 victory in the National League Championship Series before a packed house at American Family Field.

“That was just so good from the start,” said Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman, whose sixth-inning homer broke a scoreless tie. “Sometimes it takes an inning or two for someone to settle in. [Tonight] it was from the get-go.”

Snell held Milwaukee to one hit in going a full eight innings for only the second time in a career that has netted him a pair of Cy Young Awards. He struck out 10 and picked off the only baserunner he allowed — Caleb Durbin, who singled in the third.

Snell became the first pitcher to face the minimum through eight innings in a postseason game since Don Larsen threw a perfect game in the 1956 World Series. The only longer outing in Snell’s career was the no-hitter he threw for the San Francisco Giants on Aug. 2, 2024. Has he ever felt as locked in as he did Monday?

“The no-hitter, yeah,” Snell quipped.

Snell improved to 3-0 in a postseason during which no other starting pitcher has recorded two wins. He is the second Dodgers pitcher to win his first three playoff starts for the franchise, joining Don Sutton (1974).

If Los Angeles keeps winning, Snell will get more chances to add to his numbers, but for now, his 0.86 ERA over three outings is the second best for a Dodgers left-hander in a postseason (minimum 20 innings), behind only Sandy Koufax’s legendary run (0.38 ERA over three starts) in the 1965 World Series.

This is the kind of company Snell knew he’d be keeping when he signed with the Dodgers before the season.

“Even playing against them, watching, it was just always in the back of my mind, like, I wanted to be a Dodger and play on that team,” Snell said. “To be here now, it’s a dream come true. I couldn’t wish for anything more.”

Snell’s gem continued the Dodgers’ stretch of dominant starting pitching that began over the last month of the season and has propelled a postseason run for the defending champs, positioning them for a repeat despite an offense that has at times struggled to put up runs in the playoffs.

Dodgers starters are 6-1 with a 1.65 ERA so far in the postseason, logging six quality starts in L.A.’s seven games.

“Our starting pitching for the last seven, eight weeks, has been — I don’t know if you can write enough words in your stories about our starting pitching,” Freeman said. “It really has been amazing. They seem to feed off each other.”

But no Dodgers’ starter is on a run quite like that of Snell, who is hoping to win his first championship ring with the team he lost to as a member of the Tampa Bay Rays in the 2020 World Series.

Despite Snell’s dominance, the Dodgers still had to withstand a ninth-inning push by the stubborn Brewers and understand the series is just getting started. Still, with the way Snell is rolling, he’s conjuring names of Dodgers present and past, like Koufax, Kershaw, Sutton, Valenzuela and Hershiser.

“I feel like the whole postseason I’ve been pretty locked in, pretty consistent,” Snell said. “Different outings, but eight innings, went deeper. The last three I felt really good, really locked in. Consistent. Similar.”

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M’s take two in Toronto for commanding ALCS lead

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M's take two in Toronto for commanding ALCS lead

TORONTO — J.P. Crawford, the longest-tenured member of the Seattle Mariners, has experienced some disappointment in his seven seasons in the Pacific Northwest. A last-place finish. Falling just short of reaching the postseason three times. Playoff exhilaration getting abruptly extinguished the year they made it.

Sometime early this season, the shortstop believed this team was different.

“We know we’re a good team,” he said shortly after the Mariners completed perhaps the most important road trip in franchise history with a 10-3 win over the Toronto Blue Jays on Monday night to take a 2-0 lead in the American League Championship Series. “And now everyone knows that we can do this thing, and that’s what’s lighting the fire underneath everyone.”

The Mariners are two wins from doing the thing — winning their first AL pennant and advancing to the World Series for the first time in franchise history — with Game 3 scheduled for Wednesday at T-Mobile Park. It is the first time they’ve led an ALCS by multiple games. It is the 28th time in postseason history that the road team has won the first two games of a best-of-seven series. Only three of those clubs lost the series.

“We think about it,” said second baseman Jorge Polanco, who swatted a go-ahead, three-run home run in the fifth inning to give Seattle a lead they didn’t relinquish. “We hear it a lot. We know. But the mentality is just keep it simple. Just try to refocus on playing game by game.”

Less than 24 hours after the Mariners — wearied after an emotional 15-inning win in Game 5 of the AL Division Series on Friday — won Game 1 thanks to a late-inning comeback fueled by adrenaline, they used a less dramatic blueprint in Game 2.

The Mariners pounded three home runs and got six scoreless innings from three relievers to complete Monday’s demolition inside an open-roofed Rogers Centre on Canadian Thanksgiving before heading back to Seattle to potentially close out the series.

The Mariners did not waste time inflicting heavy damage against a pitcher they never had faced. Eight days ago, Trey Yesavage held the New York Yankees hitless over 5⅓ innings in his fourth career start in Game 2 of the ALDS. His abnormally high release point and arm angle, coupled with a fastball-splitter combination, overwhelmed the Yankees.

The Mariners entered the encounter with a simple game plan to avoid falling victim to the splitter, which limited the Yankees to 0-for-11 with eight strikeouts: If it’s low, let it go. Wait for a mistake up in the zone and do not miss.

Julio Rodriguez did not miss. Three batters into the game, after Randy Arozarena was hit by a pitch and Cal Raleigh walked, Yesavage threw a mistake splitter to Rodriguez up and over the plate on a 1-2 count that Rodríguez cracked down the left-field line for a three-run shot.

It was the first home run Yesavage has allowed in his brief major league career — he had previously surrendered just two extra-base hits in four starts — and the first extra-base hit he has surrendered with his splitter in the majors.

“I feel like, at the end of the day, you got to see the ball and get your pitch,” Rodríguez said. “We have seen what he’s been doing, and obviously we respect that, but we went out there to compete.”

Blue Jays manager John Schneider called for a reliever to warm up as Yesavage’s pitch count approached 30 after Rodriguez’s crowd-silencing blast. But the rookie right-hander stranded a runner at second base with consecutive strikeouts. He then settled into the game as Toronto responded with three runs in the first two innings to tie the score. Yesavage held the Mariners without another run until departing with one out and two runners on base in the fifth inning.

Two batters after Yesavage’s exit, Polanco continued his torrid October by launching a 98 mph fastball from right-hander Louis Varland just over the right-center-field wall to give the Mariners the lead with their second three-run homer. The home run was the switch-hitting Polanco’s third of the postseason and first batting left-handed. His first two were against Detroit Tigers ace lefty Tarik Skubal in the ALDS. Polanco, a 12-year veteran, has eight RBIs in the playoffs, already tied for the third most in the Mariners’ concise postseason history.

Josh Naylor delivered the final blow, a two-run home run to right field off right-hander Braydon Fisher for Naylor’s third hit of the day to give Seattle a 9-3 lead in the seventh inning. A native of Mississauga, Ontario, the first baseman became the first Canadian-born player to hit a home run in the postseason as a visiting player in Canada.

“I went 0-for-4 yesterday, and we won,” Naylor said. “So, if I did it again today, maybe [it] was good luck to go 0-for-4, and we would win again. But I was very thankful to get some hits, help the team out. Super cool to do it in front of my family, too.”

Naylor celebrated the homer by pointing to the crowd behind the Mariners’ dugout as he began his trot. He and third baseman Eugenio Suarez were the two sluggers the Mariners acquired at the trade deadline to bolster an offense that failed to adequately complement an elite pitching staff in previous years. The moves solidified Crawford’s belief early in the season — that this team could do what no team has done since the franchise’s inception in 1977.

“We’re two wins away,” Crawford said. “If that doesn’t fire anyone up, I don’t know what can.”

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