I know three things about the National Hockey League:

1. There are four Black people involved in the whole operation. 2. Sidney Crosby is the face of the League. 3. Alexander Ovechkin is actually the best player in the League.

Ovechkin made headlines last week when he bashed the NHL for not yet committing to modify its schedule to accommodate the 2014 Winter Olympics. (The League is putting its schedule on hold while players compete in 2010, but hasn’t decided if they’ll do the same for 2014.) Russia is hosting the Olympics that year; Ovechkin is Russia’s top player. Read More »

His team’s back is against the ropes and their legs are wobbly, so Dwight Howard pulled the only card he had left in the motivational playbook: He made a guarantee. Sort of. “You want me to get up here and say the season is going to be over tomorrow? That’s not what anybody should do or anybody should think,” Howard told reporters going into today’s Game 5. “I believe that we’re going to be going back to L.A.” So it didn’t exactly have the bravado of Jim Fassel’s “We’re GOING to the playoffs” poker speech, or even Mo Namath’s “We’re the best team in basketball” line from the Cavs/Magic series, but Dwight got the point across … Read More »