Inside Virginia Tech’s post-Frank Beamer struggles — and how the Hokies are trying to recover
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Andrea Adelson, ESPN Senior Writer
Virginia Tech coach Brent Pry inherited a program in 2022 that had lost its way, more than a decade removed from its last conference championship.
Though Pry had zero head-coaching experience, he had spent the previous eight years at Penn State, coaching and recruiting in the Big Ten. Perhaps most importantly, he was the candidate with the most extensive ties to Blacksburg and legendary coach Frank Beamer. When Pry was introduced as head coach, athletic director Whit Babcock proclaimed, “It’s nice to see this place reunited.”
Then Pry went 3-8, giving Virginia Tech its first losing season in 30 years. Though Pry remains optimistic about the future — “I’m the right guy for this place, and this place is right for me” — one major question persists:
Can Virginia Tech still compete at the highest level of college football?
Beamer took Virginia Tech to unprecedented heights — six BCS games, including one national championship game appearance, and a string of eight consecutive 10-win seasons from 2004 to 2011. His successor, Justin Fuente, won 10 games in his first year, then went 33-27 over the next five amid what sources described as a “dysfunctional” relationship with the administration.
Now it is up to Pry, a former assistant under Beamer in the 1990s, to return the program to relevance. Virginia Tech has spent more than $100 million to improve its facilities and resources, but is that enough for the Hokies to compete with the ACC’s top teams or the charged-up Big Ten and SEC?
Answering that question requires a deeper examination of how Virginia Tech fell so far in the first place. ESPN spoke to more than 30 former and current coaches, players, administrators and staff at Virginia Tech to see how things unraveled in the post-Beamer era. What emerged was a portrait of a department in disarray, from the top of the administration down, as the football program grappled with its storied past and a future that required far more investment and forward-thinking than ever before.
WHEN FUENTE WAS hired to take over the program before the 2016 season, he appeared to be a perfect fit — a 39-year-old, up-and-coming coach who transformed Memphis from a losing program into a 10-game winner. He even agreed to keep longtime Virginia Tech defensive coordinator Bud Foster on staff, as a way to help ease the transition.
Fuente understood it would be difficult as the immediate successor to Beamer, who went 238-121-2 during his 29 years as head coach. Beamer not only won at a high level, he was so present and down to earth that the fan base considered him part of their family. Beamer has never met a stranger; Fuente is far more reserved.
Fuente, who declined to comment for this story, has previously said he knew the challenges at Virginia Tech. In an interview with ESPN in 2016, Fuente said, “Replacing a guy like that, you just try and add to the things he’s already accomplished. We have a lot of work to do to get back to the level that Virginia Tech fans expect. We know that. We welcome that challenge.” What became challenging, according to sources familiar with the situation, was how hard it would be to change the overall mindset when things had been done one way for 29 years.
In retrospect, Babcock agrees.
“What I do realize now is it’s a lot harder to follow a legend than I anticipated, and that has nothing to do with Coach Beamer,” Babcock said.
On the outside, it appeared the transition was going smoothly at first. Fuente won 10 games and took Virginia Tech to an ACC championship game in his first year. Behind the scenes, he faced challenges. Among the most difficult, according to sources inside the program, was a fractured relationship with executive associate athletic director John Ballein.
Ballein arrived at Virginia Tech in 1987 as a graduate assistant on Beamer’s first staff and served as football ops director for 20 years — working as Beamer’s right-hand man. Babcock placed Ballein as football administrator in 2017, believing he could help Fuente.
Instead, several sources said Fuente and Ballein clashed from the start. “I don’t think he was a big Justin Fuente fan,” said one former staff member. “John never really got a great feel for him initially. I don’t think he went out of his way to be great with Justin, but I don’t know if Justin really wanted John to do that.”
Multiple sources, including both former and current staffers in the athletic department, described their relationship this way: Ballein believed in the way he ran things under Beamer. Under Fuente, he bristled at requests to change, and that ultimately forced the program into limbo — caught between the old guard and the new. Beamer remained a presence in Blacksburg, too. He would bring his dog to campus every day for lunchtime walks he took with Ballein.
“Do I think Justin was the right fit when they hired him? Yes. Absolutely,” said one source who worked in the Virginia Tech administration. “But I don’t think Nick Saban could have gotten himself out of the sandbags they attached to him.”
Babcock said the only time Fuente raised concerns about Ballein was in reference to wanting to do things “his own way, wanting to make a clean break.” But others both inside the football and athletic department painted a different picture.
The two rarely agreed and often butted heads in terms of what players needed and how the football program should be run, according to multiple former and current staff members.
“If we talked about what kind of grass to plant, what kind of fireworks to shoot, the first question out of everybody’s mouth was, ‘What would Coach Beamer want?’ That never happened with Coach Fuente,” said one source, who still works at Virginia Tech, referring to a perceived lack of power for Fuente. “Never. The support to serve the guy that they hired was not there.
“It blows my mind as an institution we let it get to this point over petty bull crap. What should have happened in my mind is Whit should have gotten Coach Fuente and John Ballein in a room and said, ‘Y’all better work this crap out. Find a frickin’ way or we’re all going to lose our jobs.’ I don’t think that ever happened.”
When asked if he thought there was any division within his administration, Babcock repeatedly denied knowing about any tensions.
“I’ve never seen any evidence, heard it secondhand, no examples, never any proof of John ever undercutting anything that Justin Fuente did.”
Ballein was not made available to comment for this story. Babcock said it was his decision to remove Ballein as sport administrator in 2018 and replace him with senior associate athletic director Danny White, who remains in that position today.
“I really wanted to help Justin do it his own way,” Babcock said. “I realized you can’t turn back the clock, and I thought Danny would bring a fresh set of eyes to it.”
Even though Ballein was moved out as football administrator, multiple former football staffers said his presence loomed large. “It was kind of like the Wizard of Oz,” one former football staffer said. “You know he was up there and behind the curtain of what’s getting shot down.”
THE PROGRAM FUENTE took over was no longer a championship-caliber contender. In 2014 and 2015, Beamer’s final two seasons, Virginia Tech needed wins over Virginia in the regular-season finale just to keep its 23-year bowl streak alive.
It was also around this time that the financial disparities between Virginia Tech and other Power 5 programs — in facilities, salaries and staffing — started to come into sharper focus. In 2017-18, for example, Virginia Tech ranked sixth out of eight public schools in the ACC in total operating expenses ($93.6 million).
“Coming into Virginia Tech, I was like, ‘Well, it’s a bigger-name place,’ and from the very beginning, I was stunned at how far behind they were and the lack of communication with the athletic department,” said one football staffer who previously worked at another Power 5 school. “The facilities were way behind, they didn’t have many positions and salaries weren’t great. I don’t know a better way to say it, but I was like, ‘What the F?'”
Fuente had five combined operations and recruiting staffers when he arrived. During the same time frame, Clemson had 22 ops and recruiting staffers. When it came to the salary pool to hire and retain full-time assistant coaches, Virginia Tech had roughly half of what ACC champion Clemson had.
“Justin was being asked to compete against Clemson, which isn’t realistic because their budget was so much larger,” one fundraising source said. “I was taken aback how there wasn’t any sort of being proactive, raising money for Justin. Think if that money had been invested in football.”
At the time, freshman football players on campus for summer workouts were housed in dorms without air conditioning, sometimes three to a room, for up to two months before being moved to their permanent housing for the year. Babcock said there remain some dorms on the Virginia Tech campus without air conditioning, and when they found out about football players placed there, “especially during August preseason camp, we worked to get them moved. That was an area that we didn’t feature much in our recruiting, and that’s what led to the construction of a $100 million football dorm.” The new dorm is shared with other students and is patterned after Auburn’s and Alabama’s. It’s a major improvement over what athletes had to endure before.
“There were nights I sweated bullets and couldn’t sleep, and I had to be up for practice,” one former player said. “You can’t preach doing the little things to us, and then y’all got us doing this. It turned into a big deal because I’m not getting good rest or I’m not making weight. It doesn’t make sense.”
There were other problem areas. Virginia Tech did not have a dedicated dining hall at the time, nor a standalone football facility. Players complained about getting their stipend checks late, forcing some to be late with their rent payments. A Virginia Tech spokesperson said checks can be withheld if an athlete has a hold on their account. Holds can occur for items ranging from unpaid parking tickets to student conduct issues. But one former staffer pushed back on this assertion, saying there was constant miscommunication with the financial office, which sometimes mailed checks to the wrong address. Players also pointed to their apparel, a matter of pride for many college athletes. Virginia Tech’s Nike contract, which pays roughly $1.98 million in cash and apparel annually, ranked among the worst deals in the Power 5. Babcock said players got everything they needed, but players complained gear was in short supply.
“Say you needed new gloves, they would fight you and not try to give you another pair of gloves for practice,” another former player said. “So you get one of each and everything, and if you lose it, it’s over with, you can’t get another.”
According to one former football staffer, Fuente asked assistant coaches to pool together extra gear and give it to players as part of a reward system. Oftentimes that meant non-Nike-issued gear in player lockers. It became a running joke.
“I’m thinking, that’s unbelievable that we’re doing a clothing drive for our own team,” the former football staffer said.
Babcock said the athletic department started using its own money to buy more gear to alleviate worries from players and coaches across all sports.
From a facilities standpoint, Fuente was able to get support from Babcock and the administration to make some much-needed upgrades. Virginia Tech spent more than $120 million to upgrade its facilities and resources while Fuente was there — including a weight room and a dining and nutrition hall in addition to the new athletics dorm.
“I can’t think of a single example — ever — where Justin asked for anything that would advance the program that I ever said no to,” Babcock said.
But Virginia Tech didn’t always execute those upgrades competently. Several players pointed to a remodeled and expanded weight room that opened in 2021 — without new weights. As a cost-saving measure, Virginia Tech administrators made the decision not to buy new weights because, as Babcock told ESPN, “Weights weigh the same.”
That decision became problematic when weights went missing because they were left unsecured during the pandemic. When the new weight room opened, the strength staff had to go to the university’s Department of Recreational Sports to borrow weights.
“It was always something,” said a former player.
Virginia Tech eventually bought new weights. But by the time all these projects were completed, Fuente’s own future at the school was in jeopardy.
INDEED, DURING THE 2018-19 season, 20 players entered the portal. According to multiple sources, the staff viewed the transfers as “addition by subtraction.”
“You could point the finger, but at the end of the day, it’s a little bit on everybody,” said defensive lineman Houshun Gaines, who played at Virginia Tech from 2016 to ’18. “Everybody has to do a better job — players have to do a better job of trying to get the coach to trust them, and then the coaches have to be more trusting.”
Other players viewed the situation differently. In one highly publicized incident, multiple players told Sports Illustrated in 2019 that a teammate wanted to throw the 2018 regular-season finale against Marshall so they could go home instead of keeping the school’s bowl streak alive. Virginia Tech won. That teammate was no longer with the program in 2019.
Multiple players told ESPN they felt their departed teammates were treated unfairly; others said because there was so much roster turnover, they could not gain the cohesion and chemistry necessary to be a complete team. Others pointed to growing distrust with the football staff.
“We had no relationships anymore because of all the controversy that was going on within the walls,” one former player said. “It was terrible. Nobody wanted to be there, we were leaving on weekends right after the games, we protested practice once, like they did not go to practice, they all stayed in the back of the parking lot.”
Quincy Patterson II, who transferred from Virginia Tech after the 2020 season, played at North Dakota State and Temple after he left the Hokies.
“I always thought it was strange the amount of hate Fuente got, even from the people on the team,” Patterson said. “The fans took it to a whole new level with the hate for Fuente, and then the players kind of built off that, like, ‘Oh yeah, what they’re saying is true,’ even if it wasn’t necessarily true. And I feel like that’s kind of how he got so bashed.”
The situation became further inflamed, both publicly and within the administration, in January 2020, when Fuente interviewed with Baylor to replace coach Matt Rhule, who had moved on to the NFL’s Carolina Panthers. The news was not taken well in the locker room, within the administration or among the fan base. Even though Fuente decided to stay with the Hokies, sources indicated Babcock was upset with the way Baylor and Fuente handled the entire situation.
Heading into the 2020 season, tensions were high. With looming pay cuts, reductions to an already tight budget and COVID-19 leaving only 49 scholarship players available for the opener, a meeting between Babcock and Fuente grew contentious. Their yelling was so loud that those in surrounding offices could hear the shouts.
“That’s a personnel-related issue,” Babcock said of the meeting. “I don’t think it’s rare, though, hypothetically, for ADs and coaches to sometimes have direct, hard conversations.” Asked whether they raised their voices, Babcock said, “I don’t recall.”
Virginia Tech went 5-6 in 2020, and speculation swirled about Fuente’s future. At the same time, Shane Beamer, son of Frank Beamer, had drawn interest from South Carolina for its open head-coaching job. Beamer was an Oklahoma assistant at the time, and had coached with his dad in Blacksburg from 2011-2015.
Once those reports surfaced, multiple sources with knowledge of the situation indicated three people who did not work for the school but had deep Virginia Tech ties reached out to Shane Beamer to gauge his interest in the Virginia Tech head-coaching job. They said if he wanted to be the head coach at Virginia Tech, they would talk to Babcock on his behalf.
That conversation never happened. Shane Beamer wanted the South Carolina job, and was hired Dec. 6. Babcock said he never spoke to Beamer. When reached by ESPN, Beamer declined comment.
On Dec. 15, Babcock announced Fuente would return. He also maintained that Fuente’s $10 million buyout was not a factor in the decision. “I believe in Justin,” Babcock said. “It’s not always the fashionable thing to keep somebody when everybody is yelling, but he’s our guy, and I believe he gives us the best chance to be successful.”
Babcock also announced they had a plan to bring the football budget into the top third of the ACC. In April 2021, Virginia Tech launched a $400 million fundraising campaign — with the hopes of using $30 million for a “football enhancement fund.”
Fuente had to win in 2021. A Week 1 victory over No. 10 North Carolina certainly drew attention, but then the losses started to mount. After Virginia Tech blew a nine-point lead against Syracuse with five minutes to play in late October, fans started chanting, “Fire Fuente!”
Sitting at 5-5, Fuente and Virginia Tech parted ways. He left with a 43-31 record at the school.
Fuente made mistakes — he waited too long to revamp his coaching staff and did not recruit the state of Virginia well. The quarterback position never developed after quarterback Jerod Evans’ departure for the NFL draft following the 2016 season. Multiple starting quarterbacks eventually transferred, including Hendon Hooker, who ended up starting at Tennessee and winning SEC Offensive Player of the Year in 2022 before becoming a third-round pick of the Detroit Lions this past spring.
“The whole time we were thinking that we know Hendon Hooker is a great quarterback, and he can lead us to wins,” said one player on the 2021 team. “But they wouldn’t hear that from the players.”
It was just another thread to pull in the unraveling of Fuente as head coach.
“There’s only so much you can fight off,” Patterson said. “When you get that much hate, and that much negative energy put towards you, it’s kind of hard for you to go to work every day and not think about it. You kind of succumb to the pressure.”
SO HOW DOES Virginia Tech find success again?
Bringing in a coach to engage more in the community and recruit the Virginia footprint were at the top of the priority list when Babcock set out to hire a new head coach. Those two criteria also happen to fit the Frank Beamer way. Hiring Pry — who worked as a graduate assistant under Beamer from 1995 to ’97 and still had ties to Ballein — felt strategic in many ways. To move on from the Fuente era, Babcock wanted to lean heavily on the past.
Said Beamer of Pry: “I’ve always thought he was a smart guy. Some people understand the game, some people the dots don’t connect, but I always thought he had that. He’s got a great background — wants to be at Virginia Tech. I think it’s the perfect match.”
But so much has changed. When Beamer was head coach, he did not have to worry about much of what keeps coaches up at night today, including the transfer portal, NIL, growing television revenue gaps and skyrocketing coaching salaries. Recruiting has changed, too. Beamer built the Hokies into a national power with an emphasis on recruiting in the 757 area code — Virginia Beach, Hampton Roads and the Tidewater region. At the time, he had a near monopoly on the area. That is no longer the case for the Hokies.
Penn State, where Pry worked before Virginia Tech, has signed more ESPN 300 players from the 757 area code since 2018 than the Hokies. So have other prominent schools, including Clemson, Ohio State and North Carolina. That monopoly Virginia Tech once had on in-state players no longer exists and will take time to rebuild.
“The great example was when I went to Warwick High School our first winter,” Pry said, “and the assistant that had been there for a long time, he says, ‘We hadn’t seen a Virginia Tech coach in six years.’ At Michael Vick’s school.”
Pry recalled recruiting players like Penn State starters Yetur Gross-Matos (Spotsylvania, Va.), Trace McSorley (Ashburn, Va.), DaeSean Hamilton (Fredericksburg, Va.) and Brandon Smith (Louisa, Va.), none of whom had Virginia Tech in the mix. All four ended up getting drafted into the NFL.
Virginia Tech receiver Ali Jennings, from Richmond, went to West Virginia out of high school before transferring to Old Dominion and then the Hokies. He said players from Virginia stopped considering Virginia Tech.
“We weren’t going to Tech,” Jennings said. “Some schools didn’t even allow Tech to come into their school anymore. They would sometimes offer guys and then pull their offers to go get another guy [from out of state]. And it was like, this is supposed to be the home team? We want to go here, but you won’t give us the opportunity to.”
Virginia Tech is trying to make strides across its football spectrum. It gave Pry a larger budget to hire additional staff for the recruiting and player personnel departments. The Hokies increased their football support staff salary pool from $1.9 million to $3.4 million. The assistant coach salary pool increased from $4.2 million to $5.6 million. But those numbers still fall short of other programs. Cincinnati, for example, has an assistant coach salary pool of $7.25 million. The Hokies’ coordinators are not among the highest-paid in the ACC.
Virginia Tech is making headway in its fundraising with the $400 million Reach for Excellence Campaign, surpassing $200 million. The school announced in 2022 that the football initiative has helped fund assistant coaches’ salaries, recruiting, player development, quality control coaches and capital enhancements of the football program.
The school’s facilities are worthy of a Power 5 conference now with a newly renovated player lounge that opened in 2022, and plans for a new $5 million locker room are underway. Pry said once the locker room is done, the Hokies “will be in a pretty good place facilitywise.”
But just as Virginia Tech has gotten up to par with regard to facilities, other issues have moved to the forefront.
The SEC and Big Ten schools will stand to make roughly $30 million more per season in their new television contracts than those in the ACC. There also is the looming specter of further conference realignment and where Virginia Tech fits in the landscape. Babcock told the Richmond Times-Dispatch in May that he has had conversations with other ACC athletics directors about “interpretations of grant of rights, of bylaws of the league, of options that may be out there.”
Pry said schools told recruits considering Virginia Tech multiple reasons not to go there — including its recent lack of success and the perception that the ACC is behind as a conference.
One Power 5 coach familiar with Virginia Tech acknowledged this is a far different time than when Beamer was coach, but also believes the Hokies are positioned well. “They’ve got tradition, they’ve got a recruiting base, they’ve got an awesome environment for home games — the things that recruits are attracted to.”
Now they just have to start winning again. ESPN’s Football Power Index projects Virginia Tech to go 5-7 this upcoming season, which would be an improvement from last season’s 3-8. In its ACC preseason media poll, Virginia Tech was picked 11th out of 14 schools.
Pry remains steadfast. He is adamant he can win at Virginia Tech, with his own spin on the Beamer way.
“We have what’s necessary to be competitive to win our league and go to the playoffs. We really do. I was at Penn State for eight years. I know what they have. We don’t have everything they have. But we got some things they don’t have, and I’m just I’m talking about from a university standpoint, a recruiting base, a league. We got some things they don’t have. It may look a little different, but we can accomplish the same.”
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Greg Wyshynski
The NHL Frozen Frenzy is like the best hockey buffet ever cooked up.
There will be some popular main courses. There will be some delectable side dishes. But with all 32 teams in action from 6 p.m. ET puck drops through the Battle of California showdown between the Los Angeles Kings and San Jose Sharks at 11 p.m. ET, fans will be able to sample all the NHL has to offer in one gluttonous sitting.
Here are reasons to watch all 32 teams during the Frozen Frenzy and beyond, from superstar players to teams with championship aspirations to controversial storylines to Alex Ovechkin once again chasing NHL goal-scoring history.
Here we go … and enjoy the Frenzy!
Atlantic Division
The constant David Pastrnak
Since 2023, the Bruins have said farewell to franchise standard-bearers Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci (retirement) as well as Brad Marchand, their heart-and-soul captain who won a Stanley Cup with Florida after an NHL deadline trade.
Which is to say that Pastrnak has seen a lot of friends leave the Bruins’ locker room, but he just keeps doing what he does best: scoring at will. Pasta has 13 points, including five goals, in his first 10 games this season. That’s to be expected for the fifth leading scorer in the NHL (329 in 246 games) over the previous three season.
The cast changes in Boston. Pastrnak remains a shining star.
Is the goaltending finally fixed?
There are many reasons why the Sabres have crashed like a Bills fan through a table in every season since last making the playoffs in 2011, but one of the primary ones has been a lack of quality goaltending. That problem was exacerbated by presumed starter Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen taking a step back last season.
Injuries to Luukkonen in the preseason opened the door for backup Alex Lyon, signed as a free agent and coming out of the gate with a .922 save percentage in seven games; and rookie Colten Ellis, who made 29 saves in his NHL debut. Dashing early-season hopes is kind of the Sabres’ thing, but at the very least, these two netminders have generated some hope for Buffalo.
Is this the year?
It’s an annual rite in the NHL: The Red Wings being poised to break out as a contender before falling short of the postseason, which they’ve done every season since 2015-16.
But through nine games, Detroit is 6-3-0 and in second in the Atlantic Division thanks to a dominant 5-1-0 record at home. The chemistry between leading scorer Dylan Larkin (13 points) and standout winger Lucas Raymond with rookie forward Emmitt “Finsanity” Finnie has been palpable. The line of Alex DeBrincat, Marco Kasper and Patrick Kane is chipping in. The Red Wings are thriving despite goalies John Gibson (acquired from the Ducks last summer) and Cam Talbot playing below replacement level to start the season.
If every part of Detroit’s engine gets roaring at the same time, how far can the team roll?
The champs are (mostly) here!
The Panthers’ bid for a third straight Stanley Cup win and fourth straight trip to the Cup Final got off to an injurious start.
Star winger Matthew Tkachuk had groin surgery in August, putting him out until December at the earliest. Then the Panthers lost star center and team captain Aleksander Barkov on his first day of training camp, needing surgery to repair the ACL and MCL in his right knee — injuries that will sideline him for the regular season and potentially the playoffs. They also lost defenseman Dmitry Kulikov for five months with an upper-body injury.
And yet the Panthers are maintaining their level of play, if not thriving: 5-5-0 in their first 10, being led in both goals (five) and points (11) by the Rat King himself, Brad Marchand.
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Brad Marchand scores goal vs. Penguins
Brad Marchand lights the lamp
No. 1 for a reason
Through 10 games, the Canadiens led the Atlantic with a 7-3-0 record. There are plenty of reasons for this great start, from the outstanding play of rookie goalie Jakub Dobes and winger Ivan Demidov to the continued maturation of players such as Lane Hutson and Alex Newhook.
But the constant for the Habs has been their No. 1 line of Cole Caufield (seven goals), Nick Suzuki (13 points) and Juraj Slafkovsky, who are scoring over 3.5 goals per 60 minutes and giving up only 0.95 goals per 60 minutes to far this season.
The bunch without Brady
Brady Tkachuk is the driving force behind the Ottawa Senators, both statistically and as one of the NHL’s most influential captains. But the Sens lost him to a torn ligament in his right thumb on Oct. 13 which required surgery, and likely will keep him out until around Thanksgiving.
The Sens are 4-4-1 through nine games. Helping to fill the void left by Tkachuk are two players off to a fast start: Centers Shane Pinto (eight goals through nine games) and Dylan Cozens (six).
Is their luck turning?
Eight of the Lightning’s first nine games this season have been decided by one goal. They were 1-2-2 in those games until back-to-back wins against the Ducks and Golden Knights at home.
Of course, as Billy Zane taught us in “Titanic”: Sometimes you make your own luck. Getting a more consistent defensive performance from their dynamic top line — Brayden Point is a minus-10 already — would be a good start.
What happens when the World Series is over?
The good news in Toronto: The incredible run by the Blue Jays to the World Series has brought the city — and much of the nation — together in following every Vladimir Guerrero Jr. swing and Trey Yesavage pitch this postseason. (Hence the change in start time for the Maple Leafs-Flames game to 6 p.m. ET.)
That means there has been a lot less attention — and scrutiny — on a post-Mitch Marner Maple Leafs team that is decidedly OK and nothing more so far. They’re eighth offensively thanks to 14 points in eight games by William Nylander — and 28th defensively thanks to below-replacement goaltending. Joseph Woll is back after an extended personal absence, so that should help the latter.
But once the World Series is over, fans will go from talking about Max Scherzer to Max Domi. And we can’t even imagine the takes if the Jays eliminate the Dodgers and plan the parade the Leafs have been trying to draw up again since the 1960s.
Metropolitan Division
When will Nikolaj Ehlers get rolling?
Some cynical Winnipeg fans are bathing in schadenfreude watching Ehlers’ first handful of games with the Hurricanes.
Ehlers left the Jets as a free agent for a six-year, $51 million deal as the latest solution on the wing for Carolina’s top line. While linemates Seth Jarvis (seven goals) and Sebastian Aho (10 points) are thriving, Ehlers went five straight games without a point to start the season.
The good news for Carolina and their new great Dane: He has assists in three straight games, so maybe the aforementioned rolling has started.
The Big Boss
Dmitri Voronkov doesn’t have the name recognition of Zach Werenski, Adam Fantilli or linemate Kirill Marchenko when it comes to Blue Jackets in the hockey discourse. But the 6-foot-5, 235-pound winger who self-bestowed the nickname “Big Boss” has been an absolute force so far this season on Columbus’s top line.
He scored five goals and added four assists through eight games for the Jackets, skating to a plus-8. GM Don Waddell challenged Voronkov to work on his conditioning when he signed him to a two-year contract extension in July. That could be the key for the Big Boss surpassing his 23 goals and 24 assists in 73 games last season.
Jack Hughes, goal machine
When Hughes is healthy and in the lineup, few players in the NHL provide their team the propulsive offensive spark that the 24-year-old center provides the Devils. Hughes has eight goals in nine games for New Jersey, including two game winners. Jesper Bratt has assisted on five of them — there are times when Bratt and Hughes seem like they’re playing on a different speed setting than everyone else.
The Devils have never had a 50-goal or 100-point scorer in franchise history. Hughes is on pace for both — provided he can stay in the lineup.
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Jack Hughes scores hat trick in Devils’ win
Jack Hughes leads the Devils to a 5-2 win over the Maple Leafs with his third career hat trick.
The joy of Matthew Schaefer
Few rookies have arrived in the NHL with the boundless enthusiasm and positivity of Matthew Schaefer. The first overall pick in this summer’s draft, the 18-year-old defenseman has earned his freshman year ice time (23:12 per game) with seven points through eight games, including three points on the power play.
The charismatic Schaefer was an instant fan favorite, with the crowd at UBS Arena chanting his name during a recent win over San Jose. Schaefer acknowledged those cheers after the game: “I love this place! Let’s go Islanders, baby!”
Are they OK?
Perhaps this is a transition season. Perhaps new captain J.T. Miller hasn’t imprinted his win-at-all-costs style on the rest of the roster. Perhaps new coach Mike Sullivan just needs more time to unlock his roster’s offense or perhaps even he can’t solve the team’s depth issues.
Whatever the reasons, the Rangers have stumbled to a 3-5-2 start, with goal scoring that ranks 31st in the NHL. There’s still plenty of time to turn the team around in front of goalie Igor Shesterkin. Perhaps that starts during the Frenzy.
Trevor Zegras‘ second act
Before the season, former Ducks phenom Zegras told me that he wanted people to “go from saying ‘He’s good at hockey’ to ‘He’s a hockey player'” after his first season in Philadelphia.
The early returns are strong: two goals and six assists in eight games, skating to a plus-5 while averaging 16:48 of ice time per game. The only bummer for Zegras is that he hasn’t gotten a strong run at center yet for the Flyers. But as his game continues to rebound, perhaps those opportunities to be a “hockey player” will flourish.
Crosby, Malkin delay the inevitable
What the projected timeline had been for the Penguins this season: After an atrocious start clinches a fourth straight season without reaching the playoffs, franchise icons Evgeni Malkin (in the last year of his contract) and Sidney Crosby (exhausted by losing) are traded to Stanley Cup contenders.
Instead, Geno and Sid have disrupted the timeline.
The Penguins’ stars have helped the team to a 6-2-1 start, good for second in the Metro. Malkin leads the team with 14 points through nine games, while Crosby has 11 points through nine games, which includes a recent hat trick against the Stanley Cup champion Panthers. They’ve both said they don’t want their ride in Pittsburgh to end. They’re playing like it.
Ovechkin goes for 900 (and more…)
During last season’s Frozen Frenzy, Alex Ovechkin was still 41 goals away from breaking Wayne Gretzky’s all-time NHL goals record. One year later, Ovi has not only surpassed The Great One’s 894 career goals — the “Gr8 Chase” ended on Apr. 6 — but he is one goal away from becoming the first NHL player to score 900 goals in his career.
Ovechkin recently played his 1,500th career game, a standard only seven other players have achieved. That’s a lot of games … and how many more Ovechkin will play in the NHL beyond this season is an undeniable undercurrent every time he steps on the ice for the Capitals.
0:47
Alex Ovechkin extends record goal tally with No. 899
Alex Ovechkin lights the lamp for his 899th goal to pad the Capitals’ lead.
Central Division
The new dynamic duo
For 15 years and three Stanley Cup championships, the Blackhawks were defined by a pair of star forwards: Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews. We’re not looking to burden two burgeoning stars with that weight of history, but it’s hard not to get caught up in the “Chicago’s new dynamic duo” hype when discussing Connor Bedard and Frank Nazar.
Bedard, 20, is looking to rebound after failing to meet expectations last season, following his rookie of the year win in 2023-24. Nazar, 21, looks primed for a breakout season in Year 2, leading Chicago in goals (four) and points (nine) through nine games.
If nothing else, they’ve already achieved something Kane and Toews did in Chicago: Making the Blackhawks a team worth watching again.
Nate Dog is barking
Nathan MacKinnon willed the Avalanche to a Stanley Cup in 2022. Since then, Colorado has lost in the first round twice and the second round once despite a deep, star-studded lineup.
“You don’t want to win just one with this group. If we only got one, it would be tough,” MacKinnon said before the season.
The hunger for a championship is back for the Avalanche and MacKinnon, who has seven goals and seven assists through 10 game and is looking absolutely dangerous every time he touches the puck.
Otter in the net
It has been quite a ride for Dallas goalie Jake Oettinger. He made the Team USA 4 Nations Face-Off roster last season and is expected to challenge Connor Hellebuyck as the nation’s Olympic starter next February in Italy.
Then, he’ll hope to lead the Stars back to the Western Conference finals … where coach Peter DeBoer pulled him after giving up two goals on two shots in their Game 5 elimination to the Oilers. DeBoer was let go this offseason, partially for the way he handled that situation. Oettinger has said his piece about how it affected him.
Now, it’s back to leading the Stars to a fourth straight conference finals while increasing his standing in the eyes of Team USA.
The $136 million man
Kirill Kaprizov has been the most important player on the Wild since he arrived in the NHL, winning rookie of the year in 2020-21. Beginning next season, he’ll also be their wealthiest player.
Kaprizov and the Wild shocked the NHL when the inked an eight-year, $136 million contract extension in September. It’s the richest contract in total dollars and annual cap hit ($17 million) in NHL history.
As he does every season, Kaprizov is proving his worth: He has 14 points (five goals, nine assists) in 10 games.
0:29
Kirill Kaprizov tallies goal vs. Rangers
Kirill Kaprizov nets goal for Wild
Countdown to extinction
The Predators (4-4-2) are off to a better start than last season’s 0-5-0 stumble that helped dig a hole from which they could not climb. But there are many more questions than answers right now.
Can they maintain that pace without top defenseman Roman Josi, who is week-to-week because of an upper body injury? What happened to Steven Stamkos, as one of the best goal scorers of the past 20 NHL seasons mustered only one power-play goal in his first 10 games?
The good news is that Juuse Saros looks like his old self again. Perhaps he can keep this thing on track because if Nashville jumps the rails, it might be time for GM Barry Trotz to plot a new course for the franchise.
The future is now for Jimmy Snuggerud
Snuggerud is so polished as a 21-year-old player that it’s sometimes hard to remember that he’s an NHL rookie.
Blues fans (and Snuggerud himself) got a reminder of that last week when coach Jim Montgomery kept him on the bench for the third period and overtime in a loss to the Kings. Snuggerud has three goals and three assists through eight games for the Blues, making his mark in a crowded rookie field this season.
Meet the NHL’s newest contender
While they have many former Arizona Coyotes players on their roster, the Mammoth are considered a new franchise by the NHL. They were the Utah Hockey Club in their inaugural 2024-25 season. Now they’re the Utah Mammoth in Year 2 and looking to make some serious noise in the Western Conference despite their newbie status.
That goes for their players, too: Top scorers like Logan Cooley (21 years old), Dylan Guenther (22) and JJ Peterka (24, acquired from Buffalo last summer) are some of their youngest players, as well. The Mammoth enter the Frenzy atop of the Central Division having won seven games in a row — unsurprisingly, a franchise record.
The Toews comeback
Before this season, Jonathan Toews last played in the NHL on April 13, 2023, as the then-captain of the Chicago Blackhawks and a three-time Stanley Cup champion.
Dealing with the effects of long COVID-19 and chronic immune response syndrome, Toews said he was stepping away from hockey but not retiring. He went on a “healing journey” that included “five weeks in India undergoing an Ayurvedic detox called a Panchakarma” in November 2024, after which Toews said his health was “trending” in the right direction.
He signed with his hometown Jets as a free agent this summer. That Toews is even playing is miraculous. That he has five points in nine games, playing 16:04 per game on average for the Jets, is extraordinary.
Pacific Division
Leo Carlsson‘s star turn
Carlsson has oozed star quality since the Ducks drafted him No. 2 in 2023. His big frame (6-foot-3) and great hands have earned him comparisons to Penguins star Evgeni Malkin, and now Carlsson is trying to have the offensive stats to match.
The 20-year-old center has nine points through eight games, playing in between fellow young star Cutter Gauthier and veteran winger Alex Killorn. He’s one to watch, for sure.
0:33
Leo Carlsson scores goal vs. Predators
Leo Carlsson nets goal for Ducks
Time to salvage the season?
After nearly making the playoffs last season with 96 points, the Flames are one of the most disappointing teams early in the 2025-26 season.
Their offense ranks last in the NHL (2.00 goals per game) after producing only one goal in five of their first seven games. That led standout goalie Dustin Wolf to lament, via Sportsnet: “I mean, I can’t generate offense. I do my job, I try to keep the puck out of our net, and hope that our guys can generate a couple.”
Calgary had an uptick in scoring heading into the Frenzy, scoring three times in a loss to Winnipeg and a season-high five times in a win over the Rangers. But at 2-7-1 after 10 games, time is already running short for coach Ryan Huska’s team.
Can they turn things around, starting against Toronto?
Connor and Leon
Let’s not overthink this. The Oilers are blessed with arguably the two best hockey players on the planet in Connor McDavid, who has 12 points in 10 games but only one goal thus far, and Leon Draisaitl, who has 11 points in 10 games, including seven goals.
They power their own lines for Edmonton and combine their supernatural hockey acumen on the power play. Connor and Leon have led the Oilers to back-to-back Stanley Cup Final losses to the Panthers.
With McDavid signing just a two-year contract extension before the season, the Oilers explicitly understand they’re on the clock to win soon with these two superstars on the roster.
Farewell, Mr. Kopitar
While some veteran NHL stars are playing it coy about their futures, Kings captain Anze Kopitar announced before the season that this will be his last NHL campaign. (That he announced it the same day that Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw revealed he was retiring was a matter of unfortunate timing.)
The legendary center is in his 20th season with the Kings, having led them to two Stanley Cup wins and winning both the Selke Trophy (best defensive forward) and Lady Byng (gentlemanly play) twice. Catch the best Slovenian-born player in hockey history while you can.
1:03
Anze Kopitar announces he’ll retire after season to focus on family
Kings captain Anze Kopitar, a two-time Stanley Cup champion, announces he will retire after the 2025-26 season to focus on family.
Macklin Celebrini, superstar
After being drafted first overall in 2024, Celebrini had a strong rookie season (63 points in 70 games) and was a finalist for the Calder Trophy. Through nine games this season, it’s clear he’s on the cusp of superstardom.
Celebrini has dominated with six goals and nine assists, combining with fellow young star Will Smith and veteran winger Tyler Toffoli on a line that’s averaging over 4.6 goals per 60 minutes when paired together.
He has played himself into the Team Canada Olympic roster conversation. He’s going viral in weird New York City street interviews. He has arrived.
The NHL’s most surprising start
The Kraken began this season with a new head coach in Lane Lambert, a new power forward in former Stars winger Mason Marchment but much of the same cast as last season’s also-ran that earned coach Dan Bylsma a ticket out of town.
There wasn’t much optimism surrounding the Kraken … and yet there they are at 5-2-2 through their first nine games, second in the Pacific Division.
They’re not dominating offensively or defensively, nor are their special teams exemplary. But the Kraken are winning hockey games, including being a perfect 3-0-0 at home, where they’ll face the Canadiens in the Frozen Frenzy.
J.T. Miller returns
The Canucks are 5-5-0 under new head coach Adam Foote, which is impressive given some of the injuries the team has been playing through — the latest being star defenseman Quinn Hughes, who has a lower-body injury.
But Tuesday night’s spotlight is on a former Canucks player: Rangers captain J.T. Miller, who makes his first trip back to Vancouver after they traded him to the Blueshirts last season.
Please recall that Miller was traded after clashing with Vancouver star center Elias Pettersson, a conflict that rocked the Canucks’ locker room so roughly that team president Jim Rutherford said there was “no good solution that would keep this group together.”
How Miller will be received by Vancouver fans is one of the Frozen Frenzy’s most anticipated moments.
Mitch Marner finding his fit
The 28-year-old winger made his dramatic exit from Toronto last summer after nine seasons of outstanding statistical output but was treated as a postseason pariah for the Maple Leafs’ lack of playoff success. He’s in Vegas now on a blockbuster eight-year, $96 million contract.
Marner has produced around his career averages so far (10 points through nine games), but he’s still finding his fit with the Knights. His much-anticipated line with Jack Eichel was broken up after three games — with Marner dropping down to play with Tomas Hertl and Pavel Dorofeyev — but Marner and Eichel were reunited in Sunday’s overtime loss to Tampa Bay. Only two of Marner’s points have come on the power play, but Vegas is ninth in the NHL with the man advantage.
One extra bit of intrigue in Vegas’ Frozen Frenzy matchup against Carolina: Marner used his no-movement clause to reject a trade to the Hurricanes during last season, later saying it was out of consideration of his wife’s pregnancy. (They welcomed a daughter in May 2025.)
LOS ANGELES — The game that had everything ended at 11:50 p.m. PT on Monday. For the previous 6 hours, 39 minutes, Game 3 of the World Series played out like a fantastical dreamscape of baseball, filled with tension and drama and madness. It was a game unlikely any before, never to be repeated again, and when the 18th inning ended and the Los Angeles Dodgers had beaten the Toronto Blue Jays 6-5, it was, in a way, a relief, because holding your breath for hours on end is not a sustainable way to live.
Such is the price we pay for an affair like Game 3. The Dodgers and Blue Jays competed at an exceptional level in the longest game in World Series history by innings and second-longest by time. They punched and counterpunched, emptied their benches and bullpens. They executed with wizardry and found pieces of themselves they didn’t know existed. And in the 18th inning, it was Freddie Freeman, already the hero of last year’s World Series, who deposited a center-cut sinker from Brendon Little over the center-field fence 406 feet away.
There have been 703 games played in the 121-year history of the World Series. While there are certainly competitors, this one launched itself into the upper echelon, undoubtedly elite, and left the 52,654 fans at Dodger Stadium as giddy as they were almost seven years to the day earlier, when the only other 18-inning game in World Series history ended the same way: with a Dodgers walk-off homer.
Game 3 of the World Series featured…
609 pitches (LAD: 312, TOR: 297)
37 runners left on base
25 position players used
19 pitchers used pic.twitter.com/MBHReOJ16x— ESPN Insights (@ESPNInsights) October 28, 2025
The heroes were plentiful, and in the aftermath of the lunacy, one of them stood in the Dodgers’ clubhouse, still trying to process what happened. Will Klein, the last man out of the Dodgers’ bullpen, a reliever who had topped out this year at two innings and 30 pitches, threw four innings of one-hit ball and struck out five on 72 pitches. The last of them, an 86 mph curveball, induced a swing and miss from Tyler Heineman and a scream from Klein, who understood what had been asked of him and knew he’d delivered.
Games don’t become classics without efforts like Klein’s — and he had an admirer who wanted to acknowledge that. Into the Dodgers’ clubhouse strode Sandy Koufax, his eminence of Dodgers pitching, who, at 89 years old, looked no worse for the wear at 12:48 a.m. Koufax walked up to Klein, stuck out his hand, looked him in the eyes and said: “Nice going.”
This was that kind of game, the one that forges bonds between a Hall of Famer and a man with 22.2 career major league innings who didn’t make the Dodgers’ roster in any of the previous three rounds of the postseason. The kind of game that prompted Klein to unlock his phone just to see how many messages he had, only for him to scroll … and keep scrolling … and keep scrolling to the point he just stopped. The kind of game that made Klein marvel to a friend in the clubhouse: “Seventy-two. Can you believe it?”
Game 3 was anarchy, a funhouse mirror of a ballgame, everything out of order. Shohei Ohtani‘s magnificence is never in question, but to see a baseball player reach nine times, something that had been done only twice in big league history — never in the postseason and not since 1942 — still registered as incredible, his magnitude lording over the game from beginning to end. He led off the game for the Dodgers with a double. He homered his next time up. He doubled again. He homered once more, his second of the game, his eighth of the postseason, to tie the game at 5 and unleash the chaos to come.
At that point, Blue Jays manager John Schneider had seen enough. In the ninth inning, Ohtani became the first hitter intentionally walked with the bases empty in the ninth inning or later of a postseason game. The next three times he came to the plate — twice with the bases empty — Schneider held up four fingers and gladly gave Ohtani a free pass. In the 17th, with a runner on first, the Blue Jays opted to pitch to him — and Brendon Little promptly deposited four balls nowhere near the strike zone. (Schneider said after the game to expect more tiptoeing around Ohtani in the days to come.)
Schneider’s decision-making earlier in the game, in which he tried to scratch across runs by substituting in a cadre of pinch runners, left the Blue Jays’ lineup compromised for most of the second half of the game. Against a Dodgers bullpen that had been a sieve for most of the postseason, Toronto managed just one run in 13⅓ innings. Los Angeles used 10 pitchers — including Clayton Kershaw, the future Hall of Famer. Kershaw came on in the 13th with the bases loaded, ground through a nine-pitch at-bat against Nathan Lukes and induced a dribbler to second base that Tommy Edman scooped with his glove to Freeman.
Memorable moments abounded over the game that featured 615 pitches, the most in a postseason game since MLB began tracking pitches in 1988. In the 14th, Will Smith lofted a fly ball to center field and dropped his bat, thinking it was a game winner. The ball died on the warning track. Teoscar Hernández, who, like Ohtani, had four hits, did the same in the 16th. It wound up in a glove, too.
By that point, Klein had arrived and set about pulling a modern-day Nathan Eovaldi, who went 97 pitches over the final six innings of the 2018 marathon. In Klein’s final inning, Yoshinobu Yamamoto — who had thrown a 105-pitch complete game two days prior — was warming up in the bullpen. Klein walked two batters. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts could have easily gone to Yamamoto. He stuck with Klein.
Klein just did it, because he had to, and that, as much as anything, is the lesson of an evening like Game 3, when a great game — which this was for the first dozen or so innings — evolves into something different altogether. Game 3 was a test. Of endurance and will — or, as it were, Will.
“You just got to either do it or you don’t,” said Dodgers reliever Justin Wrobleski, who spent time with Klein at AAA this season. “You go out there and you’re like, ‘I know what has to be done here and let’s see what I got.’ I like moments like that because it’s a test of your character. More than that, it’s a test of everything else.”
Klein passed. And Freeman, of course, is the valedictorian of such moments, one of the clutch kings of his generation. He had struggled much of the postseason, entering the game with only one RBI in the Dodgers’ previous dozen playoff games. His first two in this World Series had looked a far cry from his performance last year, when, nursing a number of injuries, he hit a walk-off grand slam in Game 1 and won series MVP. It wasn’t just the lack of production. He wasn’t hitting the ball particularly hard, either.
On the final pitch, he finally did. This is the kind of thing that happens in 18-inning games. They are uncomfortable and scary and can end with the crack of a bat. It is terrifying. It is beautiful. It is everything.
Those lucky enough to bear witness will never forget it, either. They squirmed and flinched and closed their eyes and prayed and squealed and cringed and, in the end, saw 31 hits and 37 runners left on base and 19 pitchers and one particularly majestic swing that, 10 minutes shy of Monday turning into Tuesday, ended one of the best World Series games ever — and gave the Dodgers a 2-1 advantage in this year’s series.
Klein isn’t sure how his arm will feel by the time he returns to the ballpark Tuesday for Game 4. Typically, he said, he’s a Day 2 guy, the soreness not coming until the second day after an outing. After being lavished with praise from his teammates and thanked by Sandy Koufax and written into the annals of Dodgers history, though, tomorrow and the next day wasn’t of much concern.
“I feel great right now,” he said, and with good reason. He was the winning pitcher, the stopper, the MVP of the night every bit as much as Freeman and Ohtani, and the adrenaline rush numbed whatever pain will eventually arrive. That’s for another day. This was everything — and more.
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