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WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — The NHL’s operations department pulled back the curtain on their process assessing how and why on-ice calls are overturned — or not — for the league’s general managers to kick off their annual meetings on Monday.

The 32 team executives gathered at Eau Palm Beach to hear from a panel of league hockey ops members who step into action when there’s a coach’s challenge for goalie interference or offside. The group reviewed several examples from this season and solicited manager feedback on whether they agreed with the original call or the extra layer of assessment.

Primarily, though, the goal was to provide clarity on what goes on between the refs — reviewing those infamous iPads in the penalty box — and the league figures connecting them with more information.

“When you get on the headset [in the Situation Room], the first thing you’re asking the referee when you give him the overhead [view], is, ‘is there anything you see here you didn’t see in real time,'” said Stephen Wolkom, the NHL’s senior vice president and director of officiating. “He’s going to [look] and be blunt. And that’s a tell right there on where we’re going to go [with our decision].”

Wolkom, along with Kris King, senior vice president of hockey operations and Colin Campbell, executive vice president and director of hockey operations, explained what their group is looking at when it comes to dissecting a potentially incorrect call. There’s a checklist of sorts they’ll go through on a goaltender interference question that serves, ideally, to be a consistent baseline if a goal is to be called back.

The league is looking at whether the contact from a player is deliberate or incidental, where it happened on the ice (in the goalie’s blue paint or out in white ice), if the goalie had a chance to reset, was able to do his job, and if the actions by the offensive or defensive player led to any part of the contact. And of course, there’s whether the referee sees anything differently on the provided replay that they missed in real time.

It’s often a fine line deciding which way the challenge goes. Perhaps that’s why the NHL has seen an uptick in coach’s challenges for goalie interference this season, rising to 105 already from 88 last year.

Campbell has one theory on that stat.

“There’s been maybe 10-15 really dumb challenges,” said Campbell. “We look at each other and go, ‘What are they doing? This is crazy by them.'”

Goal scoring is at a premium, though. And getting into a goaltender’s face while attempting to redirect pucks in front of the net is often the cost of netting one. So how can the NHL ensure goalies have a chance to stand tall without inhibiting a player’s right to try and beat him?

That’s at the forefront of the league’s decision-makers when they’re breaking down a challenge.

“We told the goalies we’d protect them in the blue,” said Rod Pasma, vice president of hockey operations. “How do we tell the position players when they’re trying to score and stay out of the blue, and they’re tipping a puck, and make a contact [with the goalie in white ice], [that they are] doing it wrong? That comes into it as well … and then, how much is the contact? Is it extreme? Is it relevant?”

All of that first falls on referees to answer. Those on the outside bemoan how long video review can take and the way challenges slow down a game’s flow. But communication between those eyes in the sky and the ones at ice level is key to getting a correct call. Usually once the refs have seen new angles, they’ll be able to tell King and company if the coach was right to question their verdict.

Nuance is everything, though.

“The goaltender has to be afforded the chance to make the save,” said goaltending supervisor Kay Whitmore. “But we have to be careful on saying whether the goalie can make the save or not. [Former NHL referee] Danny O’Halloran got an earful from Jonathan Quick one time saying, ‘how the [expletive] do you know I’m not going to make that save?'”

In addition to talking coach’s challenges, the league went over examples of unique offside reviews. They emphasized to the team execs that part of the process includes questioning where the puck entered the zone and whether they can clearly see where the puck is before issuing the offside challenge.

Missed game stoppages — for hand passes and tipping pucks into the net above “normal shoulder height” — were also on the agenda.

The league’s goal was to emphasize again the consistency of their approach in making one call or another — not that they want to be influencing the outcome of a game if they don’t have to.

“The call on the ice is [most] important in every one of these [situations],” said Campbell.

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Giants sell 10% stake to private equity firm

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Giants sell 10% stake to private equity firm

The San Francisco Giants have sold a reported 10% stake in the team to private equity firm Sixth Street.

The team confirmed the deal Tuesday but not the amount of the investment, which was first reported Monday by the New York Times.

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.

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Ohtani ‘nervous’ in Tokyo but gets 2 hits, runs

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Ohtani 'nervous' in Tokyo but gets 2 hits, runs

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 Freeman was 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.

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Cardinals shortstop Winn out with wrist soreness

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Cardinals shortstop Winn out with wrist soreness

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.

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