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NEW YORK — The New York Rangers have been on a mission since falling to the New Jersey Devils in the opening round of the playoffs last spring. They responded by finishing with the NHL’s best regular-season record.

Artemi Panarin had a goal and an assist, Igor Shesterkin made 26 saves for his fourth shutout of the season and the New York Rangers beat the Ottawa Senators 4-0 on Monday night to clinch the Presidents’ Trophy.

Jack Roslovic, Adam Fox and Alexis Lafreniere also scored and Chris Kreider had two assists as the Rangers won their league-best 55th game and finished with 114 points — both franchise records — and will have home-ice advantage throughout the playoffs.

New York won for the fifth time in seven games and went 26-7-1 in its past 34 games. It previously won the Presidents’ Trophy in 1991-92, 1993-94 — when it won the Stanley Cup the only time since 1940 — and 2014-15.

“Obviously it’s an accomplishment,” Rangers captain Jacob Trouba said. “Now it’s a quick turn of the page and we get ready for the real stuff.”

Four teams — Washington, Detroit, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia — are still in contention to finish in the second wild card and meet the Rangers in the opening round of the postseason. The Rangers had 107 points last year but were eliminated in seven games in the first round by the second-place Devils.

“They’ve been there all year. The team played well. They competed hard,” Rangers coach Peter Laviolette said. “We’re a group that feels like when they put their equipment on, they can win … Now you’re heading into why you did all that work, the first round of the playoffs.”

Roslovic, acquired from Columbus on March 8, scored his third goal with the Rangers and ninth overall this season at 5:55 of the first, beating Ottawa goalie Joonas Korpisalo by finishing off a 2-on-1 passing play with Kreider.

“It feels good. I’m glad to contribute,” Roslovic said. “It’s a special time to be able to come in and be a helping hand.”

Fox put the Rangers ahead 2-0 with a short-handed goal at 8:58 of the second. Fox finessed a pass from Kreider past Korpisalo for his 17th goal of the season with Kaapo Kakko — playing his 300th NHL game — in the penalty box for slashing. Fox has the most goals by a Rangers defenseman since Brian Leetch scored 21 in 2000-01.

“Knowing what was on the line tonight was a good way to end our season,” Fox said. “It’s been a full team effort with everyone chipping in. We did a good job a bearing down tonight and the crowd was into it.”

Panarin made it 3-0 with his 49th goal at 4:34 of the third. Panarin finished with 120 points — second most in Rangers history to Jaromir Jagr’s 123 in 2005-06 — and with points in a franchise-record 67 of his 82 games this season.

With the Garden crowd chanting “MVP, MVP” trying to exhort their star, Panarin had a chance to score his 50th goal with a late Rangers power play, but Korpisalo denied him twice. The 32-year-old Russian forward had seven shots on goal. He smiled when asked to assess his 120-point season and his 18 shot attempts in Monday’s game.

“Multiple things, partners, coaching staff — the whole team,” Panarin cited as reasons for his best statistical year. “Pretty fun season. It’s good to have that experience but there’s no time to relax.”

Lafreniere increased the lead to 4-0 with seven minutes remaining in the third with his 28th, concluding a pretty setup from Panarin and defenseman Erik Gustafsson.

Kreider finished with 75 points, including 39 goals, for the second-highest points total of his career.

Shesterkin won seven of his past nine starts to finish the regular season at 36-17-2. In 22 games since Feb. 12, the 28-year-old Russian netminder was 16-5-1 with four shutouts.

The Rangers finished 30-11-0 at home, winning 15 of their past 19 at Madison Square Garden. The 30 home wins tied the 1970-71 squad for most in franchise history.

The Senators will miss the playoffs for the seventh straight season. The last time Ottawa reached the postseason was in 2017 when it defeated the Rangers in six games in a second-round series.

“We gave them the first two goals. Take those two goals aside and it’s a pretty good game,” Senators interim coach Jacques Martin said. “They have a good team. We battled hard. When you play these good teams, you can’t afford to give them freebies.”

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Oregon and its 14 transfer starters just beginning to ‘jell’

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Oregon and its 14 transfer starters just beginning to 'jell'

One year ago, Oregon defensive tackle Derrick Harmon was stuffing the run for Michigan State. Kobe Savage was intercepting passes for Kansas State. Jabbar Muhammad was manning cornerback in the national championship for Washington. Evan Stewart was hauling in catches for Texas A&M. And Dillon Gabriel, of course, was throwing touchdown passes for Oklahoma.

Oregon doesn’t want to be known as Transfer Portal U. Coach Dan Lanning’s No. 1-ranked Ducks, after all, boast loads of homegrown talent, including leading rusher Jordan James and leading tackler Bryce Boettcher, who also stars for the Oregon baseball team.

Earlier this year, the Ducks inked the nation’s fourth-ranked recruiting class. Oregon’s 2025 recruiting class is currently ranked seventh. And the Ducks already have landed six ESPN 300 commitments from the Class of 2026.

But in its debut season in the Big Ten, Oregon has jumped to an 8-0 start heading into Saturday’s trip to Michigan behind the play of several key FBS transfers from the past two years. In fact, 14 of the Ducks’ 22 offensive and defensive starters played elsewhere in 2022, including their entire starting receiving corps, starting defensive line and starting secondary.

Even Oregon’s Atticus Sappington, who nailed the game-winning field goal against Ohio State on Oct. 12, kicked for rival Oregon State last year.

“Everybody here is grateful,” said Ducks leading receiver Tez Johnson, who transferred in from Troy a year ago, then set an Oregon record with 86 receptions last season. “No one takes it for granted.”

Per ESPN Research, Arizona State and Virginia Tech are the only other Power 4 programs whose starting receiving lineups are comprised entirely of transfers.

Colorado, Indiana and SMU are the other Power 4 teams with all-transfer starting defensive lines. UCLA, Louisville and Houston join the Ducks as the other Power 4 all-transfer starting defensive backfields.

Lanning has said that while he wants to build Oregon through its recruiting classes, he’s always looking for the “right pieces” with the “right character fit” in the portal who can enhance the team.

The Ducks have gotten just that from an array of transfers who, collectively, have helped Oregon become a legit national title contender.

“We’ve got a lot of veteran guys, who’ve played a lot of ball, who understand our roles,” said Savage, who had a team-high eight tackles in Oregon’s thrilling 32-31 win over the Buckeyes. “A lot of us have one year left. We’re all in it to play a great brand of football, to showcase our abilities and talents for the next level and to bring a national championship to Oregon.”

Those factors, combined with a robust NIL operation, have drawn several talented transfers to Eugene over the past two years.

When Washington coach Kalen DeBoer left for Alabama to replace Nick Saban after the national title game, Muhammad said he considered following him to Tuscaloosa. But then, immediately after he entered the portal, Muhammad got a text from Johnson, who told him, “Bro, we need you at Oregon.” Johnson, who knew what Muhammad could do after facing him twice — once in the regular season and then again in the Pac-12 championship — texted Lanning next.

“Coach said, ‘We’re going to get him,'” Johnson recalled. “I’m going to call him right now.”

Lanning followed up by FaceTiming Muhammad every day until he committed to the Ducks.

“It’s been a match made in heaven,” said Muhammad, who leads Oregon with seven pass breakups. “That a group of guys could transfer in and jell like this with the rest of the team so fast is kind of crazy. It’s actually not normal. … We’ve put our differences to the side, egos to the side and have come together and meshed.”

Muhammad and others said Oregon’s “get real” sessions over the offseason helped fast-track the chemistry now manifesting on the field. Once a week, the players would gather in rotating small groups of around a dozen, discussing a different topic each time. Harmon said the most memorable subject centered around the question, “What’s your why?”

“The first day I got here, I knew it was different,” said Harmon, who ripped the ball away from running back Quinshon Judkins in the Ducks’ win over Ohio State, leading to Oregon’s first touchdown. “Learning about a guy’s backstory, learning how a guy grew up or how a guy got here through the portal and what he had to go through … little details like that that you probably wouldn’t know. But now that you do, you just play a little bit harder for the guy.”

With so many new pieces, the Ducks still got off to a slow start. They narrowly defeated Idaho in the opener, then got a scare from Boise State.

From there, Oregon has surged, with its victory over Ohio State helping to catapult the Ducks to the top of the polls.

Gabriel, who has since returned to the forefront of the Heisman conversation alongside Colorado wideout/cornerback Travis Hunter and Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty, has quickly generated a rapport with Johnson and the other receivers. The defense, meanwhile, has surrendered more than 14 points just twice this season. The past two weeks, Oregon outscored Purdue and No. 24 Illinois 73-9 combined.

“We definitely had some growing pains — we were a completely different team with new people on both sides of the ball,” Savage said. “But I feel like we’ve really started clicking.”

Spearheaded by its transfers, Oregon’s first playoff appearance in a decade is within sight. And perhaps, the school’s first national championship, too.

“Personally, I don’t feel like we’re nowhere near our peak,” Harmon said. “We’re just scratching the surface. We’ve still got a lot of work to do. But once we hit that peak, people are going to know it.”

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Big 12: No foul play with unsecured helmet comms

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Big 12: No foul play with unsecured helmet comms

The Big 12 determined Thursday that none of its games were compromised by unencrypted frequencies used with coach-to-player in-game communications this season.

Sources told ESPN on Wednesday that the coach-to-player communications for all Power 4 college football games this season have been on unencrypted frequencies, and Texas Tech requested a report from the Big 12 on its recent games against TCU and Baylor — both losses — to ensure the integrity of the games were not compromised.

Athletic director Kirby Hocutt said he raised the issue during a call with Big 12 athletic directors Tuesday, after learning that anyone with a scanner and knowledge of how to locate the frequencies had access to those in-game communications.

“Following the industry-wide concerns surrounding helmet communications, the Big 12 conducted a review of conference games and helmet communications processes to address any issues member institutions raised regarding this matter,” the Big 12 said in a statement issued Thursday. “The review showed that at no point was any Big 12 competition compromised.”

In addition, all Big 12 helmet communication programs now have the update from GSC that provides encryption, and schools may use either CoachComm or GSC for coach-to-player communication at their discretion.

GSC is the helmet communication device provider for all 68 teams in Power 4 conferences this season.

“We’ve got to have a game whose integrity is not questionable in any way on a Saturday afternoon,” Hocutt told ESPN on Wednesday. “We owe it to the 120 young men on our football team to ensure that happens, that it’s a game of fair competition and the same set of rules are enforced.”

The revelation that college football teams have not been using encrypted frequencies has frustrated several Big 12 athletic directors, who believed the Power 4 schools had the same encrypted setup used in the NFL, sources said.

This is the first college football season that the in-game use of coach-to-player helmet communications and tablets has been permitted at the FBS level. The NCAA approved the rules change in April, six months after launching an investigation into Michigan‘s alleged signal-stealing scheme under former staffer Connor Stalions.

Football operations executives for the SEC, Big 12, Big Ten and ACC have worked together with GSC in the four weeks since to investigate potential concerns and move to a more encrypted and secure platform.

Texas Tech (5-3, 3-2) opted to move forward with a different coach-to-player system with encrypted communication provided by CoachComm for its game against No. 11 Iowa State on Saturday, sources said.

A source at one Big 12 school told ESPN that his staff purchased a scanner earlier this month upon learning of the potential vulnerability and was successful in locating their own coach-to-player communication frequency during a practice.

The frequency does not broadcast all headset communications between coaches, which would be invaluable, but merely what one coach says to one player on the field — typically a quarterback on offense and a linebacker on defense — and only when the coach is holding the button to speak to them before communication is cut off 15 seconds before the snap.

“There’s no real advantage,” one Big 12 chief of staff argued. “One, you’re speaking a different language. Two, if you think you’d be able to enact in real time what they say and try to do it on the field, you’re delusional. You’re just being your stereotypical paranoid football coach. You can’t relay it to the kids fast enough.”

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Sluka, who left UNLV over NIL dispute, in portal

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Sluka, who left UNLV over NIL dispute, in portal

LAS VEGAS — Quarterback Matthew Sluka, who left UNLV three games into the season over a name, image and likeness dispute, has entered the transfer portal, agent Marcus Cromartie said Thursday.

Sluka’s decision to leave the Rebels after leading them to a 3-0 start ignited a nationwide debate about what kind of precedent this could set. By leaving before playing a fifth game, Sluka was able to use a redshirt season and preserve his final year of eligibility.

Cromartie and Bob Sluka, the quarterback’s father, have said Sluka was promised $100,000 in NIL money to transfer from Holy Cross, but no payments were ever made.

“I committed to UNLV based on certain representations that were made to me, which were not upheld after I enrolled,” Sluka posted on X when he announced his departure. “Despite discussions, it became clear that these commitments would not be fulfilled in the future. I wish my teammates the best of luck this season and hope for the continued success of the program.”

Sluka, a graduate transfer, has not spoken publicly since then.

UNLV released a statement at the time accusing Sluka’s agent of making “financial demands.”

“UNLV athletics interpreted these demands as a violation of the NCAA pay-for-play rules, as well as Nevada state law,” the school said. “UNLV does not engage in such activity, nor does it respond to implied threats. UNLV has honored all previously agreed-upon scholarships for Matthew Sluka.”

Hajj-Malik Williams, a senior transfer from Campbell, replaced Sluka as the starter and has passed for 1,017 yards and 12 touchdowns and rushed for 495 yards and five TDs. The Rebels are 3-2 under Williams, including a 29-24 loss to now No. 15 Boise State on Friday.

UNLV is 6-2 overall and bowl eligible for the second season in a row, the first time the Rebels have accomplished that in program history.

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