‘I’m never going to stop’: Inside Freddie Freeman and the Dodgers’ march to a title that solidified their dominant era
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Jeff Passan, ESPN
NEW YORK — Two days before the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ postseason began, Freddie Freeman felt a twinge in his rib cage when he took a swing during a simulated game. He vowed to ignore it. It’s not as if he wasn’t already in pain. Over the previous week, Freeman had nursed a sprained right ankle sustained trying to avoid a tag while running to first base. He needed no more impediments. The Dodgers had a World Series to win.
A day later, Oct. 4, after Freeman finished a news conference in which he declared himself ready to play despite the ankle injury, he retreated to the batting cage at Dodger Stadium. He wanted to take some swings in preparation for a live batting-practice session. His side tingled with each of his first dozen swings. On the 13th swing, Freeman felt a jolt through his body and crumpled to the ground.
Unable to even pick himself off the floor, Freeman was helped into the X-ray room next to Los Angeles’ dugout. The results were inconclusive, and around 9:30 p.m., he received a call. The Dodgers wanted him to drive to Santa Monica for more imaging. He hopped in the car, then in an MRI tube. Around 11:30 p.m., the results arrived: Freeman had broken the costal cartilage in his sixth rib, an injury that typically sidelines players for months.
Devastation set in. Walking hurt. Breathing stung. Swinging a bat felt like an impossibility.
Freeman’s father, Fred, worried about his youngest son, whom he raised after Freeman’s mother, Rosemary, died of melanoma when Freddie was 10. He saw the anguish in every minuscule movement. Considering the injuries to his rib and ankle and the lasting soreness from a middle finger he fractured in August, surely Freeman was too beaten up to keep playing. Surely there would be more postseasons, more opportunities.
“I actually told him to stop,” Fred said. “I said, ‘Freddie, this is not worth it. I know you love baseball. I love baseball. But it’s not worth what you’re going through.’ And he looked at me like I was crazy, and he said, ‘Dad, I’m never going to stop.'”
NOT ONLY DID Freeman never stop, he put on one of the Dodgers’ greatest Fall Classic performances in history and readied the franchise for its first victory parade in 36 years.
The championship was won in a Game 5 that saw the Dodgers stake the New York Yankees a five-run lead, claw back for a 7-6 victory thanks to one of the most horrific half-innings in the Yankees’ storied history, and seal the championship with bravura performances from their bullpen and manager.
Los Angeles never got to fete the Dodgers for their World Series victory in 2020. Beyond the lack of a celebration, the title had been demeaned and denigrated by those who regarded it as a lesser championship, the product of a 60-game season played in front of no fans and a postseason run inside a pseudo-bubble. To the Dodgers, that always registered as unfair, and they used the slight as fuel.
“Twenty-nine other teams wanted to win the last game, too, regardless of the circumstances,” said right-hander Walker Buehler, who pitched the ninth inning of Game 5 to close the series for the Dodgers. “Like, everyone that talks about it, fine. … But 29 other professional, billion-dollar organizations would’ve liked to have won the last one. And we did.”
Los Angeles’ fortunes in recent postseasons have belied its evolution into the best organization in baseball. This season, the Dodgers won a major-leagues-best 98 games and their 11th National League West division title in 12 years. Their only championship in that time came in 2020. The Dodgers felt as if they had a World Series stolen from them in 2017 by a Houston Astros team later found to have used a sign-stealing scheme. A juggernaut Boston Red Sox team bulldozed them in five games a year later. The past two years, Los Angeles flamed out in first-round division series.
The Dodgers wanted this championship for so many reasons beyond the obvious. Regardless of a baseball team’s talent or payroll — both areas in which this team finds itself at the game’s apex — October is a baseball funhouse mirror. A team fat on ability can look waifish in a hurry. The short series, the odd schedule, the capacity for a lesser team to beat a better one simply because it gets hot at the right time — all of it conspires to render April through September inert. Teams built for the six-month marathon that is the regular season aren’t necessarily well-constructed for the postseason’s one-month sprint. A team’s ability to code-switch is its greatest quality.
This year, Los Angeles craved validation for its regular-season dominance. Something to silence those who malign its 2020 championship and chalk up its success not to sound decision-making processes and elite player development but an endless flow of cash. The Dodgers cannot deny the power of the dollar after guaranteeing $700 million in free agency to star designated hitter Shohei Ohtani and another $325 million to Japanese right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Ohtani hit 54 home runs and stole 59 bases during the regular season. Yamamoto threw six brilliant innings in his first World Series game. Money plays.
“World Series champions come in all different sizes and shapes and forms,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said. “And there are different strengths that help you win a World Series.”
Their lineup was an obvious one. Even a hobbled Freeman is still an eight-time All-Star — and a former MVP, just like the two men ahead of him in the lineup, Ohtani and Mookie Betts. The Dodgers led major league baseball in home runs and slugging percentage while finishing second in runs scored and on-base percentage . For all the depth the Dodgers’ lineup featured, though, the pitching staff was threadbare on account of a mess of injuries. With just three starting pitchers and a half-dozen trusted relievers — not to mention the necessity of throwing bullpen games, further taxing arms — Los Angeles required a deft touch with its pitching.
Championships take luck and timing and depth and open-mindedness and savvy. World Series are won as much on the margins as they are in the core. And every championship team features something beyond that, a separator, a je ne sais quoi. Like, say, a starter suffering through his worst season emerging to close out a World Series game. Or someone who refuses to let his broken body impede a quest so meaningful to those who rely on him.
IN 2005, WHEN Freddie Freeman was 15 years old, he was hit by a pitch that broke his wrist. Freeman was scheduled to play for Team USA’s 16-and-under national team, and he couldn’t let the opportunity pass. So he simply didn’t tell anyone about his wrist injury and gritted through the agony.
Almost two decades later, Freeman started Game 1 of the division series against San Diego without publicly divulging his broken rib cartilage. Even the slightest competitive advantage can separate win from loss, and Freeman understood the sort of challenge the Padres posed. They had constructed their roster for postseason baseball: heavy on power hitters and front-line bullpen arms, light on offensive swing-and-miss. San Diego ousted the Dodgers from the postseason in 2022 and was prepared to do the same in 2024.
The Dodgers cherished Freeman’s presence, even if he was playing at far less than 100 percent. Their manager, Dave Roberts, told Freeman that simply standing in the batter’s box imputed a particular sort of value: the fear of the unknown. If Freeman were healthy enough to play, opponents would figure, surely he could contribute, too. What San Diego didn’t know was that every time Freeman strode to fire his compact, powerful left-handed swing, his right ankle felt as if it was about to buckle. And when he whiffed on a pitch, his side screamed silently.
“It only hurts when I miss,” Freeman told his father. “So I’m just going to have to stop missing.”
In the first game of the series, with his midsection bound by kinesiology tape to stabilize it, Freeman laced a pair of singles. The limp in his running drew attention away from the rib. When he winced after swing-and-misses — Freeman did so four times in Game 1 of the NLDS — the ankle served as an ideal cover for the actual nerve center of the pain: his rib. After winning the first game, Los Angeles dropped the next two to the Padres, and his symptoms worsened.
“Every day,” Dodgers hitting coach Aaron Bates said, “I would ask: ‘How’s your ankle? How’s your rib? How’s your finger? How’s your brain?'”
The 2024 season already had strained Freeman’s psyche. In late July, his 3-year-old son, Maximus, was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome, a neurological disorder that necessitated the use of a ventilator and left him unable to walk for a period. Freeman left the Dodgers during the final week of July to take care of Max. Although Freeman returned in early August, when Max was discharged from the hospital and started his recovery, the detritus of the episode remained.
Freeman and his wife, Chelsea, carved days into pieces. Wake up. Get to the afternoon. Then the evening. Then the morning. And repeat.
“It was more just breaking things up, all those small things just to get yourself through,” Chelsea said.
“Never think big picture,” Fred said.
“And then you look back,” Chelsea said, “and you’re like, ‘Oh, my gosh, we can’t believe we went through all that.'”
The perspective helped when the pain in Freeman’s rib would not relent. After Game 3, Freeman listened to Fred. No matter how much treatment he received, how much doctors and trainers did to mask the pain, he needed a break. But to require it in an elimination game — he was despondent. Freeman had signed with the Dodgers on a six-year, $162 million free agent contract in 2022 after a protracted free agency. He joined them following a World Series-winning season with the Atlanta Braves, where he spent the first 12 years of his career. Losing in the division series for the third straight year was not an option. Losing to the Padres again was unthinkable.
When his teammates learned Freeman would sit out Game 4, they rallied around him in the team’s group chat. Kiké Hernández, Miguel Rojas, Max Muncy, Betts — they were in awe of Freeman and what he had done already and offered their appreciation. He had rescued them so many times. They would resuscitate the Dodgers’ season in his absence. The offense scored eight runs, and eight Dodgers relievers combined to shut San Diego out. Two days later, with Freeman back in the lineup, Yamamoto threw five scoreless innings, the bullpen added four more and the Dodgers surged into the NL Championship Series against the New York Mets.
Once there, Freeman struggled, mustering only three singles in 18 at-bats and sitting out Game 4 again. The rest of the Dodgers thrived. Ohtani and Betts each whacked a pair of home runs. Muncy, a remnant of the 2020 team, set a postseason record by reaching base in 12 consecutive at-bats. Tommy Edman hit .407, drove in 11 runs and won NLCS MVP as the Dodgers bounced the Mets in six games. They were off to another World Series, another opportunity to substantiate their belief in themselves, where they would face their American League analog in prestige and might: the New York Yankees.
“Freddie doesn’t complain about really anything,” Chelsea said. “He was getting over four hours of treatment a day, even on days that they weren’t playing, just to be able to hope to play in the postseason. So going into the World Series, we had no expectations. We just were hoping he’d be able to play.”
HAD THE DODGERS deposed the Mets in five games, the World Series would have started Oct. 22, two days after the conclusion of the NLCS. Instead, the Dodgers had four days off, and in that time something happened. On Oct. 21, the day after Los Angeles celebrated its NL pennant, Freeman rested. On Oct. 22, he went through his usual treatment routine and felt noticeably better. By Oct. 23, the respite and therapy felt as if they were making a demonstrable difference in his recovery. On Oct. 24, the day before Game 1 of the most anticipated World Series in years, Freeman and the Dodgers’ staff had identified a cue to unlock the power that had gone missing in the first two rounds of the playoffs.
Freeman would tell himself to stride more toward first base. In actuality, he was not doing so; it would leave him vulnerable to outside pitches, which he had made a Hall of Fame career shooting to the opposite field. The idea of doing so, though, prevented Freeman from hunching over as he swung. A more vertical stance, in theory, would allow Freeman to drive the fastballs that had eaten him up in the NLCS, when he went 2-for-13 against them.
“Dad,” Freeman told Fred, “my swing is back. It’s as good as it’s been all year.”
Fred had heard this plenty of times before. Sometimes his son was right; sometimes he wasn’t. Fred wanted to be optimistic. He needed to see it to believe it.
In the first inning of Game 1, against Yankees ace Gerrit Cole, Freeman sliced a curveball down the left-field line and motored toward second base. New York left fielder Alex Verdugo misplayed the ball, an early sign of the state of the Yankees’ defense, and Freeman kept running. He chugged into third base, slid, popped up, stared into the Dodgers’ dugout, lifted his arms and shook side to side — the original version of what has become known as the Freddie Dance, a celebration adopted by all the Dodgers for big hits.
At the end of the inning, Freeman was left stranded on third base, his ankle throbbing. While the tenderness in his rib area had abated somewhat and his finger felt good enough to throw the ball normally, the 270 feet of running from home to third reminded Freeman that Humpty Dumpty hadn’t been put back together entirely. He tried to joke about it — Freeman occasionally asked Dodgers assistant general manager Alex Slater: “Can we trade ankles?” — but his hobbling was a serious reminder that the between-series break was over.
What unfolded that night constituted one of the best opening games in World Series history. Cole and Dodgers starter Jack Flaherty traded scoreless frames until the Dodgers scored a run in the fifth. The Yankees answered with two in the sixth. Los Angeles tied the score in the eighth. And on to extra innings it went, with New York scratching across a run in the top of the 10th. In the bottom of the inning, Gavin Lux walked with one out. Edman — like Flaherty a trade-deadline acquisition — singled. Yankees manager Aaron Boone called on left-hander Nestor Cortes, who hadn’t pitched in more than five weeks due to an arm injury, to face Ohtani. He induced a flyout.
Boone then intentionally walked Betts to load the bases and face Freeman. Cortes challenged him with a 93 mph fastball on the inside corner, the sort for which his cue was made. He swung, took two steps and lifted his bat with his right hand, Los Angeles’ version of Lady Liberty. The ball flew seven rows into the right-field bleachers. Dodger Stadium shook. Roberts was so giddy reveling in the moment that he bumped into the right arm of Gavin Stone, the young right-hander who two weeks earlier had undergone major shoulder surgery.
In the 119 previous years of World Series games, 695 in all, never had a player hit a walk-off grand slam. Freeman doing so in Game 1, then shambling around the bases invoking memories of Kirk Gibson 36 years earlier — the last time Los Angeles won a full-season World Series — added a poetic touch to the night, one of the most memorable in Dodgers postseason history.
“Game 1, when he hit the grand slam, felt like we won the World Series,” Chelsea said. “Like we were going to win.”
While Chelsea knows baseball well enough to understand it’s never that easy, in the next few games, Freddie continued to make it look so. He blasted another home run off a fastball in a Game 2 win. His two-run, first-inning shot on a high inside 93 mph Clarke Schmidt cutter in Game 3 gave the Dodgers a lead they held for their second consecutive 4-2 victory. For the series’ first three games, Freeman was single-handedly carrying the Dodgers’ offense, just the way it had collectively carried him through the NLCS. Muncy was hitless. Betts cooled down. And Ohtani partially dislocated his shoulder sliding into second base during Game 2 and was never a factor in the series.
The presence of Ohtani, who had absconded from the Los Angeles Angels in pursuit of a championship, as well as that of Yankees slugger Aaron Judge, had turned this World Series into a supersized event — but Freeman was the one owning it. He hit another two-run shot in the first inning of Game 4, marking an MLB-record sixth consecutive World Series game with a home run, his streak dating back to 2021 with Atlanta. The Dodgers’ attempt at a sweep fizzled with a third-inning grand slam by Yankees shortstop Anthony Volpe and eventually turned into an 11-4 blowout, not exactly a surprise considering Roberts stayed away from using his best relievers in hopes of keeping them fresh for a potential Game 5.
Game 4 marked the Dodgers’ fourth all-bullpen effort of the postseason, a staggering number for a team with as much talent as Los Angeles. Consider the names on L.A.’s injured list come October. Longtime ace and future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw made only seven starts before a toe injury ended his season. Tyler Glasnow, acquired to help anchor the rotation over the winter, never returned from a mid-August elbow injury. Stone, the Dodgers’ best starter this season, was out. So was Dustin May after an esophageal tear. Emmet Sheehan, River Ryan and Tony Gonsolin all were on the shelf following Tommy John surgery, and the Dodgers had signed Ohtani, MLB’s first two-way player in nearly a century, knowing he wouldn’t pitch in 2024 because of elbow reconstruction.
Losing a rotation-and-a-half worth of starting pitchers would have torpedoed any other team. Los Angeles had figured out how to weather the deficiency, with Roberts and pitching coach Mark Prior puppeteering their 13-man pitching staff without excessive fatigue or overexposure to Yankees hitters. It was a delicate balance, one they feared could collapse if Game 5 went the wrong way.
AROUND 3 P.M. on Wednesday, Walker Buehler boarded the Dodgers’ team bus to Yankee Stadium, looked at general manager Brandon Gomes and said: “I’m good tonight if you need me.” Two nights earlier, Buehler had spun magic in Game 3, shutting down New York in five scoreless innings. He was scheduled to throw a between-starts bullpen session; if he needed to forgo it to instead throw in a World Series game, he was ready.
Buehler is 30 and coming off the worst regular season of his career, winning just one of his 16 starts and posting a 5.38 ERA. He missed all of 2023 after undergoing his second Tommy John surgery and returned a much lesser version of the cocksure right-hander whose postseason badassery earned him a reputation as one of baseball’s finest big-game pitchers. His fastball lacked life and his breaking balls sharpness, and with free agency beckoning, Buehler had looked positively ordinary.
This was October, though, and the month has always brought out something different in him. He dotted his fastball in all four quadrants of the strike zone in Game 3, flummoxing Yankees hitters. It revved past them with the sort of carry he displayed over four shutout innings against the Mets in the NLCS. Back, too, was Buehler’s self-assuredness. Just in case Gomes and the rest of the Dodgers’ staff didn’t understand what he meant, Buehler reiterated at the stadium: “If things get a little squirrelly, then I’ll be ready.”
The game was all Yankees to start. Judge hit his first home run of the series in the first inning. Jazz Chisholm Jr. followed with another. An RBI single from Verdugo in the second inning chased Flaherty after he had recorded just four outs. For the second consecutive night, Roberts would need to lean on his bullpen. He went into break-glass-in-case-of-emergency mode. Left-hander Anthony Banda escaped a bases-loaded jam in the second. Ryan Brasier allowed a third-inning leadoff home run to Giancarlo Stanton. Michael Kopech pitched the fourth and wriggled out of a first-and-second-with-one-out situation.
In the meantime, Cole was cruising. He held the Dodgers hitless through four innings. Hernández broke that streak with a leadoff single in the fifth. Edman lined a ball to center that clanked off Judge’s glove, his first error on a fly ball since 2017. After Volpe fielded a ground ball and tried to nab the lead runner at third, Hernández almost Eurostepped into his throwing lane, a brilliant bit of baserunning that illustrated the difference between Los Angeles’ and New York’s fundamentals. Volpe bounced the throw for a second error in the inning, loading the bases.
Cole bore down, striking out Lux and Ohtani, and Betts squibbed a ball at 49.8 mph toward Yankees first baseman Anthony Rizzo. Even with the English spinning the ball away from the first-base bag, Rizzo likely could have tagged first to end the inning. He expected to flip the ball to Cole, who anticipated Rizzo would take the out himself. Once Rizzo realized Cole had not covered the bag, he shuffled toward first. Betts beat him there, and the mental blunder gave the Dodgers their first run of the day.
Freeman served a single on an inner-third, two-strike, 99.5 mph fastball — the hardest pitch Cole threw all season — to center for two more runs. And on another 1-2 pitch that caught too much of the plate, Teoscar Hernandez drove the ball 404 feet to center field. Because it hopped against the wall instead of over it, Freeman hauled all the way from first to home. Just like that, a 5-0 advantage had evaporated into a 5-5 tie.
Yankee Stadium, minutes earlier a madhouse, flatlined. Buehler had adjourned to the weight room, loosening his arm with a yellow plyometric ball. He saw Slater, who works out during the game to calm his nerves.
“Is it squirrelly yet?” Buehler asked.
It was squirrelly, all right. Friedman had come downstairs to consult with the rest of the front office about the logistics of finding a lie-flat airplane seat to fly Yamamoto back to Los Angeles ahead of the team for a potential Game 6. Now, instead of expending energy on that, they focused on how the Dodgers would possibly secure the final 15 outs of the game if they could steal a lead.
Inside the dugout, Roberts and Prior were doing the same. They were counting on left-hander Alex Vesia for more than one inning. With his pitch count run to 23 after weathering a bases-loaded situation by getting Gleyber Torres to fly out to right field, Vesia was done after the fifth. Buehler had returned to the dugout, and Prior asked whether he had thrown all day. No, Buehler said. He offered his services to Roberts, who told him to head to the bullpen, which he did at 10:08 p.m. When Buehler arrived, he saw Brent Honeywell, whose 7⅔ innings in the NLCS had helped keep the Dodgers’ bullpen fresh, and Joe Kelly, the veteran not on the roster because of an injury.
“What the f— are you doing here?” Honeywell said.
“I just came out here to hang with you and Joe,” Buehler said.
Brusdar Graterol, the Dodgers’ sixth pitcher of the night, walked the first two hitters in the sixth and allowed the Yankees to take a 6-5 lead on a Stanton sacrifice fly. After a third walk left runners on first and second, Roberts summoned Blake Treinen, the Dodgers’ best reliever, to face Volpe, who grounded out to second on a full count.
“I owed it to them to exhaust every possible resource to give them the best chance to win the game,” Roberts said. “At that point, I’m just counting outs.”
The math was not in his favor. Left in the bullpen were the Game 4 starter, rookie Ben Casparius, and Honeywell, who had gotten tagged for four runs the previous night, along with veteran Daniel Hudson, who had surrendered Volpe’s grand slam. Treinen took care of the seventh in order, and the Dodgers greeted Yankees reliever Tommy Kahnle rudely, loading the bases with two singles and a four-pitch walk. Boone signaled for closer Luke Weaver, who had pitched in Games 3 and 4, and he worked the count full before Lux lofted a sacrifice fly to center field. Ohtani reloaded the bases on another error via catcher’s interference before the second sac fly of the inning, from Betts, gave Los Angeles a 7-6 advantage.
Roberts was ready. About 20 minutes earlier, Buehler had thrown five balls to the bullpen catcher to ensure his arm would be ready. It felt fresh. Hudson began warming up as well, and Buehler later rejoined him. Roberts wanted to stick with Treinen as long as he could, and the decision looked fateful after Judge doubled and Chisholm walked. Roberts, not Prior, walked to the mound. A pitching change seemed imminent. He considered putting Hudson into the game to face Stanton, whose seven home runs this October set a Yankees postseason record.
Roberts did not realize that Hudson’s forearm was screaming as he warmed up. Hudson had fashioned a 15-year major league career despite two Tommy John surgeries within one calendar year from 2012 to 2013, typically a career ender for pitchers. Forearm tightness is a telltale sign of elbow troubles, and Hudson foresaw catastrophe if Roberts called on him to pitch.
“If Doc brought me in,” Hudson said, “I was going to blow out again.”
When Roberts arrived at the mound, he put his hands on Treinen’s chest.
“I just wanted to feel his heartbeat and just kind of look him in the eye and say, ‘What do you got?'” Roberts said. “And he said, ‘I want him.’ And so I said, ‘All right, you got this hitter.’ Because my intention was for him to get one hitter.”
On a middle-middle first-pitch sinker, Stanton sent a lazy fly ball to short right field. Roberts planned to hook Treinen there. Treinen avoided eye contact with Roberts. Out of the corner of his eye, Roberts saw Freeman.
“I give Freddie credit,” Roberts said. “Freddie was waving me off. He kind of subtly kind of said, ‘Hey, let him stay in.’ So then I trusted the players, and Blake made a pitch.”
He struck out Rizzo on a backfoot slider, his 42nd pitch of the night, and bounded off the mound and into the dugout, lead secure. Roberts knew his next move. He was going to use his projected Game 7 starter as his Game 5 closer and win the damn World Series.
When the bullpen door swung open in the ninth inning and Buehler jogged to the mound, his wife, McKenzie, sitting in the stands, started to sob. Their baby daughter, Finley, was asleep on McKenzie’s shoulder, and the tension of the moment was eating at her, and the tears didn’t stop — not after Volpe grounded out to third, not after Austin Wells swung over a full-count curveball and not after Verdugo flailed at a 77.5 mph curveball in the dirt that won the Dodgers a World Series that 29 other professional, billion-dollar organizations would’ve liked to have won.
Buehler exulted. His teammates swarmed him. Every time the Dodgers win a series, Buehler fetches his phone, opens Instagram and captions a triumphant photo with the same two words, all caps: WHO ELSE. He means the Dodgers, yes, but there’s more to it, this manifestation of the best version of himself in October, something with which Freeman and his fellow champions are familiar.
“That’s how I feel about myself,” Buehler said. “Who else is going to do it? Who else is going to be out there? Who else is supposed to do this? We’ve got 30 guys that believe that same way. And I was just the one in the spot to do it.”
ADRENALINE STILL FLOWING, booze serving as a mighty analgesic, Freddie Freeman walked around the Dodgers’ clubhouse around 2 a.m. with only a slight limp and little sign of pain in his side. He sheathed his middle finger because the Dodgers had given theirs to all of those who called 2020 a Mickey Mouse title and suggested they couldn’t win a real one.
“He couldn’t even walk two days ago,” Chelsea said. “Getting out of bed, literally yesterday, he looked like he was 100 years old.”
On Wednesday night, into Thursday morning, onto the plane ride back to Los Angeles, Freeman felt like a kid. Like Ohtani, Freeman came to Los Angeles for this. To win. To feel greatness. If the price of that is the return of pain that eventually will subside, he gladly paid it.
“I gave myself to the game, to the field,” Freeman said. “I did everything I could to get onto that field. And that’s why this is really, really sweet. I’m proud of the fact that I gave everything I could to this team and I left it all out there. That’s all I try to do every single night. When I go home and put my head on that pillow, I ask if I gave everything I had that night. And usually it’s a yes. One hundred percent of the time it’s a yes. But this one was a little bit sweeter because I went through a lot. My teammates appreciated it. The organization appreciated it. And to end it with a championship makes all the trying times before games, what I put myself through to get on the field, worth it.”
He did it for Buehler, who walked around shirtless inside the clubhouse and on the field, trying and failing to avoid champagne-and-beer showers, including one from Ohtani that doused the cigar in Buehler’s mouth. “Shohei,” he said. “This is a Cuban!” Buehler beamed at what he had done — what they had done — to fortify the external validation the Dodgers had held internally for four years.
“I still very much see this as the second one. I don’t see them very differently,” Buehler said. “But do it on the road, in New York, against the Yankees. It’s emphatic.”
He did it for Kiké Hernández, who, with the flag of Puerto Rico wrapped around his shoulders, said: “What are they going to say now? That this one doesn’t count?” And for Ohtani, who knows how hard baseball is more than anyone and still had the temerity to say: “Let’s do this nine more times.” And for everyone else in the organization, including Kershaw, who at 36 has been with the Dodgers organization for half his life.
Just after the presentation of the commissioner’s trophy on the field, Kershaw looked at his 9-year-old daughter, Cali, and tried to explain that they were finally going to get their parade, the one COVID-19 stole from them.
“All the people get to celebrate,” Kershaw said. “Isn’t that awesome?”
“Are you crying?” Cali said.
“No, I’m not crying,” Kershaw said. “Happy tears. Happy tears. OK. I’m done crying. I’m done crying.”
He stopped and looked around. Kershaw wants to pitch again, for the Dodgers, because however others view the organization, it represents home.
“I stopped caring about what other people that weren’t a part of it thought a long time ago,” Kershaw said. “It felt real to me. So I’m going to always have that one. But we get to have a parade. We’re going to get to do a parade in L.A. on Friday. Basically a culmination of those two championships. It’s going to be incredible. I’ve always wanted to have a parade. I’ve always wanted to do that. I feel like I missed out on it in 2020. So I think it’s going to be pretty awesome.”
Freeman did it for himself, too. For him, this is just the beginning. Some of the injured starters will return next season, and the Dodgers will enter the season as favorites to become the first back-to-back World Series winners since the Yankees won three straight championships from 1998 to 2000. Brian Cashman was the general manager of those teams, and he walked through the bowels of Yankee Stadium to the Dodgers’ clubhouse to congratulate Friedman. While he was waiting, Freeman walked by.
“Congrats, man,” Cashman said. “Hell of a series.”
It was. Maybe not the dream series of seven games or even the last one in which the Dodgers and Yankees met for a title. That one, in 1981, lasted six games, with the first five all decided by three or fewer runs, and was also won by the Dodgers. It included a Game 3 started by Fernando Valenzuela, the Dodgers legend who died last week. His presence will be felt on Friday — what would have been his 64th birthday — along the 45-minute parade route, a celebration of all things Dodgers.
The merriment Wednesday stretched deep into the night. On the clubhouse speakers, Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” played, an appropriate soundtrack. The Padres weren’t. The Mets weren’t. The Yankees weren’t.
Nobody is like these Dodgers, champions of the baseball world.
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — When Navy quarterback Blake Horvath returned to his dorm room during Army-Navy week last season, he found pictures of Army quarterback Bryson Daily taped all over his door. Elsewhere, banners had mysteriously appeared in the dining hall, reading, “GO ARMY, BEAT NAVY.”
The likely suspects? West Point cadets spending a semester in Annapolis, Maryland, as exchange students. It’s a program that will celebrate its 50th anniversary this year — one of several enduring traditions between the two academies.
“I can neither confirm nor deny if that was us that evening,” Army senior cadet Jayram Suryanarayan said, “but I can say we were up to some shenanigans — so it could have been.”
The shenanigans were unfolding simultaneously in West Point, where the Navy exchange students’ clothes and uniforms had disappeared and been replaced by costumes — including a smelly fish outfit and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle — to wear the entire week.
“They bought a Marine Corps raincoat, cut it as fabric, and then sewed — and then this is what impressed me because it took time and skill — they sewed together a miniskirt for me to wear and they got a Marine Corps sweatshirt and they cropped it,” Navy senior Michael Middleton said. “They stole all of my uniforms, all of my civilian clothes. It wasn’t just to school — I had to work out in it. It was really quite a scene. It was really fun.”
(Last year’s antics were relatively tame compared to “Operation Black Knight Falling” in 2022, when five Navy midshipmen led three flight crews in formation over the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, and dropped thousands of BEAT ARMY ping-pong balls and leaflets on campus.)
After spending a semester at their rival school, the tradition culminates when the exchange students stand front and center on the 50-yard line ahead of the Army-Navy football game in what is casually referred to as a “prisoner exchange.” The men and women on the field who annually participate in that program embody everything that follows in the global game — tradition, respect, pageantry, precision — and a deep understanding that one of college football’s longest and strongest rivalries is also about an immeasurable bond that infiltrates beyond the field.
“Army and Navy, West Point and Annapolis, we’re not that different,” said Middleton, who will be a ground officer in the United States Marine Corps after graduation. “We like to have this friendly banter, and we say we’re going to beat Army by a million because that’s what we’re going to do — that’s a fact you can quote that — but really it’s one fight and one team.
“We’re all in the Department of War,” Middleton said. “We all work for each other. If we’re in some far-flung place, having to do a job the nation has called us to do, I don’t care where you graduated because we’re all out there for each other.”
On Saturday at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, this year’s group of exchange students will be released to their classmates and hoisted back into the stands to watch the 126th Army-Navy game together. It’s one of many traditions from America’s Game that don’t involve the players: From the “demonstration of discipline” as thousands of classmates from each academy “March On,” to the grit and fortitude of the relay teams who deliver the game balls after running from their schools along backroads, through states and cities, and into the stadium. It’s the thoughtful, historically accurate and detailed uniforms, which this season will celebrate respectively the 250th anniversaries of the United States Army and Navy. It’s the nearly 800 celebrities and high-ranking dignitaries, including President Donald Trump, who will attend. It’s the live mascots — one mule and two goats — who need careful delivery and their own parking spaces.
The players earn the spotlight in the final and most emotional tradition — singing their alma maters on the field after the game. And woe to the team that lost and has to sing first.
“You just feel like you not only let yourself down, your teammates down,” Army center Brady Small said, “but you feel like you let the Army down.”
While you might be familiar with some or all of these traditions from watching the game on TV, ESPN interviewed more than a dozen people from both academies who make it all come together, taking you behind the scenes for how each tradition unfolds and what it means to be a part of them.
Jump to section:
Alma mater | Uniforms
Ball run | March On
Mascots | Presidential visit
Alma mater
In preseason camp, every Army football player is tested on the school’s alma mater. It’s something they learn from the “Book of Knowledge,” which is required reading during Cadet Basic Training and has been published since 1908. It includes the history and traditions of West Point.
“I can’t tell you the exact page number,” said receiver Noah Short of where the alma mater appears, “but it’s definitely in the first few pages.”
Hail, Alma Mater dear,
To us be ever near.
Help us thy motto bear
Through all the years.
Let Duty be well performed.
Honor be e’er untarned
Country be ever armed.
West Point, by thee.
“I make them write it down,” Army coach Jeff Monken said, “they have to write it out.”
“If you don’t do it right — literally word for word — Coach Monken will not travel you,” Army linebacker Kalib Fortner said.
Both schools sing their alma maters at other games and events, but the tradition of singing it after the Army-Navy football game is unlike any other. The winner sings second.
“It’s awesome,” Monken said, “and there’s just so much emotion and relief that we’re the ones standing there singing second. … It’s equally as gut-wrenching and emotionally just rips you apart to have to stand there and mumble the words of your alma mater if you’ve gotta do it first.”
Horvath, Navy’s quarterback, said the Midshipmen are quizzed on their alma mater about four days into their plebe summer. They’d sing it before they went to bed each night around 10 p.m.
Now colleges from sea to sea
May sing of colors true
But who has better right than we
To hoist a symbol hue
For sailors brave in battle fair
Since fighting days of old
Have proved the sailor’s right to wear
The Navy Blue and Gold
“Singing first, it physically hurts a little bit,” Horvath said. “You know that your fans aren’t singing with as much enthusiasm, you’re not singing with that same sort of loudness and excitement as you would if you were singing second. It’s sort of, as a player, an embarrassment to sing first. On the flip side, singing second, you can feel the joy and excitement like after the Army-Navy game last year. It’s the loudest I’ve ever heard our alma mater sung.”
Uniforms
Army and Navy reveal special uniforms each season, but don’t bother trying to sneak a peek at either before they’re publicly announced — it’s classified, for a whopping two years.
“We don’t really keep files stored here, we just kind of keep things very hush-hush,” said Mike Resnick, associate athletic director in charge of internal operations at West Point. “Nike’s really good on the shipping. It’s West Point; we have some trustworthy people here.”
Just for added security, though, some nondisclosure acts are signed along the way. There are only about 14 or 15 people who know what Army’s uniform will look like — including the history department.
“We don’t let the Pentagon know,” Resnick said. “We keep it pretty close to the vest.”
As parts of the uniform and other sideline gear are shipped, Navy stores everything in a warehouse on the other side of the Severn River. The artist who handpaints their helmets is in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, so when Navy played at Temple this year, a few members of the equipment staff visited him to check on the progress.
A uniform 250 years in the making…https://t.co/168T92kRln#GoNavy | #Navy250 pic.twitter.com/N0LVQkHCKG
— Navy Athletics (@NavyAthletics) November 18, 2025
Every detail in both uniforms has a meaning. For Navy, the six strands of rope on the helmets represent the six original frigates of the U.S. Navy, and the knots were a spin-off of the 126 knots on the sides of the pants to represent and pay homage to the 126th Army-Navy game. On the jersey, there are 250 knots around the neck and sleeves to represent 250 years of the Navy.
“The guys always want hints,” Navy senior associate athletic director Greg Morgenthaler said. “From our first team meeting with Coach Newberry. I talked to the team in November about expectations and stuff, and they’re all like, ‘What are we wearing this year? G, what are we wearing?'”
Around noon on Nov. 17, Navy players, coaches and staff started to file into the auditorium in Ricketts Hall. It wasn’t a mandatory team meeting, but nobody was going to miss the highly anticipated uniform reveal for the Army-Navy game.
“Nobody’s posting anything regarding the unis, everybody good?” Newberry said.
“Yessir!”
Proud to honor an enduring symbol of service and sacrifice for the past 250 years.https://t.co/QlUpMO7VlC#GoArmy pic.twitter.com/5DeHAW0pm9
— Army Football (@ArmyWP_Football) November 15, 2025
Army’s marble print uniforms are designed to mirror the marble headstones at Arlington National Cemetery and the ultimate sacrifice that has been made. The Great Seal on the right shoulder indicates Army’s duty to the United States in peace and war. There is an old guard espontoon etched into each helmet to symbolize Army’s role as the tip of the spear, starting on the back of the helmet and culminating in a tip on the front.
Lieutenant Colonel John Zdeb teaches in the department of History and War Studies at West Point and has been helping with the accuracy of the football team’s uniforms for five years. He’s a graduate of the academy and also had two deployments to Iraq, one to Afghanistan, another to Eastern Europe and another to Kuwait.
“There’s always different elements where they’re asking us, my team in particular, ‘Hey, the way we’ve depicted this, is it historically accurate? Is it representing the historical event in the correct way? And if it is going to veer away from that a little bit, is that a creative liberty that makes sense? That’s worth doing?’ And so we have a lot of feedback.”
Ball run
At 3:30 a.m. Thursday morning, a group of 17 cadet marathoners, four officers and three vans departed from the West Point superintendent’s house on campus to run 240 miles across four different states — all while carrying an Army game ball to be delivered to M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore at 2 p.m. ET on Friday. On Saturday, each of the teams will jog the ball onto the field at a designated time and present it to their First Captain or Brigade Commander.
At approximately 7 a.m., on Thursday the team will pass from New York into Mahwah, New Jersey, and then continue along Route 202 into Pennsylvania. The marathon team will then run through southeastern Pennsylvania before entering Maryland, near Rising Sun. The final portion of their journey will lead them to downtown Baltimore via Route 1.
“The ball itself is always in a cadet’s hands and is moving nonstop from when we leave up until we reach the stadium,” said senior cadet Michael Clay, who is part of his fourth Army-Navy relay team and estimated he has run about 90 miles total to the past three stadiums.
The Navy relay team has a slightly more advantageous route this week — by more than 200 fewer miles from Annapolis to Baltimore. The Midshipmen will meet in front of Bancroft Hall on Friday before leaving at noon and heading out Gate 8. They will arrive at Fort McHenry in Baltimore at sunset and finish the final few miles to the stadium on Saturday.
“It’s kind of fun because we have the rest of the company there waiting at the stadium for the ball to get there, and then the people that are running that last leg kind of run up to the stadium,” Midshipman Connor Mollberg said. “The whole company’s there. It’s a big celebration that we got the ball there.”
Though not without someone occasionally fumbling along the way.
“It never intentionally hits the ground,” Clay said, “especially in those subfreezing temperatures with gloves on, it can be really hard to tell how firm of a grip you have on the ball. So yes, it has been dropped, but never intentionally — and never more than 13th company.”
The tradition began with Navy’s 13th company, which has about 120 Midshipmen in it, and while nobody is required to participate in the ball run, “people are usually more than willing to run the ball a couple of miles and help out,” said Mollberg, who is on Navy’s parachute team — not track or cross country.
While Army’s relay team is much smaller because it comprises the school’s marathon team, they tend to pass the ball around with anyone who joins them for the last few miles — typically members of the community, first responders and high-ranking West Point officers.
Because Army has a longer trek, their runners will aim for between six and 13 miles per stretch, while Navy will run seven legs of four miles per runner. Along their way, they have both cultivated relationships with small communities they routinely pass through. Elementary and school-aged kids line the streets, cheering for both teams along the way — even at 2 or 3 a.m. when the runners least expect it.
“They let us know who they’re rooting for pretty early on,” Clay said. “Certainly a healthy mix.”
‘March On’
The spectacle of watching roughly 3,000 cadets and another 4,000 Midshipmen march onto the field in unison before the Army-Navy game — entire schools of uniform-clad future military leaders taking their seats in the stadium — is one of the most recognizable traditions of the pregame ceremonies.
The cadets and midshipmen will start to march from Camden Yards about a half-mile away. Navy will be on the first-base side, Army will be in left field, and will come down Ravens Walk before entering the stadium at noon.
“We use it as a demonstration of discipline within the corps, everybody moving in the same uniform, at the same time, in the same place,” said Adam Brady, who has done this as a cadet and now as the Operations Officer at Army. “It’s one of the few times when we have the entire corps of cadets marching.”
At Army, it’s the same 30-inch step. It’s the same arm movements for thousands of students who must keep in line with the person to the right. They guide right (keep the group moving in a straight line), dress right (fine tune everyone’s position so the formation looks perfectly straight), and are centered on the person in front of them. It’s something they practice for a total of four or five hours on one of the campus athletic fields.
Aden Alexander, a plebe at Navy, will be marching onto the field for the first time and said a key to staying in line is listening to the drum beats.
“Typically over the plebe summer we’re taught with a cadence, so our detailers will be saying out loud, ‘left, right, left, right,'” Alexander said. “And we’ll have little ditties or songs that we’ll sing along to get our brains trained to walk in-step, so we’ve gotten pretty good at that.”
Everything is a competition.
“Army always marches on better than Navy,” said Jeff Reynolds, Chief of Protocol, United States Military Academy, West Point. “That’s our first win of the day.”
Mascots
It might be the only game on the planet where two goats and a mule get together before kickoff.
The Army has two mules — Paladin and Ranger IV — but only Paladin will be traveling to Baltimore. Army has an equestrian team, and cadets whose members earn the positions of “mule wranglers.” At Navy, there are eight Midshipmen in the Goat Squad, the group that takes care of Bill(s) the Goat(s) at events and games. Once you’re chosen, the job is yours until graduation. The identity of the daily caretaker, who keeps the goats on a nearby farm, is classified.
Senior Myles Brown leads the Goat Squad and has been a member since his sophomore year. He said the two goats — both named Bill — will arrive at the Stadium around 10 a.m. and be available in the parking lot to visit with fans. The Goat Squad will enter the stadium between noon and 12:30 p.m., and they’ll look for a spot on the field secluded from the football players “so they’re not overstimulated.” After Bill 37 retired, Bill 38 took his place — and Bill 39 is the new addition (for anyone who might be counting).
“They like to be together,” said Brown, who worked on a sheep farm during high school in Georgia. “They’re a lot more calm when they’re around each other.”
The goats will be on leashes, with two handlers per goat, one person to clean up any messes they leave behind (literally), one to carry water and treats, and everyone else is “crowd control.” Though the goats will eat just about anything, Brown said, “they really like animal crackers.”
The mules eat hay and the mule wranglers will bring four bales for Paladin to travel with as well as a hay net filled for him to eat on the field.
“I always think about Bevo,” said LTC Adam Brady, of the Texas Longhorns‘ mascot. Brady is a member of the commandant’s staff responsible for training and operations. “Nobody cares about Bevo until something goes wrong. We’ve got to be aware of that. They’re a huge draw. Kids love them, parents love them. People try to get on them. But they are something that we are concerned about. We have to take care of the animals, but we also do have to recognize that they are wild animals, and they’re significantly larger than the Navy goat.”
“There are some things we have to be aware of,” Brady said. “Logistically, some of that is, hey, can we even get them in the stadium? Just from a safety perspective, how can I get a spooked mule out of a stadium safely? We have to evaluate that, whether it’s here at home with our construction that we’ve been doing, or the different stadiums. The sidelines are a lot tighter than you’d expect.”
This year, one other live mascot might try to steal their spotlight.
Chesty, an English bulldog who is the mascot of the United States Marine Corps, could make a surprise appearance during the coin toss.
“That’s what we’re planning,” said Ann McConnell, the Naval Academy’s director of protocol. “However, that may change. The Secretary of War may come over to our side to walk out with the President. That’s still a little bit in flux.”
Presidential visit
Dear Mr. President:
On behalf of the Department of the Navy and the Department of the Army, we are honored to invite you and Mrs. Trump to attend the 126th Annual Army-Navy football game, on Saturday, December 13, 2025, at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, Maryland.
The home team sends the official invitation to the White House and this year that is Navy. Both schools confirmed President Trump will attend — along with hundreds of other high-ranking officials, dignitaries and celebrities. It’s a massive coordination effort that takes a year of planning and above all else — security.
Jeff Reynolds, Chief of Protocol, United States Military Academy, West Point, said he was expecting close to 800 celebrities and dignitaries in Baltimore, and is in charge of credentialing more than 600 seats on Army’s 50-yard line — extending from the first row up to the first few rows on the upper deck.
Throughout his career, Reynolds has credentialed Elon Musk, Phil Knight, Gary Sinise, Rachel Ray, Charles Barkley, Mark Wahlberg, Peyton and Eli Manning. There’s one person, though, at the top of his list — Army superintendent Lieutenant General Steven W. Gilland, “who for me, outranks everybody else. I work directly for him. I got to make sure he’s taken care of.”
Reynolds, whose first Army-Navy game was in 2008 when President George W. Bush attended, has worked with Presidents Bush, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Joe Biden and Trump.
“The challenging part is to try to make sure the fan experience is still great,” Reynolds said. “We want everybody coming to the stadium to have a great time, to enjoy America’s Game.
“But the logistics,” he said. “The White House staff determines the itinerary of the President. The Secret Service’s job is to make sure that itinerary is secure for the President — and everybody — but really they’re focused on the President. My job is to meld all that into the fan experience and the team, so they can still take the field at the right time, do whatever the coaches need them to do.”
Ann McConnell, who has worked in the Naval Academy’s protocol office for 27 years and been its director for nine, said there would be an additional 500 distinguished visitors (DVs) on Navy’s 50-yard line and will include senators, congressmen, cabinet members, and senior military leaders. This year’s coin toss will include: President Trump, the secretary of the Navy, chief of naval operations, master chief of navy, command master chief at naval academy, president from USAA, superintendent, commandant of marine corps, and the sergeant major of marine corps.
(And Chesty.)
While most of the dignitaries start to arrive between 11 a.m. and noon, the President typically comes just before kickoff for security reasons.
“I actually don’t ever sit,” said McConnell, who enlisted in the Navy in 1992 as a yeoman to follow in her father’s footsteps. “I am constantly moving. I am down on the field making sure everyone’s where they need to be for the coin toss and the crossover. I am up in the Midshipmen’s seats when our [distinguished visitors] come up to interact with the Midshipmen, I am down on our seating section making sure everyone has what they need. I am up in the warming room making sure everyone is all set. Sometimes I end up at gates making sure people that can download the tickets are able to get in. So I really from the time we arrive at eight o’clock, I do not sit until I get in my car at seven and head home.”
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Ryan S. Clark
On Dec. 31 — or thereabouts — we are going to learn which NHL players are going to spend at least two weeks in Italy representing their nations at the Olympic Games, along with knowing who will be on a beach watching those Olympics from afar.
Every nation that’s competing at the Milan-Cortina Games is expected to have its roster finalized by the Dec. 31 deadline. It’s what makes the time between now and then quite crucial, and it could play a role in the difference between potentially challenging for an Olympic medal or thinking about what that would be like.
Canada, Czechia, Finland, Sweden and the United States each have a unique set of decisions to make in the coming weeks. ESPN did its first round of projections in November for those five teams. Now comes one final set of predictions about what those five nations could do with their respective rosters.
Jump to a roster:
United States
Canada
Sweden
Finland
Czechia
United States
Note: Players in bold were the first six selected.
Team USA is facing many uncertainties entering the Dec. 31 roster deadline, which is reflected in my roster projection.
It’s a rather lengthy conversation that starts with how much injuries could impact what Team USA does with its final roster. Adam Fox (upper body) is out for an indefinite period, and Charlie McAvoy (puck to the face) could return later this week. There is also a quartet of players recovering from long-term injuries:
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Matthew Tkachuk (sports hernia and torn adductor) resumed skating in November with the idea that he could potentially return in December.
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Jaccob Slavin (lower body) began practicing on Dec. 2 in a noncontact sweater but has not played since Oct. 11.
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Jack Hughes (finger surgery) is expected to return to the lineup around the second week of January.
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Connor Hellebuyck (knee surgery) is on a path to return by early to mid-January.
My projection takes those injuries into account, with the idea that those five players should be available for the Olympics. But there are other selection discussions that go beyond these five players.
Enter Jason Robertson.
Will he make the final cut if Team USA has a full complement of players, or is he in the mix only if there’s an injury at forward?
Robertson and his potential addition (or omission) has become a talking point because of what he has done since Nov. 5 (the date of my earlier roster projections). No player has scored more goals in that time than Robertson, and Nathan MacKinnon is the only player who has more points than Robertson within that window.
That has intensified the conversation about why Robertson should make the final roster, though there is an opposing side to the debate:
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Proponents will point out how he gives Team USA another scorer who can create for others. They’ll also note that Robertson provides the U.S. with a 6-3, 207-pound option for a tournament in which physically imposing players could play a role.
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Opponents will argue that there could be two-way players who provide more continuity in the defensive zone than Robertson. They’ll also likely present the case that Robertson is not the fastest or most technical of skaters — a detail that became one of the themes of the 4 Nations Face-Off, when it was superstar vs. superstar each shift.
Team USA general manager Bill Guerin told The Athletic in late November that Robertson is doing all he can to make a compelling case. Guerin also acknowledged that there are only so many roster spots. “And when you look at it, there’s so many guys that are close in the way they’re performing, in their statistics, in their body of work,” Guerin said then. “It could come down to fit. What do we need?”
0:52
Jason Robertson scores on the power play for Dallas Stars
Jason Robertson capitalizes on the power play
Targeting defensibly responsible forwards was part of the blueprint Team USA used for the 4 Nations Face-Off. That approach is why there has been so much attention paid to Vincent Trocheck. He sustained an early-season upper-body injury that created questions about his place within the Team USA setup. Since returning on Nov. 10, he’s averaging 0.93 points per game. That’s the sort of production that reinforces his value as a two-way center who can anchor the fourth line and be used in numerous defensive situations.
Trocheck’s play is a contrast to his New York Rangers teammate J.T. Miller. There’s still a chance Miller could make the final roster given he is another two-way presence that can be used on the wing or down the middle. But his selection has been complicated by the fact that he’s averaging 0.62 points this season, despite having a 0.81 points-per-game career average.
That also highlights another reality facing Team USA: There is no shortage of forwards that Guerin and his staff could use to fill out those final spots:
0:33
Tage Thompson tallies goal for Buffalo Sabres on the power play
Tage Thompson scores power-play goal vs. Flames
Having three defensemen who are injured or recovering from injuries means that the U.S. will need to stay nimble right until Dec. 31. They have some options on the blue line, too:
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Has John Carlson done enough to be in the discussion? His potential addition would give the U.S. another veteran. He has also been sixth in points among defensemen since Nov. 5.
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There are young player options, such as Lane Hutson, Luke Hughes and Jackson LaCombe, who have been logging heavy minutes over the past month. Veterans like Shayne Gostisbehere or Seth Jones could also be in play.
One area in which it appears Team USA could find continuity is goaltending. As I see it, the U.S. will retain the three goaltenders it used at the 4 Nations Face-Off: Jake Oettinger, Jeremy Swayman and Hellebuyck, in the event he’s healthy. Joey Daccord and Spencer Knight have created compelling cases for why they could pose a selection discussion (particularly if Hellebuyck’s availability is in question).
Swayman, Oettinger and Knight are fifth, sixth and seventh, respectively, in GSAA among goalies in 5-on-5 play (min. 300 minutes), per Natural Stat Trick. Daccord is 13th, and Hellebuyck, who last played Nov. 15, is 19th.
Canada
Note: Players in bold were the first six selected.
Creating the strongest and most strategic lineup possible is the objective for every front office. This particular projection is reflective of what Canada’s front office believes it can achieve, by creating a roster that allows coach Jon Cooper to have as many options as possible at his disposal based on his game-by-game strategy.
Many of Canada’s forwards have shown they can fit within that structure: They can score, create for themselves, create for others around them and defend in ways that allow them to be trusted in any scenario.
Determining how forwards like Connor Bedard, Macklin Celebrini, Anthony Cirelli, Seth Jarvis, Wyatt Johnston, Mark Stone and Tom Wilson fit into those plans appears to be the primary challenge facing Canada’s front office ahead of the roster deadline.
Why? Because it’s essentially choosing between having the additional personnel that fits within a proven plan, versus having players who can fit in to an altered strategy should circumstances change on the ground in Italy.
Cirelli, Jarvis and Stone are two-way players who can both score and create for teammates, but their defensive zone impact is just as crucial. Bedard and Johnston can provide instant offense, and Celebrini is a blend of both; he has shown he can perform highly in every area of the ice.
Wilson is an outlier, in that he might be the most unique forward of this group. He provides Canada with one more tall and heavy presence up front at 6-4 and 225 pounds, and also gives the team another forward who can create problems at the net front.
My projection goes with Bedard, Celebrini, Stone and Wilson to make the final roster because it is a way of getting all those items. Morgan Geekie and Bo Horvat, who could each finish with more than 50 goals this season, may give the Canadian front office some sleepless nights before the deadline.
0:32
Macklin Celebrini’s hat trick wins it for Sharks in OT
Macklin Celebrini scores on the power play for San Jose Sharks
On defense, the emphasis is on players who can possess the puck, create for others and score goals. They must be able to be used in numerous situations while logging heavy minutes.
Experience and size are two of the assets they lost with Alex Pietrangelo, who is out recovering from a long-term hip injury. My projection gives Canada five defensemen who are each taller than 6-2, with the idea that there are other options to consider, like Evan Bouchard, Jakob Chychrun, Mike Matheson and Matthew Schaefer. Canada also has 6-0 Brandon Montour to consider.
Continuity and game strategy could be the hallmark for how Canada assembles its roster. That is also what makes the situation around goaltending difficult, because there’s been a lack of continuity (and long-term strategy).
The three goalies Canada brought to the 4 Nations Face-Off — Jordan Binnington, Adin Hill and Sam Montembeault — have had challenging 2025-26 seasons. A lower-body injury sent Hill to injured reserve in October, and he is possibly weeks away from returning. Montembeault has the worst GSAA of any goalie in the NHL in 5-on-5 play (min. 300 minutes) as of Dec. 8.
The discussion around Binnington has become a rather complicated endeavor. The St. Louis Blues struggled in the first quarter of the season, but entered Dec. 9 just two points out of a playoff spot. Part of what has made the discourse around Binnington complex is that the Blues were one of the strongest teams in the NHL in allowing the fewest scoring chances and high-danger scoring chances per 60 minutes in the first quarter. But Binnington is 53rd in save percentage — of the 57 goalies who qualify in the NHL. He has the fourth-lowest GSAA in all scenarios, and the sixth-lowest GSAA in 5-on-5 play entering Dec. 9, according to Natural Stat Trick.
Of course, one of the counters to those questions is that Binnington has a history of overcoming his inconsistencies to win important games. He had a combined .895 save percentage in December and January last season before backstopping Canada to a 4 Nations Face-Off title. He also led the Blues to a Stanley Cup win in 2019, including a clinching victory on the road in Game 7.
Binnington recently told The Canadian Press that he was “aware of what’s going on, and you want to put yourself in the best position to make that team and make it easy for the people making the decision.” He added, “At the same time, I feel like I’ve been around the league for a decent amount of time, and I know that if I control my inner world and what I need to do to feel at my best, then the rest will take care of itself.”
He made the cut (and the starting nod) in my projection, but the other two spots bring new faces. Logan Thompson entered Dec. 8 ranked first in GSAA among those with more than 10 games, and Scott Wedgewood was third, per Natural Stat Trick. Those two round out the goalie battery for Canada.
Could others like Jake Allen, Mackenzie Blackwood, Tristan Jarry and Darcy Kuemper present a case before New Year’s Eve?
Sweden
Note: Players in bold were the first six selected.
Sweden has quite a few moving parts it must manage. The need for consistency is even more crucial upon knowing that the Dec. 31 roster deadline is quickly approaching.
Elias Pettersson is one of the players at the heart of this conversation. He faced questions at the start of the season about whether he would be a better fit at center or on the wing, considering his offensive struggles along with Sweden’s additional options down the middle. Pettersson came into Dec. 8 averaging 0.79 points per game, while on a team that is in the bottom third of the NHL in goals per game. He also missed the Canucks’ past two games with a lower-body injury.
It has all led to a discussion about who makes the most sense at second-line center between Elias Lindholm, Mika Zibanejad and Pettersson. Lindholm returned from a lower-body injury and scored eight points in his first eight games back, averaging 0.85 points per game for the season. Zibanejad averaged 0.78 points per game through his first 31 games and came into Dec. 8 as the second-highest scoring center in terms of points among Swedes.
I’ve got Zibanejad centering the second line, with Lindholm in the middle of the third and Pettersson on the wing.
Deliberating between those three — with the idea that Joel Eriksson Ek can anchor the fourth line — also comes as Sweden awaits news on William Karlsson. He sustained a lower-body injury in mid-November that led to him being moved to long-term injured reserve on Dec. 6. Karlsson makes the final roster in this projection, with the idea he could be an extra forward who can play down the middle or on the wing.
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Elias Pettersson scores while falling down for Canucks
Elias Pettersson nets an impressive goal while falling onto the ice to give the Canucks a 2-1 lead over the Sharks.
Sweden has seen progress in other areas of the lineup. Gabriel Landeskog went from three points in his first 12 games to having nine points in 13 games in November. Two-way veteran forward Marcus Johansson is averaging 0.69 points per game, one of the strongest offensive campaigns of any Sweden player.
This could result in Sweden’s front office having a difficult decision to make when it comes to finalizing its forward group. Among those left off my roster, Andre Burakovsky, William Eklund and Emil Heineman have each made cases, and Rickard Rakell could also be under consideration despite the fact that he broke his hand in mid-November and is expected to return around mid-January.
The only injury concern facing Sweden’s blue line was Victor Hedman, who returned on Dec. 6 after a nearly monthlong absence. And in fact, my projected roster here has Sweden taking the same D group it used at the 4 Nations Face-Off, plus Hampus Lindholm.
Who’s making a late push? Oliver Ekman-Larsson had the most points of any Swedish defenseman this season entering Dec. 8, and Philip Broberg was fourth in average minutes played among Swedish defensemen. Simon Edvinsson and Adam Larsson could also be in the mix.
Now comes the most interesting question facing Sweden: Is Minnesota Wild rookie Jesper Wallstedt going to Milan-Cortina?
As of Dec. 8, Wallstedt is in the top three in the NHL in GSAA, goals-against average and save percentage among goalies with more than 10 games played. He has worked in tandem with fellow Swede Filip Gustavsson to create one of the best duos in the NHL. I’m sending both Gustavsson and Wallstedt to Italy.
Jacob Markstrom and Linus Ullmark have not fared up to expectation this season. Both entered Dec. 8 carrying save percentages below .880. Ullmark’s performance is particularly puzzling; the Ottawa Senators are among the top five teams in the NHL in fewest scoring chances allowed per 60, fewest high-danger chances allowed per 60 and fewest shots allowed per 60, and the former Vezina Trophy winner’s save percentage is a career-low .877.
Finland
Note: Players in bold were the first six selected.
Finland continues to encounter an extra degree of difficulty when building its roster, because there seems to be some sort of new injury on a near-weekly basis.
It started with Aleksander Barkov tearing his ACL and MCL in training camp. That was followed by Kaapo Kakko, Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen and Rasmus Ristolainen all missing the start of the regular season with injuries.
Kakko returned on Nov. 1, got injured on Nov. 13 and returned again on Nov. 29. Luukkonen has remained mostly healthy, and Philadelphia Flyers coach Rick Tocchet provided a timeline on Dec. 3 for Ristolainen’s potential return, saying, “It’s not a month and it’s not a week.” There’s also the fact that Juuso Valimaki, who was on Finland’s 4 Nations Face-Off roster but didn’t play, sustained a knee injury that required surgery last season and has yet to play this season.
Adding on to that list, Patrik Laine underwent core surgery in late October. He’ll miss three to four months, with his earliest return being Jan. 25. That would give him a five-game window to get ready for the Olympics if he’s named to the final roster. Mikael Granlund (lower body), Eetu Luostarinen (burns from a grilling accident) and Jesperi Kotkaniemi (ankle) were each on IR at various points this season and returned during the first weekend of December. Olli Maatta (upper body) has been out of the lineup since mid-November.
My roster projection takes those injuries into account, with the premise that everyone except Barkov and potentially Laine should be fully healthy when Finland’s front office submits its final roster on Dec. 31. It’s possible Finland could select Laine, but that puts a lot of faith in a five-game window after a major surgery being enough preparation for the Olympics.
Juggling that many injury concerns — with the reality that there could be even more in the coming weeks — has made depth even more imperative. Finland has forwards like Matias Maccelli and Aatu Raty who didn’t make the cut in my projection, but either could make the final cut or be called upon should another injury arise.
Unfortunately, the harsh reality is that 13 of the 28 Finnish forwards who have played a game in the NHL this season had five points or fewer entering Dec. 9. It’s the sort of dynamic that could prompt Finland’s front office to consider Finnish players who aren’t in the NHL, such as Jesse Puljujarvi.
It’s a similar situation with Finland’s defense. Finland has had only seven defensemen who have played a game in the NHL this season.
Czechia
Note: Players in bold were the first six selected.
Like its Finnish counterparts, Czechia’s front office is trying to figure out how it can piece together its best possible roster while navigating injuries. And as noted above with Puljujarvi, Czechia may also rely upon quite a few personnel currently playing in Europe.
Filip Chytil, who has had his career interrupted by injuries, sustained an upper-body injury this season that has kept him on IR since Oct. 20. He resumed skating in mid-November but a timeline has not been given for his return. Jiri Kulich remains out indefinitely with blood clots, while Tomas Nosek continues to recover from a knee injury with the expectation he will miss the Olympics. Czechia’s front office is also monitoring Michal Kempny’s status after he sustained an injury on Nov. 27 while playing in Sweden, with no reported timetable for his return.
Chytil and Kempny are included on my roster because there appears to be enough of a runway for them to prepare for the Olympics. If not, that would leave Czechia seeking another forward to fill its top nine while also losing one of its top six defensemen.
Certain portions of Czechia’s projected roster is in flux. Czechia has seen players like Adam Klapka get more playing time this season, while others like Ondrej Palat are playing every game but struggling. Palat is projected to finish with a career-low 14 points in an 82-game season.
Another player who has struggled this season is David Tomasek. He averaged 1.21 points per game playing in Sweden last season, but his transition to the NHL has been difficult, with five points through his first 19 games. There’s also the possibility that David Kampf could factor into the discussion now that he’s consistently playing games in the NHL again.
All of the above is what has made the performances of those playing in Europe even more important toward creating the strongest Czechia roster. There are forwards like Ondrej Beranek, Filip Chlapik, Ondrej Kase, Michael Spacek and Matej Stransky who are having strong seasons. Jan Kostalek and Libor Zabransky provide another set of options on defense. Kostalek has 27 points in 28 games. Zabransky had 11 goals and 21 points and is second in average ice time through his first 29 games in the Extraliga this season.
Czechia also has some deliberating to do with its goalies beyond Lukas Dostal. The conversation started gaining momentum when rookie Jakub Dobes won his first six starts this season while posting a .930 save percentage. However, he has gone 4-4-2 in 10 games since, with a save percentage below .900 in six of those contests.
Dostal and Dan Vladar are both in the top 22 of GSAA among goalies with 300 minutes or more played this season. Karel Vejmelka is 42nd and Dobes is 44th entering Dec. 9, according to Natural Stat Trick. So I give the slight edge to Vejmelka in this final projection.
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