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Celtic's Matt O'Riley, Hearts striker Lawrence Shankland and Rangers duo Jack Butland and James Tavernier are nominated for PFA Scotland's player of the year.

On this edition of the 32 Thoughts Podcast, Jeff Marek and Elliotte Friedman give an update on each first-round series in the Stanley Cup Playoffs and some of the intriguing storylines that have emerged.

DALLAS (AP) — The Dallas Cowboys are reuniting with running back Ezekiel Elliott after agreeing to terms on a contract with the former two-time rushing champion, a person with knowledge of the deal said Monday.

Elliott returns to the Cowboys a year after they let him go in a cost-cutting move. The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the agreement was pending a physical.

The Cowboys acknowledged during the draft last weekend that they had recently met with Elliott and his representatives.

Dallas didn’t draft a running back after moving from its starter each of the past two seasons, and owner and general manager Jerry Jones said he thought Elliott was still a starting-caliber back.

Elliott, who will turn 29 just as the Cowboys report for training camp in California in July, spent last season as the backup to Rhamondre Stevenson in New England but started the last five games when Stephenson was injured.

Elliott won rushing titles in two of his first three seasons with the Cowboys and is the third-leading rusher in franchise history with 8,262 yards. He trails two Pro Football Hall of Famers — all-time NFL rushing leader Emmitt Smith and Tony Dorsett.

Tony Pollard, a fourth-round pick by Dallas in 2019, replaced Elliott last season but didn’t have an impact to match his $10.1 million salary playing on the franchise tag. Pollard signed with Tennessee in free agency.

In 2016, Elliott teamed with quarterback Dak Prescott to create a dynamic rookie pairing that led the Cowboys on an 11-game winning streak and the top seed in the NFC playoffs.

Prescott then edged out Elliott for NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year honors after the Cowboys lost to Aaron Rodgers and Green Bay.

Elliott never matched the 1,631 yards rushing from his rookie season. His second year was marred by a two-month court fight with the NFL over a six-game suspension involving domestic violence allegations. Elliott served the suspension nine games into the season after losing an appeal.

The 2016 All-Pro still led the NFL in yards rushing per game in his second season, then won his other rushing title with 1,434 yards in 2018.

Elliott missed the offseason and training camp in 2019 in a contract holdout, finally joining the Cowboys during the week before the season opener after signing a $90 million, six-year extension.

While Elliott scored 22 touchdowns combined over the final two seasons of his first Dallas stint, he surpassed 1,000 yards just once in three years after signing the expensive extension.

Elliott rushed for 642 yards and three touchdowns in what ended up being coach Bill Belichick’s final season with the Patriots in 2023. Elliott visited the Cowboys in Week 4, gaining just 16 yards in New England’s 38-3 loss.

While they won 12 games for the third consecutive season in 2023, the Cowboys missed Elliott’s powerful running style in short-yardage situations.

Dallas is in flux with its offensive line, having to replace two starters. Three of Dallas’ eight draft picks last weekend were offensive linemen. Elliott’s return, however, would bolster the club’s pass protection.

Cardiff City are looking to agree a new deal with manager Erol Bulut after Bluebirds owner Vincent Tan authorises contract talks.

1. MLB Power Rankings: Where All 30 Teams Stand After 1 Month  Bleacher Report
2. MLB Power Rankings for the week of April 28  MLB.com
3. MLB Power Rankings: Braves hold on to No. 1 spot as Twins surge, but are Astros digging too deep a hole?  CBS Sports
4. FanGraphs Power Rankings: April 22–28  FanGraphs
5. MLB Power Rankings Week 4: Who's No. 1 one month in?  ESPN

Zak Zinter, Michael Hall "brothers" with Browns after being heated rivals in college  NBC SportsView Full Coverage on Google News

1. Winners, losers after Dover Cup race won by Denny Hamlin  NBC Sports
2. Analysis: Keeping poise, understanding pedigree the name of the game for Denny Hamlin  NASCAR
3. Top 5, Dover: The rise of air blocking, Monster Mile catches a break, IndyCar scandal  The Athletic
4. Hamlin holds off Larson to snag Cup win at Dover  ESPN
5. Denny Hamlin explains how drivers 'defend' lead in Next Gen car  On3.com

England number eight Billy Vunipola is arrested in Spain following an alleged incident in a bar in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Discussing Lions GM Brad Holmes' NFL Draft picks, and the mindset behind the moves  The AthleticView Full Coverage on Google News

LOS ANGELES — The two people they talk about more than anyone else on this Edmonton Oilers team are, well, so obvious that we don’t even need to name them. They carry the team so many nights, filling the highlight shows and All-Star ballots — until a gritty Game 4 in L.A.— on the muddiest of playoff tracks.

Then it’s someone else’s turn. Someone else’s job, on a night where the Kings were the better, more desperate team, limiting Edmonton to a franchise playoff-low 13 shots on goal, while L.A. peppered Edmonton’s goal with 33.

Now, after a gutty, gritty, 1-0 win, the two names come from the other end of the roster. Two guys who just four seasons ago were grinding it out together with the Wichita Thunder of the East Coast Hockey League, the thought of an NHL playoff game at Crypto.com Arena not just a distant dream, but more like a prayer.

They are Stuart Skinner and Vincent Desharnais, two old friends who found a way to become the story Sunday night in L.A., where the Oilers grabbed this series by the throat, heading home now with a 3-1 lead and a chance to clinch Wednesday night at Rogers Arena.

“We’ve come a long way,” said Skinner after his first career playoff shutout. “It’s pretty special for us to both be on the same team, six years later, after being in the dark days, in the dungeon. Going through that together is extremely helpful for us as friends and teammates. We wouldn’t change a thing.”

Skinner stopped everything he should have, plus a few more that the Kings likely thought he wouldn’t. Meanwhile, big Desharnais found himself elevated into an important role in a game that — it was clear early on — was going to have to be won with more crash than dash, more shot-blocking than goal-scoring.

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“You can tell on the bench, after you have a couple periods of (this hockey),” said Oilers defenceman Mattias Ekholm. “We’re playing good defence, and guys kind of galvanize around that. They’re like, ‘We’re just going to have one of those nights tonight.’ On the back end, that’s how we want to play the game.”

And so the team that scored 17 goals in the opening three games of this series, scored just once in Game 4 and won in regulation.

“Having in our portfolio that we can play a lot of different games is going to be huge here coming down the stretch,” Ekholm said. “We showed tonight, we’re not afraid of them.”

We’ve written for a few years here, the Oilers would never win until they ceased being that team that only won games that Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl won for them. On some nights that means alternative scorers, on others it means guys like Cody Ceci lead the defence in ice time, and the Bottom Six are perfect defensively.

That pair of superstars will win you plenty, no question. But it’s nights like this one where that theory bears out — where the zero on the scoreboard means so much more than the one.

Stanley Cup Playoffs Round 1: Oilers vs. Kings

Keep up with the latest news and analysis as the Edmonton Oilers take on the Los Angeles Kings in Round 1 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Full coverage

“If you listen to any of Kenny’s (GM Holland) pressers, the biggest growth on this team was going to be from within,” said winger Zach Hyman. “It’s going to be from young guys taking the next step and maturing. Becoming better players.

“(Warren) Foegele had his first 20-goal season. (Ryan McLeod) is taking a step. (Dylan Holloway) came up and scored two big goals. Stu has been unbelievable, grabbing the reins in net and running with it.

“And Vinny has just been steady Eddie back there. On the PK he’s the first one over the boards. At the end of the game, he’s right there with (Ekholm)… That’s the key: the growth from within.”

Desharnais, 27 and only 114 games into his NHL career, is like Joel Edmundson, but without all those years of wear and tear. And Skinner? Who has a clue how good he may be — a Calder Trophy finalist as a rookie last spring, and infinitely better just one year later.

“It’s the calmness, the demeanour,” Ekholm said of the pair. “You can see it in their eyes, but you can also see it in the way they act. They’ve been through it. It’s experience. Not a ton of experience — it’s just a year — but in the beginning of your career, it makes wonders for you.

“You can tell. It’s almost like they’re just an inch taller. Chest out. I think Vinny has been one of — if not the — best D-men we’ve had so far the series.”

The game’s lone goal was a power-play bullet by Evan Bouchard — assisted by Draisaitl and McDavid — special teams being the glaring element that separates these two annual foes.

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In this series, Edmonton’s power play is 8-for-15, while the Oilers’ penalty kill has been perfect, stuffing the Kings on 11 attempts. They’ve each scored 10 goals at even strength — the extra eight goals via Edmonton’s dominance on specials is winning this series for them.

Over the past three playoff meetings, Edmonton has 24 goals on 50 power-play opportunities versus L.A. They’ve eviscerated the Los Angeles penalty killers, and in a game where each team had just one power play, the Oilers even won the special-teams battle in Game 4: one goal to none.

This is not a game these Oilers traditionally find a way to win.

“No, no,” Hyman said. “We always win scoring goals, right? We scored one goal, and Stu played unbelievable. We shut ‘er down, and then we’re going into the third period with a 1-0 lead, and the sign of a mature team is just hold to on to it. Do whatever you need to do to hold on to it.

“It’s just massive. The difference between 2-2 and being up 3-1 is just huge.”

What’s the recipe for a lengthy playoff run?

“Your goalie has to steal you a game. Your penalty kill steals you a game. Your powerplay steals you a game,” Hyman listed off. “If you have different ways to win, you win more games. That’s the reality. The margins in the playoffs are so tight.

“Every year I’ve been here it’s felt like we could have done more, and now we have more options on how to win a game.”

In a game where the puck dropped at around 10:45 p.m. ET, most people will wake up, see a 1-0 score, and say, “Glad I didn’t stay up to watch that.”

But in this Oilers dressing room, this was a Rembrandt, an Oscar winner and a Pulitzer Prize game — all wrapped into one.

“These are the types of games you have to win in the playoffs. It’s not going to be 6-5, 7-4 every night,” said greasy winger Corey Perry. “You’re going have to dig deep, play defence and grind one out.

“We found a way tonight.”

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NASHVILLE — Fifty-four years without a Stanley Cup has made Vancouver Canucks fans a little skittish about success and conditioned for disappointment, which they expect in springtime the way they expect rain in January.

Nothing could have prepared them for what happened Sunday.

Outshot, outskated, outplayed and generally outclassed for 57 minutes, the Canucks scored twice in the last three minutes of regulation time with their goalie out — and that goalie was named Arturs Silovs — and won 4-3 in overtime on Elias Lindholm’s goal at 62 seconds as Vancouver stole Game 4 from the Nashville Predators to take a 3-1 series lead in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Each of Vancouver’s three wins has been with a different goaltender, as first Thatcher Demko and then Casey DeSmith were hurt. One injury is significant, the other not.

The Canucks have managed 71 shots on net. In the series! No team in NHL history has tested an opposing goalie less often through four games. Star defenceman Quinn Hughes is getting blasted by the Predators and star centre Elias Pettersson and his linemates have yet to make a dent.

No one on the Canucks, especially head coach Rick Tocchet, is arguing that Vancouver has been the better team so far, even if all three of their goalies have been better than the Predators ace Juuse Saros.

And yet, Tuesday at Rogers Arena, the Canucks will have an opportunity to win a Stanley Cup series on home ice for the first time since the 2011 Western Conference Final.

Watch the Stanley Cup Playoffs on Sportsnet

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These are not the Canucks we have known all these years.

Even when they’re bad, they can be good. As we’ve said before, one of Tocchet’s greatest achievements has been raising the floor for this team by getting players to embrace his ideas about defending and systems play.

“Before we started the playoffs, I asked a couple of guys: What word would you describe this team all year?” Tocchet told reporters in his post-game press conference. “We wanted to put it on a T-shirt or our hoodies, and they said ‘resilient.’ That’s our word. That worked tonight on that T-shirt, that word for us. It’s been like that all year. Certain spots we’ve been put in (but) somehow we get out of them. It might not look pretty, you know? Like tonight wasn’t pretty, and we got out of it somehow.”

They got out of it when they got Silovs, another surprise starter, out of his crease for an extra attacker in the final minutes.

With only 16 shots on Saros through 57 minutes, the Canucks cut a 3-1 deficit in half when Brock Boeser took Lindholm’s goalmouth pass and lifted the puck into the roof of the net with 2:47 remaining.

Then, after the Predators Colton Sissons somehow managed to hit the post of the Canucks’ open net from 30 feet away, Boeser completed his hat trick on his biggest night for the franchise by collecting his own rebound off the post and jamming it past a sprawled Saros with eight seconds left in the third period.

Nashville had had a chance to clear its zone but Hughes made a brilliant play at the right-wing boards to keep the bouncing puck in and get it past Gustav Nyquist about six seconds before Boeser scored from the aftermath of J.T. Miller’s slap-pass.

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In overtime, Ryan O’Reilly and Filip Forsberg, the Predators’ two best forwards, both drifted wide and left Lindholm completely unchecked in the low slot, where he scored from Conor Garland’s pass after the Canucks winger spun away from Nashville defenceman Luke Schenn.

It may have been the first good shift of the night for Lindholm, Garland and Dakota Joshua, the trio that drove the Canucks down the stretch and into the playoffs.

“I think we’re all knowing that so far we haven’t played our best,” Lindholm said. “There’s been a couple of periods here and there where we’ve played pretty good. But overall, we haven’t been nearly as good as we can. I think today was showing a lot of character on the team, you know, coming back like that the way we did. And hopefully we can build off that.”

“Obviously, we’ve got some things to work on but that three minutes won us the game,” Tocchet said. “You’ve got to take the positives, but we’ve got some work to do.

“Generally, the last couple of games, I think they’ve been a little bit better on battles and skating. I find we’re not moving our feet and we’re kind of losing some battles. I don’t think it’s any tactical thing. We’ve got to get some guys in the fight here a little bit. But it’s a lot easier to teach and prod and get guys going when you’re winning. So hopefully, this is going to bring some juice to some guys.”

Boeser, who began his hat trick in the first period on a cross-ice pass from Miller that marooned Saros, was easily the best Canucks player. The longest-serving player on the team amassed eight of the Canucks’ 20 shots over 22:17 of ice time. Miller had three assists and may have surpassed Hughes as the best Canuck in the series.

Lindholm had a goal and assist and went 15-5 on faceoffs, and Silovs, the 23-year-old Latvian who helped his country win its first medal at the world championships a year ago, stopped 27 of 30 shots in his first playoff game and 10th appearance in the NHL.

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After Demko was knocked out of the series in Game 1, DeSmith won Game 3 2-1 on Friday and was healthy enough to fully practise on Saturday. But Tocchet confirmed that the veteran backup has an injury and that a decision was made after practice to go with Silovs in Game 4.

Silovs’ reaction when he was told?

“It was a great time to shine, you know,” he said Sunday evening.

Already missing Demko, the Canucks are thought to be being ultra-protective of DeSmith, whom Tocchet expects to be an option in goal on Tuesday.

“Nobody was down,” Tocchet said of the team’s reaction to starting goalie No. 3. “I don’t think the moment is too big for (Silovs). I just like his demeanour.”

Asked about possibly holding DeSmith out of Game 5, too, the coach said: “It’s a tough question because, obviously, if Smitty feels good enough to go and we feel it’s safe to go in there, you’d go with Casey, right? But saying that, we’ve got Arty and we’re confident with him. I think we (can) win either way. I think the prudent thing is to get Casey healthy before we make any decision.”

Stanley Cup Playoffs Round 1: Canucks vs. Predators

Keep up with the latest news and analysis as the Vancouver Canucks take on the Nashville Predators in Round 1 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Full coverage

The Canucks flew home post-game but were not expected to practise on Monday.

“It doesn’t affect the way we’re playing,” Miller said of the goalie carousel. “If anything, you want to play harder for the guy. It doesn’t matter who’s in net, we should have every reason to be playing on our toes and playing Canuck hockey no matter who’s back there. And I’m just happy that whoever’s getting the call right now is stepping up for us.”

But Vancouver isn’t playing Canucks’ hockey. Their forecheck was largely nonexistent in Nashville and, as Tocchet noted, they’re neither skating nor battling at the Predators’ level.

“That’s a big win for where we are in the series right now, but we know we have another gear,” Miller said. “It’s crazy how it works sometimes. I keep saying it, but we just need to be a helluva lot better than we were today.”

We’ve heard that before from the Canucks. Just never when they’re winning a playoff series.

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