Pittsburgh Penguins star Sidney Crosby was once again named the NHL’s most complete player in the annual NHLPA poll released Wednesday.
Crosby earned 38.4% of the votes for “most complete player” ahead of Aleksander Barkov of the Florida Panthers (14.6%). In the five seasons the NHLPA has voted on this category, Crosby has won it every year.
A total of 639 NHLPA members took part in the NHLPA Player Poll this season, the ninth time the players association has conducted one. Players from each of the 32 teams were surveyed anonymously by the NHLPA during the first half of the regular season.
Crosby was a close second (13.6%) to Ryan O’Reilly of the Nashville Predators (14.5%) in “the player you’d most want to take a faceoff on your team.”
But Crosby (11.6%) finished a distant second to Connor McDavid (48.7%) as “the forward you’d want on your team if you needed to win one game.” Andrei Vasilevskiy of the Tampa Bay Lightning (46.9%) won the goalie category for the third straight season, while Cale Makar of the Colorado Avalanche won for defensemen (56.4%) for the second straight season.
Makar was also named the best breakout passer with 26.6% of the vote.
McDavid also won best stick handler (35.5%), finally topping Detroit Red Wings star Patrick Kane in the category after finishing second for three straight seasons. But the Edmonton star was second overall (20.9%) for “best playmaker” to Nikita Kucherov of the Lightning (28.5%). Both McDavid (99 assists) and Kucherov (96 assists) are trying to become the first players since Wayne Gretzky in 1990-91 to tally 100 assists in a season.
McDavid (17.5%) was also second in “which player do you least enjoy playing against, but would like to have on your team?” The winner for the third straight season was Brad Marchand of the Boston Bruins (29.2%), who is infamous for frustrating opponents with his offensive skill and his trash talk.
McDavid (9.5%) was second in the “most difficult player to face in their own end” category behind Lightning defenseman Victor Hedman (20.3%).
T-Mobile Arena, home to the Vegas Golden Knights, was named the toughest place to play as a visiting team (31.4%) with PNC Arena in Raleigh, home to the Carolina Hurricanes, ranking second (16.3%). For the sixth straight season, Montreal’s Bell Centre was named the arena with the best ice.
Away from the rink, Bruins forward David Pastrnak was judged to have the best style (15%).
Italy was named the global destination where NHL players most want to play a game — no surprise, given that the 2026 Olympic Winter Games are being held there.
Finally, Marie-Philip Poulin of Montreal in the Professional Women’s Hockey League was named the “PWHL player you most enjoy watching” with 31.8% of the vote, outpacing Hilary Knight of PWHL Boston (14.8%).
Sportico places the value of the franchise and its team-related holdings at $4.2 billion.
Sixth Street’s investment, reportedly approved by Major League Baseball on Monday, will go toward upgrades to Oracle Park and the Giants’ training facilities in Scottsdale, Arizona, as well as Mission Rock, the team’s real estate development project located across McCovey Cove from the ballpark.
Giants president and CEO Larry Baer called it the “first significant investment in three decades” and said the money would not be spent on players.
“This is not about a stockpile for the next Aaron Judge,” Baer told the New York Times. “This is about improvements to the ballpark, making big bets on San Francisco and the community around us, and having the firepower to take us into the next generation.”
Sixth Street is the primary owner of National Women’s Soccer League franchise Bay FC. It also has investments in the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs and Spanish soccer powers Real Madrid and FC Barcelona.
“We believe in the future of San Francisco, and our sports franchises like the Giants are critical ambassadors for our city of innovation, showcasing to the world what’s only made possible here,” Sixth Street co-founder and CEO Alan Waxman said in the news release. “We believe in Larry and the leadership team’s vision for this exciting new era, and we’re proud to be partnering with them as they execute the next chapter of San Francisco Giants success.”
Founded in 2009 and based in San Francisco, Sixth Street has assets totaling $75 billion, according to Front Office Sports.
TOKYO — Shohei Ohtani seems impervious to a variety of conditions that afflict most humans — nerves, anxiety, distraction — but it took playing a regular-season big-league game in his home country to change all of that.
After the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ Opening Day 4-1 win over the Chicago Cubs in the Tokyo Dome, Ohtani made a surprising admission. “It’s been a while since I felt this nervous playing a game,” he said. “It took me four or five innings.”
Ohtani had two hits and scored twice, and one of his outs was a hard liner that left his bat at more than 96 mph, so the nerves weren’t obvious from the outside. But clearly the moment, and its weeklong buildup, altered his usually stoic demeanor.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen Shohei nervous,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “But one thing I did notice was how emotional he got during the Japanese national anthem. I thought that was telling.”
As the Dodgers began the defense of last year’s World Series win, it became a night to showcase the five Japanese players on the two teams. For the first time in league history, two Japanese pitchers — the Dodgers’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto and the Cubs’ Shota Imanaga — faced each other on Opening Day. Both pitched well, with Imanaga throwing four hitless innings before being removed after 69 pitches.
“Seventy was kind of the number we had for Shota,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “It was the right time to take him out.”
The Dodgers agreed, scoring three in the fifth inning off reliever Ben Brown. Imanaga kept the Dodgers off balance, but his career-high four walks created two stressful innings that ran up his pitch count.
Yamamoto rode the adrenaline of pitching in his home country, routinely hitting 98 with his fastball and vexing the Cubs with a diving splitter over the course of five three-hit innings. He threw with a kind of abandon, finding a freedom that often eluded him last year in his first year in America.
“I think last year to this year, the confidence and conviction he has throwing the fastball in the strike zone is night and day,” Roberts said. “If he can continue to do that, I see no reason he won’t be in the Cy Young conversation this season.”
Cubs right fielder Seiya Suzuki went hitless in four at bats — the Cubs had only three hits, none in the final four innings against four relievers out of the Dodgers’ loaded bullpen — and rookie Roki Sasaki will make his first start of his Dodger career in the second and final game of the series Wednesday.
“I don’t think there was a Japanese baseball player in this country who wasn’t watching tonight,” Roberts said.
The Dodgers were without Mookie Betts, who left Japan on Monday after it was decided his illness would not allow him to play in this series. And less than an hour before game time, first baseman Freddie Freemanwas scratched with what the team termed “left rib discomfort,” a recurrence of an injury he first sustained during last year’s playoffs.
The night started with a pregame celebration that felt like an Olympic opening ceremony in a lesser key. There were Pikachus on the field and a vaguely threatening video depicting the Dodgers and Cubs as Monster vs. Monster. World home-run king Saduharu Oh was on the field before the game, and Roberts called meeting Oh “a dream come true.”
For the most part, the crowd was subdued, as if it couldn’t decide who or what to root for, other than Ohtani. It was admittedly confounding: throughout the first five innings, if fans rooted for the Dodgers they were rooting against Imanaga, but rooting for the Cubs meant rooting against Yamamoto. Ohtani, whose every movement is treated with a rare sense of wonder, presented no such conflict.
JUPITER, Fla. — St. Louis Cardinals shortstop Masyn Winn was scratched from the lineup for their exhibition game on Tuesday because of soreness in his right wrist.
Winn was replaced by Jose Barrero in the Grapefruit League matchup with the Miami Marlins, with the regular-season opener nine days away. Winn, who was a 2020 second-round draft pick by the Cardinals, emerged as a productive everyday player during his rookie year in 2024. He batted .267 with 15 home runs, 11 stolen bases and 57 RBIs in 150 games and was named as one of three finalists for the National League Gold Glove Award that went to Ezequiel Tovar of the Colorado Rockies.
Winn had minor surgery after the season to remove a cyst from his hand. In 14 spring training games, he’s batting .098 (4 for 41) with 12 strikeouts.