Passan: 5 biggest takeaways from MLB’s landmark pitching study
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Jeff Passan, Senior MLB Insider
In Major League Baseball’s much-anticipated Pitching Injury Report, the league spends most of the 62 pages breaking little new ground. This is by design. To address the game’s rash of arm injuries with a sense of urgency, MLB couldn’t undertake the years of research necessary to better explain where the sport has failed and where it must go. More than a solution, this is, quite literally, a call to arms.
Over the last year, MLB officials talked with more than 200 people: pitching coaches, athletic trainers, former big leaguers — really anyone who might offer a nugget of insight or wisdom. Alongside bringing some clarity to the issue, MLB endeavored to answer lingering questions. Did the pitch clock cause arm injuries to soar? (There is no evidence to suggest as much.) What about the lack of sticky stuff to give pitchers a better handle on the ball? (Still unclear, though with the amount of ink devoted to the importance of grip, logic suggests it could be a factor for some.)
The larger issue is that arm injuries are a problem bigger than MLB. They exist in every crevice of the baseball universe, from college to youth baseball to the international game. This means fully dissecting the issue takes nuance and space better provided by a book, which I undertook a dozen years ago. Like the league, I came to no a-ha conclusion, beyond the brokenness inherent in a game fruitlessly trying to breed pitchers to do the very thing that gets arms hurt and the accompanying trajectory that portended trouble. In nearly a decade since The Arm was published, almost nothing has changed. In fact, arm injuries have gotten worse.
This report is an adequate, if banal, first step. Sound the alarms from the top, and hope to pull the right levers so a decade from now the game, at all levels, looks different. At the very least, it’s an acknowledgement that this is a matter worthy of the league’s time and energy. And while MLB isn’t explicit in its plans going forward, the main takeaways from the report are clear.
1. Early-season injuries have become especially worrisome to teams
In a memo sent to executives and team medical staff with the report Tuesday, MLB outlines the next phase of its research: “a detailed examination of offseason training regimens and early-season workloads.”
Injured-list placements between spring training and Opening Day have spiked precipitously in the last two years: nearly 100 in 2023 and more than 110 last year after never exceeding 80 over the previous five full seasons. And with spring training report dates less than two months away, how pitchers work in the offseason is at the forefront of clubs’ minds.
Professional pitchers now strive to show up at camps in Arizona and Florida looking near-ready to pitch in the big leagues. Over what should be their offseason, they use available technology to perfect current pitches and learn new ones, and, after a long season, rest insufficiently. Early in camp, they try to impress their team with the quality of their stuff — valuing spring measurables over staying healthy for a full season. Spring-training workloads, in the meantime, have dipped, even as pitchers bypass using camp to build arm strength.
“Although well-intentioned,” the report says, “this trend of reduced spring training workloads has coincided with an increase in early-season and spring training injuries, which contributes to the conclusion of some experts that pitchers are exposed to a higher risk of injury because they are not prepared for the dramatic increase in workload and intensity when the season begins.”
Undertaking this sort of a study necessitates buy-in from players, trainers and teams. Years of data will be needed before any sort of conclusion — and that is often the issue with the arm: Even data alone won’t necessarily lead to a satisfying explanation. What makes the arm such a puzzle is that any number of things can ruin it.
2. MLB is now on the record saying the most significant causes of arm injuries are velocity, spin-chasing and maximum-effort pitching
At this point, anyone familiar with how the arm works understands that the modern style of pitching is incompatible with arm health. Teams prize velocity and spin in the players they draft, promote and eventually keep on their rosters. If going deep into games led to better career outcomes, pitchers would adjust their behavior. It hasn’t. So they don’t.
Everything starts with velocity.
“Despite a direct correlation with injury risk,” the report says, “average fastball velocity in MLB jumped from 91.3 mph in 2008 to 94.2 mph this year. Velocity has been pursued by pitchers because it is advantageous in achieving positive performance outcomes, can be quantified and acquired, and is valued by major league clubs. Private facilities that specialize in velocity-focused methods of training have grown in popularity.”
Further, the report says, the culprits of injury proliferation include “the emphasis on optimizing ‘stuff’ (a term referencing the composite movement characteristics of pitches, including horizontal and vertical break and spin rate) and the modern pitcher’s focus on exerting maximum effort while pitching in both game and non-game situations.”
Partially at fault, the report posits, is that MLB teams’ response to this has not been to change the behaviors antithetical to health but rather work around them. More teams have resigned themselves to arm injuries and instead sought roster depth, taking advantage of rules that allow them to churn their pitching staff. In each of the last four years, teams have averaged more than 32 pitchers used per season. In 2010 that number was 22.8, in 2000 22.5, in 1990 20 and in 1980 15.1.
3. Technology runs the game
Never does the report explicitly ask what could join velocity, spin and max-effort pitching on the Mount Rushmore of Blown-Out Elbows, but it alludes implicitly and, at times, explicitly to technology’s part. This is not to suggest tech in baseball is inherently bad; on the contrary, it has done wonders for the game. But one quote in particular, from an athletic trainer, accurately reflects the environments in which pitchers are being taught.
“They’ll turn around and look at the Edgertronic and TrackMan, and they’re married to it,” the athletic trainer said. “And they’ll ask, ‘Where was that? Am I tunneling?’ I think it’s deadly. You’re challenging them on the mound to grip it, rip it. They come in and are asking, ‘What’s my carry?'”
First, a few definitions. An Edgertronic camera takes super-slow-motion video and allows pitchers to see how their pitch grip relates to the spin they seek on a certain pitch. TrackMan is a radar system that tracks ball flight and measures velocity and spin. Tunneling is trying to create difficult swing decisions for hitters by releasing different types of pitches from the same point. And carry is a pure-backspin fastball that isn’t pulled down by gravity as much as one even slightly off-axis, giving it the illusion of rising.
To be a pitcher at almost any competitive level today means fluency in this language. This is what pitchers are taught. And because the technology provides accurate and objective numbers with which growth can be tracked, it is fully embraced by the next generation of pitchers.
The consequences of this can damage pitchers who see TrackMan and Rapsodo data not as a tool but as their hammer. And who can blame them? When teams are interested in pitchers, the first thing they want to see is his data. With that being the case, of course pitchers are going to focus on juicing those numbers any way possible. It’s just another case of misplaced incentives running amok.
4. The minor leagues do not prepare pitchers for the demands of the major leagues
Twenty years ago, about 55% of major league starts and just over 50% of minor league starts came on five or fewer days’ rest. In 2024, that had dropped to about one-third of starts in the big leagues and barely 10% in the minor leagues. The same trend applies to relief pitchers: Big league relievers pitch on back-to-back days around 16% of the time; in the minor leagues, it’s closer to 2%. Want to know why the number of major league starts going at least five innings has dropped from 85% to 70% in the last two decades? Maybe it’s because over the same period, minor league starts of that length have gone from around 70% to less than 40%.
By and large, young players are no longer training — or, better put, being trained — to do what major league teams ask of them. One can’t reasonably expect a pitcher to throw deep into games when they’ve trained to air it out for five innings. Going back-to-back is a physical test that far too many relievers fail because nobody bothered telling them it’s an imperative skill for a big league bullpen arm.
And at the same time, the starting pitcher has been deprioritized. With the emergence of a seemingly endless supply of high-velocity relief pitchers, starters’ inability to go deep into games and the fear of the third-time-through-the-order penalty, the slow death of the starting pitcher has accelerated, much to the league’s discontent.
“Starting pitchers are no longer incentivized to establish their durability in games over the course of the championship season because clubs are more willing to rely on relief pitchers than ever before,” the report says. “Instead, they now pursue max-effort performance over much more limited periods of time — putting them at more substantial risk of future injury. These trends similarly raise questions about whether rule changes can be considered to make it more appealing for pitchers to prioritize durability over max-effort performance, in order to improve pitcher health.”
Perhaps the easiest rules changes the league can make are limiting moves back and forth between Triple-A and the big leagues and limiting the number of pitchers a team can roster, forcing starters to chase innings over stuff and strikeouts. The blowback would be strong — from teams and players — but when the league says modern pitching theory’s outcomes have “a noticeable and detrimental impact on the quality of the game on the field,” it’s the sort of damning statement that tends to prompt change.
5. The danger of amateur trickle-down
Perhaps the most damning graphic in the report comes on page 33. It covers 11 years of pitchers at the Perfect Game National Showcase, at which the largest company in youth baseball invites the best high school juniors in the country to play in front of an endless supply of talent evaluators. In 2014, five pitchers threw at least 95 mph. Same in 2015. Over the next three years, it was seven, six, three and eight. In 2020, it doubled to 16. Since then, the report says, it has more than doubled again, to 36.
High school players are simply doing what will get them recruited to college, where they’ll simply do what gets them drafted, where they’ll simply do what gets them promoted. Everything filters down from the big leagues. Kids aren’t using TrackMan and Rapsodo if big leaguers don’t. Compound that with the encouragement by travel-ball operators to participate in year-round play via showcases, the adoption of misguided weighted-ball programs from people ill-suited to properly monitor such training tools and the straight-up ignoring of PitchSmart guidelines recommended by a panel of medical experts, and far too often, players are coming into MLB systems already broken. Twenty years ago, less than 5% of drafted pitchers had reconstructive surgery on their pitching elbow’s ulnar collateral ligament, typically known as Tommy John surgery. Now, it’s more than one-third.
“The risks of arm injury due to overuse largely have been ignored in favor of year-round travel baseball and showcases (a longstanding concern with amateur baseball that experts view as only worsening in recent years),” the report says. “Indeed, high-level amateur players perform year-round with intense pitching schedules that put them at greater risk of future injury. Although some suggest that current youth and amateur development models may be primarily responsible for an increase in pitcher injuries across all levels, we conclude that improving pitcher health requires both adjusting professional incentives and implementing changes to amateur baseball so that appropriate training and performance practices trickle down to the amateur level.”
The report, which generally skimps on recommendations in favor of additional research, does no such thing with youth baseball. It recommends closing loopholes in PitchSmart guidelines, enforcing standards on participating tournaments and leagues, and increasing education. Even more, it suggests blackout periods that prevent professional scouts from evaluating players and allowing them proper rest and recovery during the offseason.
This is where the baseball universe must converge. All the stakeholders. For the sake of the kids. For the sake of the game. Solving arm injuries won’t ever come in one fell swoop. With so many pathologies, answers are built, not found. And though it will take years to see progress, it’s vital for MLB’s report to be just the beginning, not a standalone effort that stops where it started.
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Ryan S. Clark
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Kristen Shilton
South Florida is the sort of place where bizarre doesn’t just live, it thrives. Jake Walman, who was fined for squirting water in Game 3, scored what appeared to be the game-winning goal for the Edmonton Oilers in the third period … only for Sam Reinhart to score for the Florida Panthers with 20 seconds left in regulation … before Leon Draisaitl scored the actual game winner in overtime to give Edmonton a 5-4 win and tie the Stanley Cup Final at 2-2.
Game 4 was so erratic that even Florida Man likely thought it was too much. Exactly how hectic are we talking? How about the Panthers opening with a 3-0 lead in the first period, only to see the Oilers pull Stuart Skinner, replace him with Calvin Pickard and then score three goals of their own in the second period.
That set the stage for a defensive deadlock in the third that appeared to first be broken when Walman scored with 6:24 left, only to have Florida even the score. Draisaitl finished the job for Edmonton in overtime.
At this point, you know the drill. Ryan S. Clark and Kristen Shilton take a look at what worked and what didn’t for each team, while identifying which players to watch in Game 5 and pondering the big questions for the Oilers and the Panthers come Saturday.
Is the conversation after Game 4 more about the comeback — or what forced the Oilers to need to come back in the first place?
After the Oilers allowed two goals in each period of Game 3, they allowed three in the first period of Game 4. In total, the first period marked the sixth time in the first 10 periods of this series that the Panthers have come away with multiple goals. That’s what forced Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch and his staff to make a quick adjustment to avoid a disaster similar to Game 3.
Knoblauch’s decision to remove Skinner to start the second led to Pickard stopping all 10 shots he faced in the frame. It helped that the Oilers went from a 38.4% shot share in the first to a 55.6% shot share in the second, resulting in three goals. It was just their second multigoal period during the Cup Final.
Everything was going so well in the third. Their defensive structure allowed eight combined high-danger scoring chances in the second and third period, a contrast from the seven they allowed in the first alone. To be 20 seconds away from tying the series all while the Panthers had a shot share that was greater than 60%? That’s what made Reinhart’s goal so disheartening.
But in the end, Draisaitl’s game winner drew the Oilers level entering Game 5 on Saturday. — Clark
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Leon Draisaitl scores OT winner for Oilers in Game 4
Leon Draisaitl notches the game-winning goal with this one-handed effort in a pulsating Game 4 that levels the series for Oilers.
The Panthers tried to call game in the first period. And, briefly, it looked like they succeeded. They pounced early with a pair of Matthew Tkachuk power-play goals (his first points of the Cup Final), and Anton Lundell added insult to Oilers’ injury by extending Florida’s lead to three with just 41 seconds left in the first period — a 20-minute frame where the Panthers outshot Edmonton 17-7 and outchanced them 21-5. Florida’s furious forecheck once again appeared to flummox the Oilers.
But Edmonton made a goalie change to start the second, and their karma shifted along with it. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (on the power play), Darnell Nurse and Vasily Podkolzin erased all of Florida’s first-period work and put the Panthers on their heels.
And Pickard had Florida’s number in net, keeping the Panthers’ deep well of offensive threats from finding an equalizer until 20 seconds were left in regulation and Reinhart found an opening.
Florida’s eventual loss in extra time felt stunning. The Panthers’ uncharacteristic mistakes — players caught below the goal line, losing track of assignments, turnovers — ultimately doomed them in a game they were on track to win handily. Now all that matters is how they rebound in the quick turnaround to Game 5. — Shilton
Arda Öcal’s Three Stars of Game 4
Draisaitl set the record for most overtime goals in a single postseason, with four — after setting the record for most overtime goals in the regular season. He is the third player in Stanley Cup Final history with multiple OT goals in a single series — along with Don Raleigh in 1950 with the New York Rangers vs. the Detroit Red Wings and John LeClair in 1993 with the Montreal Canadiens vs. the Los Angeles Kings.
After coming in to relieve Skinner, Pickard proceeded to make 22 saves on 23 shots (the lone goal coming in the final minute of regulation with Florida’s net empty). Pickard is the first goaltender to win a Stanley Cup Final game in relief since 2015, when Andrei Vasilevskiy played 9:13 in relief of injured Ben Bishop. Pickard is also the fourth goalie to win seven straight decisions in the playoffs who didn’t start his team’s first game of the postseason, joining Chris Osgood (2008), Jacques Plante (1969) and Cam Ward (2006).
Tkachuk scored his first two goals of the Cup Final to open the game up quickly for Florida. This was also the first time Tkachuk has scored two goals in a Cup Final game. His fifth career playoff power-play goal set a franchise record.
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Matthew Tkachuk scores again to make it 2-0 Panthers
Matthew Tkachuk doubles the Panthers’ lead, again scoring on the power play against the Oilers in Game 4.
Honorable mention: This series!
This Cup Final has been incredibly entertaining. Between two overtime games, a blowout and dueling three-goal periods in Game 4, there has been no shortage of drama and intrigue in this Cup Final rematch. This series is the third in NHL history to see at least seven total goals in the first four games (1980 and 1918 were the others) and, at 32 goals, is tied for the fourth most goals in Cup Final history through four games. Bring on Game 5!
Players to watch in Game 5
Pickard’s work in relief of Skinner has become rather instrumental in the Oilers establishing some sense of consistency. The strongest example of that came in their first-round series against the Los Angeles Kings, when Pickard was named the starter in Game 3 and would win four straight to advance Edmonton to the second round. He won the first two games of the second round against the Vegas Golden Knights before an injury prompted the Oilers to return to Skinner.
Pickard was perfect in the second period of Game 4 and was nearly flawless until Reinhart’s goal late in the third. But when it reached overtime? Pickard stopped every shot — with some help from the crossbar — to finish the evening stopping 22 of 23 for a .957 save percentage over 51:18. And that was with the Panthers having a shot share greater than 57% over the final two periods. — Clark
0:40
Calvin Pickard’s outrageous save keeps Oilers in game
Calvin Pickard’s incredible tip-save onto the crossbar stops Panthers from notching an overtime game-winner.
The Panthers’ leading scorer in the playoffs wasn’t at his best in Game 4 — and Florida will need a return to form Saturday. Bennett took a second period infraction that led to Edmonton’s first goal off a power-play marker by Nugent-Hopkins, and he was tagged again in the third period for tripping right when Florida had found its lost momentum.
Add to that Bennett collected just a single assist on a night where the Panthers struggled for offense after an explosive first period. That’s not the sort of impact Florida requires from Bennett — and all eyes will be on how he rebounds in Game 5.
It was a positive for Florida to see Tkachuk get rolling Thursday, but the Panthers’ offense has so often run through Bennett. (His breakaway goal in Game 3 was particularly nice.) Florida will be right to expect Bennett to step it up when the series shifts back to Edmonton. And if any player can turn things around in a hurry, it’s Bennett, who was the Conn Smythe Trophy favorite ahead of Game 4 for a reason. — Shilton
Big questions for Game 5
Did the Oilers’ comeback potentially unlock a new way to defend the Panthers?
The Oilers have had troubles with preventing breakaways. They’ve struggled with giving up the big period on more than one occasion. In fact, that was the narrative of a Game 3 that might have been their worst performance of the postseason.
The first period of Game 4 seemed to point to another defensive challenge for the Oilers — only for them to walk away with a win and the belief that they might have found a solution for their aforementioned issues.
In Game 4, the Oilers:
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Found ways to take away the passing lanes, which is why they went from allowing 17 shots in the first period to 23 shots for the entire rest of the game.
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Blocked 28 shots.
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Significantly prevented the Panthers from having high-danger chances despite the possession numbers. In fact, the Panthers finished with one high-danger scoring chance in overtime while having a 57.14% shot share.
Even with Reinhart’s late goal, the overall structure the Oilers used for the rest of Game 4 — coupled with Pickard’s performance — had them looking like the team that has led Connor McDavid to repeatedly state that they can play defense. But can they harness what they did in Game 4 for Game 5 and beyond? And if so, will that be the key to the rest of the series? — Clark
Can Florida rattle Pickard?
The Panthers had Skinner’s number in this series, scoring eight goals on the netminder through Game 3 and the first period of Game 4. Pickard, on the other hand, was excellent in relief of Skinner on Thursday, making 18 consecutive saves before allowing Reinhart’s goal late in the third.
It’s not as if Pickard wasn’t challenged. He made several terrific stops on the Panthers’ top scorers and proved he was still in peak form despite not starting a game in weeks.
That doesn’t bode well for Florida. Even though Reinhart did get one past Pickard late, it didn’t seem to shake Pickard’s confidence. He was terrific in extra time, doing more than enough to keep pace with Sergei Bobrovsky at the other end, and ultimately securing the victory for Edmonton.
So what sort of challenge will a goaltending switch present for Florida in Game 5? Pickard was a sensational 6-0 in the postseason before getting hurt in the second round. If Pickard can be that game-changing presence in the crease that the Oilers are looking for, what will it take for the Panthers to respond and recapture an offensive edge? — Shilton
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Greg Wyshynski
SUNRISE, Fla. — The Edmonton Oilers didn’t just win Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final to even their series with the Florida Panthers at 2-2. They accomplished something the NHL hasn’t seen in 106 years.
With their 5-4 overtime win on Thursday night, Edmonton became the first road team in Stanley Cup Final history to rally from a deficit of at least three goals and win since the Montreal Canadiens rallied to defeat the Seattle Metropolitans in overtime in 1919.
Leon Draisaitl‘s 11th goal of the playoffs ended Game 4 in extra time for the Oilers. Home teams with at least a three-goal lead in the Stanley Cup Final were 158-1 before Thursday night.
“I think that once again it shows you that our group never quits,” Draisaitl said. “I think we believe that no matter how bad it is, if we get over that hump of adversity we’re going to keep pushing, we’re going to keep coming, and eventually it’ll break.”
Draisaitl made NHL history of his own in the victory. This was his NHL record fourth overtime game-winning goal in the 2025 postseason, the most ever in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. He also set the regular-season record with six this season.
Draisaitl’s dramatic goal Thursday night came in a game in which the Oilers trailed 3-0 after the first period.
“We sat back too much,” defenseman Jake Walman said. “We watched a little too much. We didn’t get to our game at all in that first period. That’s pretty much the thing we talked about in the intermission — get to our game and see what happens.”
That sentiment was conveyed in an impactful intermission speech by forward Corey Perry, the 40-year-old in his 20th NHL season, whose words inspired and refocused the Oilers for a second period that saw them tie the score at 3-3.
“I’m not going to share exactly what he said, but the message was that he’s been in these moments,” Draisaitl said. “He’s not a guy that speaks up or yells at guys all the time. That’s not his character. So you know when a guy like that — with that many games, that much experience, he’s won everything there is to win, he knows how to win — when he speaks up, you listen. It grabs your attention.”
The Oilers didn’t have that attention at the start.
Edmonton was trying to rebound from a devastating 6-1 loss in Game 3. Goaltender Stuart Skinner, who was pulled from that loss, got the start Thursday night because of his ability to bounce back after defeats along with his 6-0 record in Game 4s in his career.
But Skinner’s night would end early, as he was replaced by goalie Calvin Pickard in the second period. Pickard made 18 straight saves before Florida’s Sam Reinhart sent the game to overtime with a goal at 19:40 the third period, scoring with goalie Sergei Bobrovsky on the bench for an extra skater.
“It’s hard to describe the situation that he gets put in,” Draisaitl said of Pickard. “We’re down 3-0. He’s coming in. He’s cold. It’s not easy, and he makes those stops at the key moments when we really need them. He’s one of the best in the league at making the right save at the right time. He’s been nothing but spectacular for us.”
Pickard took over the Oilers’ crease for an ineffective Skinner in the first round against the Los Angeles Kings, going 6-0 for Edmonton. But an injury in their second-round series against Vegas gave Skinner the starting job again through the next two rounds.
Pickard came up with some clutch stops throughout his 22-save effort in Game 4, none bigger than a glove save on Florida’s Sam Bennett that sent the puck behind him off the crossbar and out of trouble in overtime.
“I read it pretty well,” Pickard said. “I looked in my glove and it wasn’t in there. I heard the crowd ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ and I got a good bounce.”
Pickard became the sixth goaltender to win a Stanley Cup Final game in relief.
The Oilers started Game 4 allowing a barrage of shots to the Panthers and once again parading to the penalty box. Matthew Tkachuk scored to make it 1-0 on a 5-on-3 power player with Evander Kane in the penalty box for high-sticking and Darnell Nurse in there for tripping. Tkachuk scored again 5:16 later on a power-play goal after Mattias Ekholm went off for high-sticking Brad Marchand. Center Anton Lundell made it 3-0 with 42 seconds left in the first period.
Skinner gave up three goals on 17 shots on Thursday, struggling again after lasting 43:27 in the Oilers’ loss in Game 3, in which he gave up five goals on 23 shots. Pickard entered on Monday night and stopped seven of eight shots.
With Pickard between the pipes, the Oilers began their comeback. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins converted on the power play — on one of three penalties the Panthers took in the period — from McDavid and Draisaitl. Nurse snuck one past Bobrovsky at 12:47 to cut the Florida advantage to one goal.
Just 10 seconds after Nurse scored, Florida captain Aleksander Barkov took a delay of game penalty. It was the moment the Oilers were waiting for: the best defensive forward in the NHL in the penalty box and a chance for their offensive stars to tie the score. But Bobrovsky was all the penalty kill needed, making five saves, including two on McDavid on the same scoring chance.
Undaunted, the Oilers kept fighting and tied the score with 4:55 left in the second period. Nurse set up forward Vasily Podkolzin for his second of the playoffs, knotting it at 3-3.
It remained that way until 6:24 of the third period when a great Oilers forecheck pinned the Panthers’ top line in their zone before Walman blasted the puck for the 4-3 lead. But the Oilers couldn’t hold it, as Florida knotted the score on Reinhart’s late goal.
After an overtime that saw both teams get their chances, it was Draisaitl who ended it at 11:18. After a great pass by Podkolzin to set him up, Draisaitl pushed the puck toward the Florida net and it deflected off defenseman Niko Mikkola and past Bobrovsky (30 saves).
Draisaitl is now tied with McDavid with 32 points in the playoffs. He is the fifth player in NHL history with at least 30 points in consecutive postseasons and is tied with McDavid and Mark Messier for second all-time with three 30-point postseasons in total; Wayne Gretzky did it six times.
“He’s as clutch as it gets,” Pickard said of Draisaitl. “He’s been playing great. Always scoring big goals at big times, and now we’re going home with momentum.”
For Florida, it was a squandered opportunity to move one win away from hoisting the Stanley Cup for the second straight season.
“It’s the best of three,” Tkachuk said. “With losing this one tonight, we’ve got to go in there and win one eventually. So hopefully you can do it in Game 5.”
LOS ANGELES — Cincinnati Reds left-hander Wade Miley is accused in court documents of providing drugs to the late Tyler Skaggs, the Los Angeles Angels pitcher who died of an accidental overdose in 2019.
Skaggs’ former agent, Ryan Hamill, said in a deposition that Skaggs told him he was using pain pills containing oxycodone that were provided by Miley.
The deposition is part of a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Skaggs’ family against the Angels in California. A former publicist for the Angels, Eric Kay, was convicted in Texas of providing the fentanyl-laced pills that an autopsy found contributed to Skaggs’ death. Kay was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison.
Skaggs died in the team hotel in a Dallas suburb. His body was found hours before what was supposed to be the start of a series between the Angels and Texas Rangers.
Miley, 38, is not facing criminal charges, and it’s not the first time his name has come up in relation to Skaggs’ death. During the sentencing phase of Kay’s case, prosecutors used a recording of a conversation between Kay and his mother in which Kay said Miley was one of Skaggs’ drug suppliers.
The Reds had no comment Thursday, and Miley wasn’t immediately available for comment.
Matt Harvey, now a retired major league pitcher, testified during Kay’s trial that he provided drugs to Skaggs. Harvey was later suspended for 60 days for violating MLB’s drug policy. He didn’t pitch in the major leagues again. Harvey and three other players also testified they received pills from Skaggs and described the recreational drug use they witnessed while with the Angels.
Harvey and Skaggs were teammates with the Angels in 2019. Skaggs and Miley were teammates with the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2012 and 2013.
Hamill said the conversation in which Skaggs implicated Miley took place in 2013. Hamill had expressed concern to Skaggs’ parents about what he said was erratic behavior from the pitcher in a phone conversation. Hamill said he and Skaggs’ parents confronted Skaggs at home, leading to Skaggs’ admission that he was using drugs and the accusation that Miley was supplying them.
Miley signed a one-year contract with the Reds on June 4 and has made two starts this season. He had Tommy John surgery on his left elbow in May 2024 and signed a minor league deal with Cincinnati in February.
Miley had an opt-out clause if he didn’t reach the big leagues by June 1. The 14-year veteran executed that clause but remained with Cincinnati while he pursued potential deals with other clubs before re-signing with the Reds.
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