Inside USC’s quest to build a championship-caliber roster around its Heisman-winning QB
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Paolo Uggetti, ESPN
THE HOME TEAM locker room at AT&T Stadium was quiet. At first, no words were spoken, no music played from the speakers. Despite an 11-win season after a 4-8 year, there was no room for celebration. As pads came off USC players’ shoulders for the last time in the 2022-23 season, tears surfaced.
The Trojans had been up by 15 points with less than five minutes left in the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic but, with victory well within their grasp, they allowed Tulane to engineer a shocking comeback to win the New Year’s Six bowl, clouding USC’s incredible turnaround season.
“It was heart-wrenching,” nickelback Jaylin Smith said. “To work so hard for an opportunity like this and to come up short. There were a lot of tears in there.”
When coach Lincoln Riley finally entered the room and spoke to the players on hand, he had a simple message.
“Remember this feeling.”
For players like Smith, who recalled Riley’s words from that night, that feeling is vivid. But over the past eight months, the emotion has evolved from being a hollow disappointment to a motivational fuel that USC hopes will define a season with a better ending.
“We tapered off at the end of the season,” said center Justin Dedich, who decided to return to USC for one more season. “The motto this year is the longer it goes, the better we get.”
As USC readies itself for Year 2 of the Riley era, starting Saturday against San Jose State, the task at hand is different from turning around a 4-8 season. After losing to Utah in the Pac-12 championship, missing a shot at the College Football Playoff and having its greatest weakness — an inconsistent defense — on full display, expectations have only grown. USC is ranked sixth in the AP preseason poll — and questions around the Trojans’ defense have only gotten louder.
With a Heisman-winning quarterback in tow, a slew of returning starters and talented transfer additions, there’s plenty of pressure surrounding the team in its last season as part of the Pac-12. A year into their tenure, Riley & Co. head into the 2023 campaign attempting to harness new talent, continuity and improvement into not just a cohesive team but a championship-caliber one that won’t come up short again.
“I think that’s ultimately been everyone’s motivation,” Smith said. “If you were in that locker room after Tulane, you know the feeling, and I think everyone that was in there, they get the feeling, and they are motivated to never feel that way again.”
ALEX GRINCH DID something this offseason that he hadn’t done in his entire coaching career. As he began the process of taking stock of his first season as the Trojans’ defensive coordinator, Grinch realized going back and reviewing game film wasn’t going to be enough. He needed to go back and watch film of USC’s practices, too.
“It provides a little bit of insight maybe why you didn’t do certain things. It again takes some discipline, and you got to rip off some Band-Aids to do some of those things,” Grinch said. “For instance, finishing football. If you can’t put together on Tuesday and Wednesday two hours of practice building and scouting, it’s going to be really hard to put 60 minutes in [on Saturdays].”
Grinch studied the film and then, a few months ago, brought in some of the team’s defensive leaders to review it as well. It proved illuminating, as coaches and players saw how some things the unit was doing at the start of the year dissipated over the course of the season.
“Being able to look back and say, ‘This was helping us,’ or ‘We kind of got away from this, and it started to hurt us,'” linebacker Shane Lee said. “It can definitely be a tool if you use it right.”
Grinch, whose seat warmed after the loss to Tulane, hasn’t shied away from the facts: Last season, USC’s defense was near the bottom of the FBS in nearly every statistical category except for turnovers forced (sixth in the country). It allowed 27 plays of 20 yards or more, 13 plays of 30 yards or more, eight plays of 40 yards or more, and four plays of 50 yards or more — numbers that all ranked in the bottom 30 defenses in the country.
Talk to any player on the USC defense and a stream of honest acknowledgements surface when discussing last year’s performance. There’s little sugarcoating or beating around the bush — they all know it wasn’t good enough.
“We don’t really look at rankings, but the rankings show that we weren’t the best we could be,” Smith said. “It was frustrating.”
According to the junior safety, strength coach Benny Wylie spent the summer emphasizing those rankings to the defense, reminding them during workouts of, for example, how many points USC’s defense gave up in the fourth quarter. The answer was an average of 10.4 points per fourth quarter — 128th in the country.
“We want to be an effort-based defense, a fast defense, playing free and playing with an edge, something we missed last year,” redshirt senior Bryson Shaw said. “There was a certain type of competitive vibe to us that we were missing.”
It wasn’t just the players. Grinch said he spent the offseason balancing out trying to learn from what worked and didn’t work for last year’s team while also reminding himself that it still helped USC win 11 games and, most importantly, that he couldn’t approach this season as if he were trying to coach last season’s unit.
“Everything is obviously on the table moving forward, but the big-picture stuff in terms of who you want to be and what you want to be. Did we succeed in that in Year 1? No, but that piece doesn’t change,” Grinch said. “What you’re looking for is the tangible piece. The fact is we now have to make sure we play more physically, play faster. … All those things have to move the needle.”
If there wasn’t enough pressure heading into Year 1, there certainly is now. And if the early part of this season displays similar struggles, those negatives will linger. Grinch recognizes that, and, as he put it, he can’t fight narratives. Last month, when a reporter asked him how he felt about the perception that he is coaching for his job this season, Grinch didn’t flinch.
“I think 21 years in the business, I mean, I think you’re coaching for your job all the time,” Grinch said. “I think pressure comes with it. I think about whether it’s Missouri or Washington State or Ohio State or Oklahoma, I don’t think I feel any different than I have in any of those years. There’s a lot of pressure.”
Despite the chatter about Grinch’s job being in jeopardy after the Tulane loss, Riley didn’t waver either, instead reaffirming his commitment in Grinch. This year, there’s added depth and experience at nearly every position, which has bred a productive competition across the board, in large part because USC once again dipped deep into the transfer portal to find an edge. Literally.
MARSHAWN LLOYD WAS still wearing the garnet and black colors of the other USC across the country when he was watching Lincoln Riley’s USC wide-eyed and with a tinge of jealousy.
“I watched the Utah game and the Tulane game, and I hadn’t committed,” Lloyd said. “I was just like, ‘Man, I would love to be in that type of offense.'”
Eight months later, Lloyd now wears cardinal and gold, having spoken his wish into reality by transferring from South Carolina to Southern California and landing squarely in the middle of the offense he admired from afar. Lloyd, who rushed for 573 yards and nine touchdowns last season, is one of several talented transfers who entered the portal this offseason and ended up choosing the Trojans.
As offensive fixtures such as Jordan Addison and Travis Dye left for the NFL, the Trojans had no problem reloading on offense. They added the likes of Lloyd, Arizona‘s Dorian Singer — the Pac-12’s second-leading receiver last year — while bolstering their offensive line with four-star offensive lineman Emmanuel Pregnon from Wyoming and three-star offensive lineman Michael Tarquin from Florida.
While last year’s portal run for USC was in large part due to the circumstance of overhauling a roster, this year’s additions seem to be more rooted in USC’s success and in its obvious needs after losing its final two games last year. It’s why most of its biggest targets in the portal ended up being on defense.
After losing its best defensive player, Tuli Tuipulotu, to the NFL draft, USC had to address that aforementioned edge rusher position and its defensive line as a whole. That unit is where USC found the most transfer portal success, adding players such as three-star Kyon Barrs from Arizona in December along with four-star Jack Sullivan from Purdue, four-star Anthony Lucas from Texas A&M, and eventually the biggest get of them all in four-star defensive lineman Bear Alexander from Georgia.
“We have more good players and less bad players,” Riley said matter-of-factly of the difference between this year and this time last year. “The front seven defensively is a huge difference. It feels a lot different, a little more competition across the board.”
The linebackers represent this notion well. Between a veteran and captain like Lee, a dynamic returning transfer in Eric Gentry and transfer additions such as Jamil Muhammad from Georgia State and four-star linebacker Mason Cobb from Oklahoma State, the room is loaded with options, and that’s before even considering true freshman Tackett Curtis, who has earned some reps among the first team in practice and is listed as the starter at Will linebacker on USC’s recently released depth chart.
Cobb, in particular, has been a standout for more than just his play. In a short time, he has become not just a fixture of the USC defense but a leader for the whole team, all of whom wax poetic about the new guy who has transformed into a team captain in record time.
“That guy deserves it,” Shaw said. “He came in right away and I felt like I knew him forever. He’s got a certain vibe to him, and we all gravitate to it. We’re very excited that he’s here.”
When Riley first arrived at USC, he emphasized his preference to build his team through high school recruiting over relying heavily on the portal. That reliance diminished slightly this season, with 15 incoming transfers compared with 20 last year.
“Moving forward, what you don’t do is say, ‘Well, we’re not doing transfer, we’re not doing high school guys,'” Grinch said. “Let’s make the best roster we possibly can.”
While USC keeps jumping up the recruiting rankings and getting commitments from players such as the top quarterback in the 2026 class, Julian Lewis, there is still an unspoken urgency to build a roster this season that can win now, in what will likely be Caleb Williams‘ final college season.
IT IS A prefix that will forever precede his name — Heisman winner — but Williams has already moved past it.
“He achieved the greatest award you can — the Heisman — and he wants more,” Dedich said. “Not many people can actually go out there and do that.”
A glance at Williams’ Instagram feed is enough to perceive the ways he has enjoyed and supercharged his offseason after winning the Heisman. Visiting London. Walking the runway at Paris Fashion Week. Attending an F1 race in Monaco. Throwing the first pitch at a Dodgers game. His teammates, though, have seen him in different contexts: hanging out, planning team activities, throwing at summer workouts.
“Everyone thinks he’s Superman, but he’s still human,” Dedich said.
Williams, for his part, knows that remaining level with the teammates he will have to correct or praise at some point is crucial to his role as a leader. It’s why he knows coasting in practices or workouts isn’t an option. Or why being the one to create chemistry by spending time outside the football field with the rest of the team is crucial to USC’s success.
“Comfort and confidence,” Williams said when asked what is different going into his second season at USC. “Not just for myself but for everybody overall. Confidence in the scheme. When you get a year under your belt, you get a bunch of trials and tribulations, you get successful plays, you get some confidence, and you get to work with it the whole summer. That’s what we’ve been doing.”
Those who have been around Williams can attest to the growth. Some say he has stepped into being as much of a coach as he can be as a player. Others call out his leadership, while those who transferred to USC don’t hesitate when admitting he was a factor in their decision. Arriving on campus and interacting with Williams in person has only bolstered their belief that they made the right choice.
“He organizes workouts and brings us along,” Singer said. “He brought the offensive line to his first pitch at the Dodgers game; he took the team paintballing a couple weeks ago. So it’s things like that that people don’t see that makes him really special.”
Yet nothing brings home that point more than when Williams becomes as anonymous as he can be these days, putting on a helmet before putting on a show.
“He’s a unique talent and a unique person,” Dedich said when asked about the comparison between Williams and Patrick Mahomes. “People are going to compare other kids to Caleb one day.”
Defensive leaps and improvements on offense should boost USC’s chances this season, but every player is conscious of the fact that the Trojans’ chances rely heavily on Williams, whom every teammate seems to be running out of adjectives to describe. It is fitting then, that the rare critique comes from the person who knows him best.
“He’s played a year and a half of college football. There’s 15 more levels he can get to,” Riley said. “He needs to get better at a little bit of everything. I don’t know if you guys believe me when I tell you that actually is the truth. He’s tremendous, but he doesn’t walk on water yet. He’s got a lot of work to do, and he’s the first one to admit that.”
If Williams’ teammates are the chorus of praise Williams has earned, Riley is the realist, the motivator who knows that the task of improving upon last season won’t be easy, even with a roster that’s deeper, better and more committed to winning.
“I do think he’s a better player right now than he was,” Riley said. “But he’s got a whole new set of challenges that are coming up that he’s gonna have to be ready to work with.”
So far the new and improved Williams show has come behind closed doors, in practices where only a handful of people can watch. Come Saturday, the stage will welcome Williams once again. And after the past eight months of work, USC is hoping the team that joins him up there will be a far better version than the one the Trojans have left behind.
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Greg Wyshynski
The NHL Frozen Frenzy is like the best hockey buffet ever cooked up.
There will be some popular main courses. There will be some delectable side dishes. But with all 32 teams in action from 6 p.m. ET puck drops through the Battle of California showdown between the Los Angeles Kings and San Jose Sharks at 11 p.m. ET, fans will be able to sample all the NHL has to offer in one gluttonous sitting.
Here are reasons to watch all 32 teams during the Frozen Frenzy and beyond, from superstar players to teams with championship aspirations to controversial storylines to Alex Ovechkin once again chasing NHL goal-scoring history.
Here we go … and enjoy the Frenzy!
Atlantic Division
The constant David Pastrnak
Since 2023, the Bruins have said farewell to franchise standard-bearers Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci (retirement) as well as Brad Marchand, their heart-and-soul captain who won a Stanley Cup with Florida after an NHL deadline trade.
Which is to say that Pastrnak has seen a lot of friends leave the Bruins’ locker room, but he just keeps doing what he does best: scoring at will. Pasta has 13 points, including five goals, in his first 10 games this season. That’s to be expected for the fifth leading scorer in the NHL (329 in 246 games) over the previous three season.
The cast changes in Boston. Pastrnak remains a shining star.
Is the goaltending finally fixed?
There are many reasons why the Sabres have crashed like a Bills fan through a table in every season since last making the playoffs in 2011, but one of the primary ones has been a lack of quality goaltending. That problem was exacerbated by presumed starter Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen taking a step back last season.
Injuries to Luukkonen in the preseason opened the door for backup Alex Lyon, signed as a free agent and coming out of the gate with a .922 save percentage in seven games; and rookie Colten Ellis, who made 29 saves in his NHL debut. Dashing early-season hopes is kind of the Sabres’ thing, but at the very least, these two netminders have generated some hope for Buffalo.
Is this the year?
It’s an annual rite in the NHL: The Red Wings being poised to break out as a contender before falling short of the postseason, which they’ve done every season since 2015-16.
But through nine games, Detroit is 6-3-0 and in second in the Atlantic Division thanks to a dominant 5-1-0 record at home. The chemistry between leading scorer Dylan Larkin (13 points) and standout winger Lucas Raymond with rookie forward Emmitt “Finsanity” Finnie has been palpable. The line of Alex DeBrincat, Marco Kasper and Patrick Kane is chipping in. The Red Wings are thriving despite goalies John Gibson (acquired from the Ducks last summer) and Cam Talbot playing below replacement level to start the season.
If every part of Detroit’s engine gets roaring at the same time, how far can the team roll?
The champs are (mostly) here!
The Panthers’ bid for a third straight Stanley Cup win and fourth straight trip to the Cup Final got off to an injurious start.
Star winger Matthew Tkachuk had groin surgery in August, putting him out until December at the earliest. Then the Panthers lost star center and team captain Aleksander Barkov on his first day of training camp, needing surgery to repair the ACL and MCL in his right knee — injuries that will sideline him for the regular season and potentially the playoffs. They also lost defenseman Dmitry Kulikov for five months with an upper-body injury.
And yet the Panthers are maintaining their level of play, if not thriving: 5-5-0 in their first 10, being led in both goals (five) and points (11) by the Rat King himself, Brad Marchand.
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Brad Marchand scores goal vs. Penguins
Brad Marchand lights the lamp
No. 1 for a reason
Through 10 games, the Canadiens led the Atlantic with a 7-3-0 record. There are plenty of reasons for this great start, from the outstanding play of rookie goalie Jakub Dobes and winger Ivan Demidov to the continued maturation of players such as Lane Hutson and Alex Newhook.
But the constant for the Habs has been their No. 1 line of Cole Caufield (seven goals), Nick Suzuki (13 points) and Juraj Slafkovsky, who are scoring over 3.5 goals per 60 minutes and giving up only 0.95 goals per 60 minutes to far this season.
The bunch without Brady
Brady Tkachuk is the driving force behind the Ottawa Senators, both statistically and as one of the NHL’s most influential captains. But the Sens lost him to a torn ligament in his right thumb on Oct. 13 which required surgery, and likely will keep him out until around Thanksgiving.
The Sens are 4-4-1 through nine games. Helping to fill the void left by Tkachuk are two players off to a fast start: Centers Shane Pinto (eight goals through nine games) and Dylan Cozens (six).
Is their luck turning?
Eight of the Lightning’s first nine games this season have been decided by one goal. They were 1-2-2 in those games until back-to-back wins against the Ducks and Golden Knights at home.
Of course, as Billy Zane taught us in “Titanic”: Sometimes you make your own luck. Getting a more consistent defensive performance from their dynamic top line — Brayden Point is a minus-10 already — would be a good start.
What happens when the World Series is over?
The good news in Toronto: The incredible run by the Blue Jays to the World Series has brought the city — and much of the nation — together in following every Vladimir Guerrero Jr. swing and Trey Yesavage pitch this postseason. (Hence the change in start time for the Maple Leafs-Flames game to 6 p.m. ET.)
That means there has been a lot less attention — and scrutiny — on a post-Mitch Marner Maple Leafs team that is decidedly OK and nothing more so far. They’re eighth offensively thanks to 14 points in eight games by William Nylander — and 28th defensively thanks to below-replacement goaltending. Joseph Woll is back after an extended personal absence, so that should help the latter.
But once the World Series is over, fans will go from talking about Max Scherzer to Max Domi. And we can’t even imagine the takes if the Jays eliminate the Dodgers and plan the parade the Leafs have been trying to draw up again since the 1960s.
Metropolitan Division
When will Nikolaj Ehlers get rolling?
Some cynical Winnipeg fans are bathing in schadenfreude watching Ehlers’ first handful of games with the Hurricanes.
Ehlers left the Jets as a free agent for a six-year, $51 million deal as the latest solution on the wing for Carolina’s top line. While linemates Seth Jarvis (seven goals) and Sebastian Aho (10 points) are thriving, Ehlers went five straight games without a point to start the season.
The good news for Carolina and their new great Dane: He has assists in three straight games, so maybe the aforementioned rolling has started.
The Big Boss
Dmitri Voronkov doesn’t have the name recognition of Zach Werenski, Adam Fantilli or linemate Kirill Marchenko when it comes to Blue Jackets in the hockey discourse. But the 6-foot-5, 235-pound winger who self-bestowed the nickname “Big Boss” has been an absolute force so far this season on Columbus’s top line.
He scored five goals and added four assists through eight games for the Jackets, skating to a plus-8. GM Don Waddell challenged Voronkov to work on his conditioning when he signed him to a two-year contract extension in July. That could be the key for the Big Boss surpassing his 23 goals and 24 assists in 73 games last season.
Jack Hughes, goal machine
When Hughes is healthy and in the lineup, few players in the NHL provide their team the propulsive offensive spark that the 24-year-old center provides the Devils. Hughes has eight goals in nine games for New Jersey, including two game winners. Jesper Bratt has assisted on five of them — there are times when Bratt and Hughes seem like they’re playing on a different speed setting than everyone else.
The Devils have never had a 50-goal or 100-point scorer in franchise history. Hughes is on pace for both — provided he can stay in the lineup.
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Jack Hughes scores hat trick in Devils’ win
Jack Hughes leads the Devils to a 5-2 win over the Maple Leafs with his third career hat trick.
The joy of Matthew Schaefer
Few rookies have arrived in the NHL with the boundless enthusiasm and positivity of Matthew Schaefer. The first overall pick in this summer’s draft, the 18-year-old defenseman has earned his freshman year ice time (23:12 per game) with seven points through eight games, including three points on the power play.
The charismatic Schaefer was an instant fan favorite, with the crowd at UBS Arena chanting his name during a recent win over San Jose. Schaefer acknowledged those cheers after the game: “I love this place! Let’s go Islanders, baby!”
Are they OK?
Perhaps this is a transition season. Perhaps new captain J.T. Miller hasn’t imprinted his win-at-all-costs style on the rest of the roster. Perhaps new coach Mike Sullivan just needs more time to unlock his roster’s offense or perhaps even he can’t solve the team’s depth issues.
Whatever the reasons, the Rangers have stumbled to a 3-5-2 start, with goal scoring that ranks 31st in the NHL. There’s still plenty of time to turn the team around in front of goalie Igor Shesterkin. Perhaps that starts during the Frenzy.
Trevor Zegras‘ second act
Before the season, former Ducks phenom Zegras told me that he wanted people to “go from saying ‘He’s good at hockey’ to ‘He’s a hockey player'” after his first season in Philadelphia.
The early returns are strong: two goals and six assists in eight games, skating to a plus-5 while averaging 16:48 of ice time per game. The only bummer for Zegras is that he hasn’t gotten a strong run at center yet for the Flyers. But as his game continues to rebound, perhaps those opportunities to be a “hockey player” will flourish.
Crosby, Malkin delay the inevitable
What the projected timeline had been for the Penguins this season: After an atrocious start clinches a fourth straight season without reaching the playoffs, franchise icons Evgeni Malkin (in the last year of his contract) and Sidney Crosby (exhausted by losing) are traded to Stanley Cup contenders.
Instead, Geno and Sid have disrupted the timeline.
The Penguins’ stars have helped the team to a 6-2-1 start, good for second in the Metro. Malkin leads the team with 14 points through nine games, while Crosby has 11 points through nine games, which includes a recent hat trick against the Stanley Cup champion Panthers. They’ve both said they don’t want their ride in Pittsburgh to end. They’re playing like it.
Ovechkin goes for 900 (and more…)
During last season’s Frozen Frenzy, Alex Ovechkin was still 41 goals away from breaking Wayne Gretzky’s all-time NHL goals record. One year later, Ovi has not only surpassed The Great One’s 894 career goals — the “Gr8 Chase” ended on Apr. 6 — but he is one goal away from becoming the first NHL player to score 900 goals in his career.
Ovechkin recently played his 1,500th career game, a standard only seven other players have achieved. That’s a lot of games … and how many more Ovechkin will play in the NHL beyond this season is an undeniable undercurrent every time he steps on the ice for the Capitals.
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Alex Ovechkin extends record goal tally with No. 899
Alex Ovechkin lights the lamp for his 899th goal to pad the Capitals’ lead.
Central Division
The new dynamic duo
For 15 years and three Stanley Cup championships, the Blackhawks were defined by a pair of star forwards: Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews. We’re not looking to burden two burgeoning stars with that weight of history, but it’s hard not to get caught up in the “Chicago’s new dynamic duo” hype when discussing Connor Bedard and Frank Nazar.
Bedard, 20, is looking to rebound after failing to meet expectations last season, following his rookie of the year win in 2023-24. Nazar, 21, looks primed for a breakout season in Year 2, leading Chicago in goals (four) and points (nine) through nine games.
If nothing else, they’ve already achieved something Kane and Toews did in Chicago: Making the Blackhawks a team worth watching again.
Nate Dog is barking
Nathan MacKinnon willed the Avalanche to a Stanley Cup in 2022. Since then, Colorado has lost in the first round twice and the second round once despite a deep, star-studded lineup.
“You don’t want to win just one with this group. If we only got one, it would be tough,” MacKinnon said before the season.
The hunger for a championship is back for the Avalanche and MacKinnon, who has seven goals and seven assists through 10 game and is looking absolutely dangerous every time he touches the puck.
Otter in the net
It has been quite a ride for Dallas goalie Jake Oettinger. He made the Team USA 4 Nations Face-Off roster last season and is expected to challenge Connor Hellebuyck as the nation’s Olympic starter next February in Italy.
Then, he’ll hope to lead the Stars back to the Western Conference finals … where coach Peter DeBoer pulled him after giving up two goals on two shots in their Game 5 elimination to the Oilers. DeBoer was let go this offseason, partially for the way he handled that situation. Oettinger has said his piece about how it affected him.
Now, it’s back to leading the Stars to a fourth straight conference finals while increasing his standing in the eyes of Team USA.
The $136 million man
Kirill Kaprizov has been the most important player on the Wild since he arrived in the NHL, winning rookie of the year in 2020-21. Beginning next season, he’ll also be their wealthiest player.
Kaprizov and the Wild shocked the NHL when the inked an eight-year, $136 million contract extension in September. It’s the richest contract in total dollars and annual cap hit ($17 million) in NHL history.
As he does every season, Kaprizov is proving his worth: He has 14 points (five goals, nine assists) in 10 games.
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Kirill Kaprizov tallies goal vs. Rangers
Kirill Kaprizov nets goal for Wild
Countdown to extinction
The Predators (4-4-2) are off to a better start than last season’s 0-5-0 stumble that helped dig a hole from which they could not climb. But there are many more questions than answers right now.
Can they maintain that pace without top defenseman Roman Josi, who is week-to-week because of an upper body injury? What happened to Steven Stamkos, as one of the best goal scorers of the past 20 NHL seasons mustered only one power-play goal in his first 10 games?
The good news is that Juuse Saros looks like his old self again. Perhaps he can keep this thing on track because if Nashville jumps the rails, it might be time for GM Barry Trotz to plot a new course for the franchise.
The future is now for Jimmy Snuggerud
Snuggerud is so polished as a 21-year-old player that it’s sometimes hard to remember that he’s an NHL rookie.
Blues fans (and Snuggerud himself) got a reminder of that last week when coach Jim Montgomery kept him on the bench for the third period and overtime in a loss to the Kings. Snuggerud has three goals and three assists through eight games for the Blues, making his mark in a crowded rookie field this season.
Meet the NHL’s newest contender
While they have many former Arizona Coyotes players on their roster, the Mammoth are considered a new franchise by the NHL. They were the Utah Hockey Club in their inaugural 2024-25 season. Now they’re the Utah Mammoth in Year 2 and looking to make some serious noise in the Western Conference despite their newbie status.
That goes for their players, too: Top scorers like Logan Cooley (21 years old), Dylan Guenther (22) and JJ Peterka (24, acquired from Buffalo last summer) are some of their youngest players, as well. The Mammoth enter the Frenzy atop of the Central Division having won seven games in a row — unsurprisingly, a franchise record.
The Toews comeback
Before this season, Jonathan Toews last played in the NHL on April 13, 2023, as the then-captain of the Chicago Blackhawks and a three-time Stanley Cup champion.
Dealing with the effects of long COVID-19 and chronic immune response syndrome, Toews said he was stepping away from hockey but not retiring. He went on a “healing journey” that included “five weeks in India undergoing an Ayurvedic detox called a Panchakarma” in November 2024, after which Toews said his health was “trending” in the right direction.
He signed with his hometown Jets as a free agent this summer. That Toews is even playing is miraculous. That he has five points in nine games, playing 16:04 per game on average for the Jets, is extraordinary.
Pacific Division
Leo Carlsson‘s star turn
Carlsson has oozed star quality since the Ducks drafted him No. 2 in 2023. His big frame (6-foot-3) and great hands have earned him comparisons to Penguins star Evgeni Malkin, and now Carlsson is trying to have the offensive stats to match.
The 20-year-old center has nine points through eight games, playing in between fellow young star Cutter Gauthier and veteran winger Alex Killorn. He’s one to watch, for sure.
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Leo Carlsson scores goal vs. Predators
Leo Carlsson nets goal for Ducks
Time to salvage the season?
After nearly making the playoffs last season with 96 points, the Flames are one of the most disappointing teams early in the 2025-26 season.
Their offense ranks last in the NHL (2.00 goals per game) after producing only one goal in five of their first seven games. That led standout goalie Dustin Wolf to lament, via Sportsnet: “I mean, I can’t generate offense. I do my job, I try to keep the puck out of our net, and hope that our guys can generate a couple.”
Calgary had an uptick in scoring heading into the Frenzy, scoring three times in a loss to Winnipeg and a season-high five times in a win over the Rangers. But at 2-7-1 after 10 games, time is already running short for coach Ryan Huska’s team.
Can they turn things around, starting against Toronto?
Connor and Leon
Let’s not overthink this. The Oilers are blessed with arguably the two best hockey players on the planet in Connor McDavid, who has 12 points in 10 games but only one goal thus far, and Leon Draisaitl, who has 11 points in 10 games, including seven goals.
They power their own lines for Edmonton and combine their supernatural hockey acumen on the power play. Connor and Leon have led the Oilers to back-to-back Stanley Cup Final losses to the Panthers.
With McDavid signing just a two-year contract extension before the season, the Oilers explicitly understand they’re on the clock to win soon with these two superstars on the roster.
Farewell, Mr. Kopitar
While some veteran NHL stars are playing it coy about their futures, Kings captain Anze Kopitar announced before the season that this will be his last NHL campaign. (That he announced it the same day that Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw revealed he was retiring was a matter of unfortunate timing.)
The legendary center is in his 20th season with the Kings, having led them to two Stanley Cup wins and winning both the Selke Trophy (best defensive forward) and Lady Byng (gentlemanly play) twice. Catch the best Slovenian-born player in hockey history while you can.
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Anze Kopitar announces he’ll retire after season to focus on family
Kings captain Anze Kopitar, a two-time Stanley Cup champion, announces he will retire after the 2025-26 season to focus on family.
Macklin Celebrini, superstar
After being drafted first overall in 2024, Celebrini had a strong rookie season (63 points in 70 games) and was a finalist for the Calder Trophy. Through nine games this season, it’s clear he’s on the cusp of superstardom.
Celebrini has dominated with six goals and nine assists, combining with fellow young star Will Smith and veteran winger Tyler Toffoli on a line that’s averaging over 4.6 goals per 60 minutes when paired together.
He has played himself into the Team Canada Olympic roster conversation. He’s going viral in weird New York City street interviews. He has arrived.
The NHL’s most surprising start
The Kraken began this season with a new head coach in Lane Lambert, a new power forward in former Stars winger Mason Marchment but much of the same cast as last season’s also-ran that earned coach Dan Bylsma a ticket out of town.
There wasn’t much optimism surrounding the Kraken … and yet there they are at 5-2-2 through their first nine games, second in the Pacific Division.
They’re not dominating offensively or defensively, nor are their special teams exemplary. But the Kraken are winning hockey games, including being a perfect 3-0-0 at home, where they’ll face the Canadiens in the Frozen Frenzy.
J.T. Miller returns
The Canucks are 5-5-0 under new head coach Adam Foote, which is impressive given some of the injuries the team has been playing through — the latest being star defenseman Quinn Hughes, who has a lower-body injury.
But Tuesday night’s spotlight is on a former Canucks player: Rangers captain J.T. Miller, who makes his first trip back to Vancouver after they traded him to the Blueshirts last season.
Please recall that Miller was traded after clashing with Vancouver star center Elias Pettersson, a conflict that rocked the Canucks’ locker room so roughly that team president Jim Rutherford said there was “no good solution that would keep this group together.”
How Miller will be received by Vancouver fans is one of the Frozen Frenzy’s most anticipated moments.
Mitch Marner finding his fit
The 28-year-old winger made his dramatic exit from Toronto last summer after nine seasons of outstanding statistical output but was treated as a postseason pariah for the Maple Leafs’ lack of playoff success. He’s in Vegas now on a blockbuster eight-year, $96 million contract.
Marner has produced around his career averages so far (10 points through nine games), but he’s still finding his fit with the Knights. His much-anticipated line with Jack Eichel was broken up after three games — with Marner dropping down to play with Tomas Hertl and Pavel Dorofeyev — but Marner and Eichel were reunited in Sunday’s overtime loss to Tampa Bay. Only two of Marner’s points have come on the power play, but Vegas is ninth in the NHL with the man advantage.
One extra bit of intrigue in Vegas’ Frozen Frenzy matchup against Carolina: Marner used his no-movement clause to reject a trade to the Hurricanes during last season, later saying it was out of consideration of his wife’s pregnancy. (They welcomed a daughter in May 2025.)
LOS ANGELES — The game that had everything ended at 11:50 p.m. PT on Monday. For the previous 6 hours, 39 minutes, Game 3 of the World Series played out like a fantastical dreamscape of baseball, filled with tension and drama and madness. It was a game unlikely any before, never to be repeated again, and when the 18th inning ended and the Los Angeles Dodgers had beaten the Toronto Blue Jays 6-5, it was, in a way, a relief, because holding your breath for hours on end is not a sustainable way to live.
Such is the price we pay for an affair like Game 3. The Dodgers and Blue Jays competed at an exceptional level in the longest game in World Series history by innings and second-longest by time. They punched and counterpunched, emptied their benches and bullpens. They executed with wizardry and found pieces of themselves they didn’t know existed. And in the 18th inning, it was Freddie Freeman, already the hero of last year’s World Series, who deposited a center-cut sinker from Brendon Little over the center-field fence 406 feet away.
There have been 703 games played in the 121-year history of the World Series. While there are certainly competitors, this one launched itself into the upper echelon, undoubtedly elite, and left the 52,654 fans at Dodger Stadium as giddy as they were almost seven years to the day earlier, when the only other 18-inning game in World Series history ended the same way: with a Dodgers walk-off homer.
Game 3 of the World Series featured…
609 pitches (LAD: 312, TOR: 297)
37 runners left on base
25 position players used
19 pitchers used pic.twitter.com/MBHReOJ16x— ESPN Insights (@ESPNInsights) October 28, 2025
The heroes were plentiful, and in the aftermath of the lunacy, one of them stood in the Dodgers’ clubhouse, still trying to process what happened. Will Klein, the last man out of the Dodgers’ bullpen, a reliever who had topped out this year at two innings and 30 pitches, threw four innings of one-hit ball and struck out five on 72 pitches. The last of them, an 86 mph curveball, induced a swing and miss from Tyler Heineman and a scream from Klein, who understood what had been asked of him and knew he’d delivered.
Games don’t become classics without efforts like Klein’s — and he had an admirer who wanted to acknowledge that. Into the Dodgers’ clubhouse strode Sandy Koufax, his eminence of Dodgers pitching, who, at 89 years old, looked no worse for the wear at 12:48 a.m. Koufax walked up to Klein, stuck out his hand, looked him in the eyes and said: “Nice going.”
This was that kind of game, the one that forges bonds between a Hall of Famer and a man with 22.2 career major league innings who didn’t make the Dodgers’ roster in any of the previous three rounds of the postseason. The kind of game that prompted Klein to unlock his phone just to see how many messages he had, only for him to scroll … and keep scrolling … and keep scrolling to the point he just stopped. The kind of game that made Klein marvel to a friend in the clubhouse: “Seventy-two. Can you believe it?”
Game 3 was anarchy, a funhouse mirror of a ballgame, everything out of order. Shohei Ohtani‘s magnificence is never in question, but to see a baseball player reach nine times, something that had been done only twice in big league history — never in the postseason and not since 1942 — still registered as incredible, his magnitude lording over the game from beginning to end. He led off the game for the Dodgers with a double. He homered his next time up. He doubled again. He homered once more, his second of the game, his eighth of the postseason, to tie the game at 5 and unleash the chaos to come.
At that point, Blue Jays manager John Schneider had seen enough. In the ninth inning, Ohtani became the first hitter intentionally walked with the bases empty in the ninth inning or later of a postseason game. The next three times he came to the plate — twice with the bases empty — Schneider held up four fingers and gladly gave Ohtani a free pass. In the 17th, with a runner on first, the Blue Jays opted to pitch to him — and Brendon Little promptly deposited four balls nowhere near the strike zone. (Schneider said after the game to expect more tiptoeing around Ohtani in the days to come.)
Schneider’s decision-making earlier in the game, in which he tried to scratch across runs by substituting in a cadre of pinch runners, left the Blue Jays’ lineup compromised for most of the second half of the game. Against a Dodgers bullpen that had been a sieve for most of the postseason, Toronto managed just one run in 13⅓ innings. Los Angeles used 10 pitchers — including Clayton Kershaw, the future Hall of Famer. Kershaw came on in the 13th with the bases loaded, ground through a nine-pitch at-bat against Nathan Lukes and induced a dribbler to second base that Tommy Edman scooped with his glove to Freeman.
Memorable moments abounded over the game that featured 615 pitches, the most in a postseason game since MLB began tracking pitches in 1988. In the 14th, Will Smith lofted a fly ball to center field and dropped his bat, thinking it was a game winner. The ball died on the warning track. Teoscar Hernández, who, like Ohtani, had four hits, did the same in the 16th. It wound up in a glove, too.
By that point, Klein had arrived and set about pulling a modern-day Nathan Eovaldi, who went 97 pitches over the final six innings of the 2018 marathon. In Klein’s final inning, Yoshinobu Yamamoto — who had thrown a 105-pitch complete game two days prior — was warming up in the bullpen. Klein walked two batters. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts could have easily gone to Yamamoto. He stuck with Klein.
Klein just did it, because he had to, and that, as much as anything, is the lesson of an evening like Game 3, when a great game — which this was for the first dozen or so innings — evolves into something different altogether. Game 3 was a test. Of endurance and will — or, as it were, Will.
“You just got to either do it or you don’t,” said Dodgers reliever Justin Wrobleski, who spent time with Klein at AAA this season. “You go out there and you’re like, ‘I know what has to be done here and let’s see what I got.’ I like moments like that because it’s a test of your character. More than that, it’s a test of everything else.”
Klein passed. And Freeman, of course, is the valedictorian of such moments, one of the clutch kings of his generation. He had struggled much of the postseason, entering the game with only one RBI in the Dodgers’ previous dozen playoff games. His first two in this World Series had looked a far cry from his performance last year, when, nursing a number of injuries, he hit a walk-off grand slam in Game 1 and won series MVP. It wasn’t just the lack of production. He wasn’t hitting the ball particularly hard, either.
On the final pitch, he finally did. This is the kind of thing that happens in 18-inning games. They are uncomfortable and scary and can end with the crack of a bat. It is terrifying. It is beautiful. It is everything.
Those lucky enough to bear witness will never forget it, either. They squirmed and flinched and closed their eyes and prayed and squealed and cringed and, in the end, saw 31 hits and 37 runners left on base and 19 pitchers and one particularly majestic swing that, 10 minutes shy of Monday turning into Tuesday, ended one of the best World Series games ever — and gave the Dodgers a 2-1 advantage in this year’s series.
Klein isn’t sure how his arm will feel by the time he returns to the ballpark Tuesday for Game 4. Typically, he said, he’s a Day 2 guy, the soreness not coming until the second day after an outing. After being lavished with praise from his teammates and thanked by Sandy Koufax and written into the annals of Dodgers history, though, tomorrow and the next day wasn’t of much concern.
“I feel great right now,” he said, and with good reason. He was the winning pitcher, the stopper, the MVP of the night every bit as much as Freeman and Ohtani, and the adrenaline rush numbed whatever pain will eventually arrive. That’s for another day. This was everything — and more.
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Jesse Rogers
LOS ANGELES — Toronto Blue Jays designated hitter George Springer exited Game 3 of the World Series with a right side injury, leaving his status for Game 4 uncertain.
Springer injured himself on a swing in the seventh inning Monday night. He was clearly in pain as he grabbed the right side of his body immediately after fouling off a 95 mph fastball from Dodgers reliever Justin Wrobleski. Springer called for a Blue Jays athletic trainer, and there was almost no discussion of him staying in the game.
“George, it’s some right side discomfort,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said after Toronto’s 6-5 loss in 18 innings that put L.A. up 2-1 in the Series. “He already went for a MRI. We’ll see how it comes back and see how he walks up [Tuesday], but it sucks.”
Ty France replaced Springer with an 0-1 count and eventually struck out in an eight-pitch at-bat against Wrobleski. Springer, France and Davis Schneider combined to go 2-for-9 with three strikeouts out of the leadoff spot.
“He’s obviously a huge part of our lineup,” Schneider said of Springer. “Glad I got him out when I did, and hopefully it didn’t make anything worse, but we’ll see how he is [Tuesday].”
Springer was 0-for-3 with two strikeouts in Game 3 at Dodger Stadium, where he was routinely booed before each at-bat — a callback to his days with the Houston Astros and their sign-stealing scandal of 2017 and 2018. Springer was the 2017 World Series MVP when the Astros beat the Dodgers in a seven-game World Series.
Springer had three hits during the first two games of the World Series in Toronto.
Information from The Associated Press was included in this report.
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