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NASHVILLE, Tenn. — It didn’t take long for the Vegas Golden Knights to use their newfound cap space Wednesday, with the Stanley Cup champions signing forward Ivan Barbashev to a five-year contract worth $5 million annually.

The Golden Knights were facing a bit of a salary cap conundrum with Barbashev, who told ESPN before the Cup finals that he wanted to remain in Vegas, as a pending unrestricted free agent.

Or they were facing a conundrum until Wednesday afternoon, when they traded veteran forward Reilly Smith and his $5 million cap hit over the next two years to the Pittsburgh Penguins for a 2023 third-round pick.

A little more than an hour after the Golden Knights traded Smith, the team announced they had signed Barbashev through the 2027-28 season. Barbashev now joins teammates such as Jack Eichel, Alex Pietrangelo and Mark Stone among the eight players on the Golden Knights roster under contract for at least three more seasons.

Barbashev’s acquisition at the trade deadline didn’t garner as much attention as some other deals, but he jumped right into the Golden Knights’ lineup and was a key cog in their run to the Cup.

A Cup champion in 2019 with the St. Louis Blues, Barbashev, 27, finished with 16 goals and 45 points with the Golden Knights and Blues. But he truly added to his free agent résumé in the postseason, where he posted six goals and 15 points in the first three rounds alone and helped Vegas to its second Western Conference title. In the Knights’ title-winning game on June 13, Barbashev scored his first goal of the Stanley Cup Final, as Vegas cruised to a 9-3 win over the Florida Panthers.

Along the way, his asking price skyrocketed from the team-friendly $2.3 million annual cap hit on the two-year contract he signed with the Blues in 2021, and many teams were believed to have been interested.

“He’s a good player for us,” Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy said during the regular season. “He’s a guy who’s not going to get a lot of attention. He’s not flashy.”

Barbashev’s career season came in 2021-22, when he finished with 26 goals and 60 points. A third-liner at certain times in his development with St. Louis, Barbashev is a definitive first- or second-liner now, and is coming off a Vegas run in which he averaged 17:39 time on the ice.

A native of Moscow, Barbashev, a 2014 second-round pick of the Blues, broke into the league in the 2016-17 season.

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Sources: Hokies fire Pry after 0-3 start, ODU loss

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Sources: Hokies fire Pry after 0-3 start, ODU loss

Virginia Tech has fired coach Brent Pry, sources told ESPN’s Pete Thamel on Sunday. Pry is set to be owed more than $6 million in his buyout.

The move comes a day after a 45-26 home loss to Old Dominion in which the Hokies were booed loudly while heading to the locker room for halftime.

Saturday’s loss dropped Virginia Tech to 0-3 on the season and 16-24 through four seasons under Pry.

The hot-seat talk bubbled up around Pry in November last season, and if the Hokies had lost to Virginia to end the season, a change may have been made at that point. But Virginia Tech defeated Virginia, and Pry’s second consecutive 6-6 regular season landed him in a bowl game.

But as the offseason included personnel changes, the talk around Pry’s status didn’t fade. He entered Year 4 with a new defensive coordinator — Sam Siefkes, a former linebackers coach with the Arizona Cardinals — and a staff that included former longtime Hokies defensive coordinator Bud Foster as an adviser/analyst.

It did not work in the early going. Though the Hokies played hard in a season-opening loss to South Carolina, they were pushed around by another SEC team, Vanderbilt, in Virginia Tech’s home opener a week later. The Commodores scored 34 consecutive points to close out a 44-20 win in which they trailed by 10 points at halftime.

That loss, however, proved to be just an opening act to Saturday’s stunning loss to in-state foe Old Dominion.

“Clearly, it starts with me,” Pry said after the loss to the Monarchs. “Coaches, players, everybody is accountable here. We’ve got to get back to the basics and find a way to be closer to the team we can be.”

Virginia Tech will host Wofford on Saturday before beginning ACC play the following week at NC State.

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UCLA fires coach Foster after Bruins start 0-3

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UCLA fires coach Foster after Bruins start 0-3

UCLA fired football coach DeShaun Foster after he started his second season at the helm 0-3, the school announced Sunday.

An impressive class in the transfer portal, including the addition of former Tennessee quarterback Nico Iamaleava, seemed like a solid foundation for Year 2 under Foster, who rallied the Bruins to win four of their last six games to end the 2024 season.

But this season couldn’t have started off any worse. In the Rose Bowl on opening night, the Bruins fell to Utah 43-10. A week later at UNLV, they stumbled again, dropping a 30-23 decision. But those losses were just lead-ins to a puzzling 35-10 defeat at the hands of New Mexico in Week 3 at the Rose Bowl.

The Bruins, through three weeks, did not top 23 points in any game, and had allowed at least 30 in all three losses.

Foster had a 5-10 record in the 15 games he coached for the Bruins.

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Surging Rangers get Garcia back from stint on IL

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Surging Rangers get Garcia back from stint on IL

NEW YORK — The Texas Rangers got a key player back for their playoff push Sunday, when outfielder Adolis García was activated from the 10-day injured list.

García, who missed 10 games with a strained right quad, was set to bat fourth and play right field in the series finale against the New York Mets.

The IL stint was the second in a month for García, who was sidelined by a sprained left ankle from Aug. 13-22. The former All-Star and Gold Glove winner is batting .235 with 18 homers and 73 RBIs this season, but he hit .368 with two homers, nine RBIs and three steals in as many attempts in nine games following his return from the ankle injury before getting hurt while beating out a potential double-play grounder against the Arizona Diamondbacks on Sept. 1.

“It’s always good to get one of your core guys back,” Rangers manager Bruce Bochy said. “He was really swinging the bat well when he got hurt.”

Despite dealing with a litany of injuries, the Rangers entered Sunday on a six-game winning streak and with the best record in the majors (16-4) since Aug. 23. Texas was two games behind the Houston Astros and Seattle Mariners in the AL West race.

Second baseman Marcus Semien (left foot) and pitcher Nathan Eovaldi (right rotator cuff) are likely out for the regular season while shortstop Corey Seager is recovering from an appendectomy.

To make room for García, the Rangers optioned outfielder Dustin Harris to Triple-A Round Rock.

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