Ontario Sports News

Columbus Blue Jackets forward Adam Fantilli was back at practice Monday, wearing an orange practice sweater.

It was the first time the star rookie has joined practice since suffering a laceration to his calf in late January.

The Blue Jackets were not going to have Fantilli play in the team’s final three games, the club told Aaron Portzline of The Athletic back on April 10.

Fantilli was expected to miss eight weeks after being cut on the left calf with a skate blade in a game against the Kraken.

Fantilli was among the NHL’s top rookies this season and the third-leading scorer on the Blue Jackets at the time with 12 goals and 15 assists. He was also tied for third in goals and is fourth in points among all rookies at the time of his injury.

The Nobleton, Ont., native was selected by Columbus with the third overall pick at the 2023 NHL Draft.

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The Milwaukee Bucks could have an uphill battle ahead of them in the first round of the playoffs.

Superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo is reportedly doubtful for Game 1 of the series against the Indiana Pacers on Sunday as he nurses a calf injury, The Athletic’s Shams Charania reported Monday.

Antetokounmpo suffered the calf strain in a game against the Boston Celtics on April 9, after he struggled to run upcourt late in the third quarter.

The next day, the team announced that Antetokounmpo would miss the remaining three games of the regular season as he attempts to recover from the injury in time for the playoffs.

“No timeline or anything like that, but we’ve got the best team working with him,” Bucks head coach Doc Rivers said on Wednesday. “There’s no one who’s going to work harder than him. You know that. He’ll be back when he should be back. We’ll find out when that is.”

Last year, Antetokounmpo bruised his lower back after getting fouled and landing hard in Game 1 of the Bucks’ first-round playoff series with the Miami Heat. Antetokounmpo sat out the rest of that game and also missed Milwaukee’s next two games before returning in Game 4 of a series the Bucks lost 4-1.

The two-time MVP has been great this season, averaging 30.4 points, 11.5 rebounds and 6.5 assists, helping steer the Bucks to the third seed in the Eastern Conference.

Milwaukee will kick off its post-season run against the Indiana Pacers on Sunday.

— With files from the Associated Press

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Rafael Nadal is “ready enough” to play on Tuesday in what he expects to be his last Barcelona Open.

Nadal on Monday confirmed his participation in his first clay-court tournament this year.

“It was a positive week of training and I’ll be on the court,” said Nadal, who will face Flavio Cobolli in his opening match. “It’s a gift to be here. I have a feeling that it will be my last time here and I want to enjoy it.”

Nadal, a 12-time champion in Barcelona, had hip surgery last summer and this year has played only three competitive matches, all in Brisbane before skipping the Australian Open.

“I’m ready enough to play,” Nadal said. “It is what it is right now. I have to keep going day by day.”

The Spaniard said he was in a unique situation after “two tough years” of injuries and felt he can still “be competitive.”

The 37-year-old Nadal pulled out of last week’s Monte Carlo Masters before it started because of a lingering injury, saying “ my body simply won’t allow me.”

In early March, the 22-time Grand Slam champion played an exhibition match against Carlos Alcaraz in Las Vegas but days later pulled out of the Indian Wells tournament.

Nadal is a 14-time winner at the French Open which doesn’t begin until May 25.

Alcaraz won’t play in Barcelona because of an injury. Stefanos Tsitsipas, who defeated Jannik Sinner in the Monte Carlo final, has entered Barcelona.

The Philadelphia Eagles have locked up another core player agreeing to a three-year contract extension and also exercised the fifth-year opinion for the 2025 season with receiver DeVonta Smith.

NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reports that the contract is worth $75 million which includes $51 million guaranteed.

Smith has recorded 240 receptions for 3,178 yards and 19 touchdowns in his first three seasons in the league.

Philadelphia has made it a point to get players locked this off-season. Alon with Smith, kicker Jake Elliott, tackle Jordan Mailata and safety Reed Blankenship were all signed to extensions. 

The Red Sox celebrate Patriots’ Day by hosting the Cleveland Guardians for the start of a four-game series. You can watch the game at 11 a.m. ET / 8 a.m. PT on Sportsnet or Sportsnet+ or follow along with our live MLB tracker.

The Phoenix Suns have signed guard Grayson Allen to a four-year, $70 million extension, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported on Monday, looking up an important player before he hit the open market.

The deal will keep Allen in Phoenix through the 2026-27 season and includes a player option for the 2027-28 season.

Allen, 28, was traded to the Suns in the off-season in the blockbuster three-team trade that sent Damian Lillard to Milwaukee. Phoenix sent centre Deandre Ayton to the Portland Trail Blazers as part of the deal.

The guard has enjoyed a career year with the Suns, putting up career-highs in points (13.5), rebounds (3.9) and assists (3.0). Notably, he led the league in 3-point shooting percentage, knocking down 46.1 per cent of his 5.9 shots a game.

With this extension, Allen will avoid free agency as his contract was set to expire this summer.

Phoenix finished the regular season with a 49-33 record, good for the sixth seed in the Western Conference, thereby avoiding the play-in tournament. They’ll take on the three-seed Minnesota Timberwolves in the first round of the playoffs.

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A disappointing and transformative Toronto Raptors season officially came to an end on Sunday.

The season will be remembered for its slow march to the finish and two trades that will have ripple effects for years to come. But it also featured some success stories, including the first all-star selection for Scottie Barnes and the gradual development of rookie Gradey Dick.

Now that the final buzzer has sounded, Raptors players will hold a final availability with the media before breaking away for the summer.

The following players are expected to speak. All times are Eastern and subject to change.

Kelly Olynyk: 10:15 a.m.
Jakob Poeltl: 11 a.m.
RJ Barrett: 11:45 a.m.
Scottie Barnes 12:30 p.m.
Immanuel Quickley: 1:15 p.m.
Gradey Dick: 2 p.m.

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TORONTO — Chris Bassitt didn’t become one of the most durable pitchers in the majors by chance. He took to heart a mantra he often heard from coaches in the Chicago White Sox system, a player’s best ability is availability, and those words took on a different meaning after he blew out his elbow chasing velocity with the Oakland Athletics in April 2016. In the years since, he’s focused on training for longevity rather than maxing out, and geared his approach on the mound toward hauling innings rather than blowing away hitters.

All of which has made the Toronto Blue Jays right-hander particularly interested in the discourse around the slate of severe pitching injuries to strike the game over the past couple of months, stars like Spencer Strider and Shane Bieber among them. Two weekends ago, the players union and Major League Baseball exchanged duelling statements on the matter, further polarizing a back-and-forth already ranging from thoughtful theorizing to easy-answer hot takes, with precious little of it productive.

“It makes me sick to watch the finger-pointing on why is all this happening, rather than everyone kind of taking the blame for themselves,” Bassitt, who starts Monday in the series opener versus the New York Yankees, says during an interview. “First and foremost, it is the players to blame for throwing the way that we’re trying to throw. But for people to think that it’s not the pitch clock, that’s completely wrong, it is the pitch clock. Training-wise, how people push training, it is that, too.

“This is a much bigger issue because it’s not a one-factor thing,” he continues. “It’s not like we take one thing away and this goes away. This is a cumulative problem. Say we have 10 weights we’re trying to hold. All of a sudden you take away one and it’s going to go away? That’s not the way it is. The way that guys train, how hard guys throw and then you shorten the time frame of how you want people to do it — it’s cumulative what’s causing all this.”

Such a holistic view of what’s ailing an industry in which the average fastball velocity has climbed from 92.5 to 94.1 m.p.h. over the past decade is sorely needed because throwing harder is a grassroots-to-big-leagues pursuit.

As Colorado Rockies right-hander Cal Quantrill, another pitcher to have had Tommy John surgery, put it: “Who gets the most outs as a 13-year-old? A lot of times it’s the guy who throws the hardest. Who gets the best scholarship and gets drafted the highest? We really like those kids that throw a hundred. So we’ve certainly incentivized velocity.”

At the Letters

Ben Nicholson-Smith is Sportsnet’s baseball editor. Arden Zwelling is a senior writer. Together, they bring you the most in-depth Blue Jays podcast in the league, covering off all the latest news with opinion and analysis, as well as interviews with other insiders and team members.

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The problem, as the native of Port Hope, Ont., points out, is that sport’s rewarding of hard throwers “is not necessarily for the wrong reasons.”

“Velo does help. In a lot of ways it can make you a better pitcher,” he continues. “These hitters are so good now, they see velo all the time. The velo it would take to just blow guys away has consistently gone up and up and up to the point where, if that’s all you’re chasing, you’re kind of limiting your upside. You’re going to have to have something else unless you can truly just come out and pop 101, 102. So I don’t know. I’m following this as interested as everyone else. I don’t really have an answer. The body can only take so much and I think we’re right on the edge of what’s possible.”

The recent arm count underlines that.

Atlanta announced over the weekend that Strider underwent surgery to repair the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow, ending his season. Along with Bieber, Guardians reliever Trevor Stephan, Boston’s Lucas Giolito, Marlins righty Eury Perez, Yankees reliever Jonathan Loaisiga and Oakland’s Trevor Gott are also among the pitchers to undergo Tommy John surgery in recent weeks.

Marlins ace Sandy Alcantara, Rays all-star Shane McClanahan all-star Orioles closer Felix Bautista, Dodgers starter Tony Gonsolin, White Sox closer Liam Hendriks and Pirates lefty Angel Perdomo also all had Tommy John surgery in the final two months of last season, with dozens of less severe injuries, too.

There’s personal cost to the pitchers and collective cost to their teams, who must reallocate those innings to other arms. Given how irreplaceable so many of those pitchers are — a club is lucky to find one Strider, let alone having a spare lying around — teams sometimes seek to optimize a few different arms trying to piece a starter together.

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Over time, a steady stream of factors — better information on how starters fare a third-time through the order, the difficulty in developing starters, differing approaches to managing workload, more max-effort pitching to counter launch-angle hitting — have eroded the number of pitchers capable of hauling innings.

At 24, Strider was the youngest pitcher among the top 20 in innings pitched last season, finishing 18th with 186.2. Logan Webb of the San Francisco Giants led the majors with 216 innings at age 26, with Arizona’s 27-year-old Zac Gallen second at 210, followed by five pitchers 29 or older. Half of the top 30 in innings logged were 30 or older and that’s a massive looming problem for the industry when they age out given the current attrition.

“When all those older guys that basically so-called know how to pitch are gone and you’re got to make up all those innings, I don’t know where the industry thinks they’re going to make them up,” says Bassitt, who logged a career-best 200 innings last year. “It’s not even possible in our current climate. So I think we have a very big issue. If everyone doesn’t sit in the mirror and take blame, then it’s going to get a lot worse.”

The Blue Jays feature three of this decade’s most durable pitchers, with José Berríos fifth in innings pitched at 642.1, Kevin Gausman ninth at 620.2 and Bassitt 11th at 618. Berrios, at 30, is the youngest, followed by Gausman at 33 and Bassitt at 35.

For now, they are an incredible bedrock from which the Blue Jays can build a pitching staff, but the stops and starts for top prospect Ricky Tiedemann, the careful handling of Yariel Rodriguez, the status of 2022 first-rounder Brandon Barriera (who is awaiting a second opinion on the severity of his recent elbow injury) underlines how difficult developing the next generation will be, for them and others.

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Especially since pitching isn’t getting any easier.

Quantrill, who like Bassitt is among the most thoughtful players in the game, blew out his elbow during his sophomore season at Stanford “because I threw a lot of innings and I was undersized and I was pressing, pressing, pressing to get better and better,” he says. “I don’t really regret how I did it. That’s what I thought it was going to take to be a great college pitcher and get drafted where I wanted to get drafted.”

The San Diego Padres selected him eighth overall in 2016 and he debuted there before establishing himself with Cleveland, logging 585.2 big-league innings since 2019. With a fastball that sits 93 (a 35th percentile number in the majors) he’s heard arguments about managing effort levels over the course of the game, but doesn’t think that’s feasible for the vast majority of pitchers in the sport.

“There are times in games where I’ll push the pedal down a little harder or let it off, but it’s not really a health decision, it’s more of a pitch decision,” he explains. “Like, could a 90-m.p.h. sinker be better than a 94-m.p.h. sinker? Is the slow cutter better than the hard cutter? Unfortunately, I’m just not good enough to take 10 per cent off everything and think it’s going to work. I pretty much send everything as hard as I can at all times. There are times where execution is more important than velo. But to stay relevant and to continue to get outs at the level you want to get outs at, it takes just about everything you’ve got.

“That’s just where our game is at,” Quantrill continues. “We’re all pressing to be as freaky as we can be, spin the ball as hard as we can and continue to have jobs and compete and get wins. We’re going to have to find balance in a game of when you need to press, when you need to pull back. I think we all are trying to find that balance.”

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That’s what makes Bassitt such an outlier, perhaps an example for teams to emulate in their player development rather than trying to mass-produce short-stint power arms.

After his elbow reconstruction, he understood that his chase for more velocity would simply chew up his arm again, so he adapted his approach. He throttled his heater. He leveraged a repertoire of eight pitches more effectively. He varied arm angles to further complicate a hitter’s approach against him. And he tailored his training to prepare “for a marathon” while so many other pitchers in the sport “are training for sprint.”

“Nothing I do, training-wise, is to throw really hard. Everything I do is to make sure my body is in the right spot so I can throw 120 pitches in a game if my team needs it,” Bassitt says. “If you gave me two, three weeks, there’s not a doubt in my mind I can hit 97. Not a doubt. I don’t want to train for that. I want to train to try to throw 200 innings a season. I know when the season comes winding down, our bullpen is better because of me, our starters are fresher because of the innings I can throw. I think long term over short term.”

Ultimately, addressing what could easily become, if it’s not already, a pitching crisis with strategic, long-term thinking is an industry-wide imperative. Science and tech is helping everyone find a pathway to nastier and nastier pitches, with ways to help the arm recover lagging behind. And a challenge is that stuff both plays and pays, which motivates teams to push their pitchers and pitchers to push themselves, perhaps necessitating a rethink of how the sport rewards big velocity.

“Not all outs are worth the same amount of money and that’s just the truth,” says Quantrill. “It’s pretty easy to see what it’s done on the hitting side. We like homers a lot and we’re willing to strike out a little bit to get them. Those guys continue to get the biggest contracts and that’s good. Homers are fun. People love them and it makes a huge impact on a game. But I think you’re seeing, even on the hitting side, a little bit of bounce back now to like, there’s nothing wrong with being a .300 hitter with some pop. That works, too. We’re going to find that balance on the pitching side.”

Bassitt, who signed a $63-million, three-year deal with the Blue Jays as a free agent two winters ago, agrees. He’s seen examples of that balance and believe their approach offers a path forward.

“There’s no doubt that if you throw harder, you have nastier stuff, you’re going to get paid more, more teams are willing to take more risk on you,” he says. “People will see a fastball at 93 and say if he loses two miles an hour, now he’s, 89-91, we don’t like that, compared to if you were throwing 97, you lose two miles an hour, you’re now 95, that’s not a big deal. But again, availability.

“I was blessed enough to come up with Chris Sale sitting there and throwing 90-92 through four innings and all of a sudden he’s throwing 97-98 one inning, and then he’s back to 90-92. José Quintana was doing a similar thing, basically throttling his fastball. You saw Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer do it forever. Gerrit Cole obviously does a really good job of it, too. They’re not max-efforting their fastball every time. They’re sitting there commanding the zone, throwing to spots with the fastball and then have the ability to throw it hard. To me showing stuff is great, but I think holding stuff for 100 pitches is even more awesome.”

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More information has arisen from the Arizona Coyotes relocation to Salt Lake City, and Jeff Marek and Elliotte Friedman lay it all out for you in this edition of the podcast. Elliotte provides behind the scenes details on what happened leading up to last week and explains how NHL hockey might return to the desert. The guys also talk about Auston Matthews being one goal away from 70, the Eastern Conference playoff race, and Elliotte takes a hard stance on Vegas’s use of LTIR.

The Baltimore Orioles need to do us a favour and figure out how to make us hate them. Like, PDQ — pretty damned quick.

Because as much as we like to make a big deal out of the American League East being the toughest division in Major League Baseball, it can’t hold a candle to the National League West or maybe even the NL Central when it comes to rivalries. It needs a breath of bad air, what with the road to the division title now travelling through Baltimore and their despicably likeable collection of fresh faces.

I was reminded of this Saturday night while watching the San Diego Padres and Los Angeles Dodgers empty the benches after San Diego’s Jurickson Profar squared to bunt in a perfect game. It was pure boys being boys stuff… but it was also just April 13. Truth is, if you’ve been paying attention, the axis of anger fully shifted to California years ago, where the Padres, Dodgers and San Francisco Giants have taken turns throwing at each other and emptying dugouts and their fans have exhibited the kind of ill-tempered, jackassery usually associated with NFL fans. Meanwhile, for the past 15 or so years, teams in the NL Central have delighted in leaving bruises on each other’s hitters. (In a previous life, I covered a Cincinnati Reds-Pittsburgh Pirates series that was the most vicious I’ve seen.)

What do we have in the AL East? Other than New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone and Tampa Bay Rays counterpart Kevin Cash flexing and threatening bullpen Armageddon… er, not much.

Hating on the Rays is just bullying. It’s the type of stuff for which parents scold their kids. Hating on the Rays gets you a trip to the principal’s office and says more about you than it does them. Shame on you for hating the Rays. The Boston Red Sox? Please. They seem to have fallen into a funk of nameless aimlessness. Jack Daniels drinking dirtbags no more, they have guys like Triston Casas, who sunbathe and do yoga. Their fans are still… well, you know what we call them. But these days they seem more inclined to turn on their own team — especially the front office — than the opposing team. Not so different than Blue Jays fans, eh?

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We’ll get to see Juan Soto and the Yankees at the Rogers Centre these next three days and perhaps his presence will be enough to re-kindle some kind of Yankgst. Maybe his odd arrogance at the plate — the whole butt-wiggling thing when he takes a pitch — will spark something, although it’s a safer bet that more of the discussion in the stands will be: “If only the Blue Jays had the type of minor-league system to pull off that trade, we wouldn’t have had to go through the whole Shohei Ohtani thing.” Old friend Marcus Stroman will pitch Wednesday, and while his edginess might add a wrinkle in the summer, he’s still a favourite, here.

At this time, can we all take a moment to remember how easy it was for Stroman to get under Buck Showalter’s skin when the latter managed the Orioles? Remember Darren O’Day frothing at the mouth at the site of Jose Bautista… or then-Orioles general manager Dan Duquette famously remarking he didn’t think Baltimore fans would ever want a player like Bautista on his team? Good times. But that was when the Blue Jays were a bunch of reclamation cases like Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion and late bloomer Josh Donaldson, who’d accumulated years of slights both real and imagined. It wasn’t just the Orioles. That team fought with the Kansas City Royals and Texas Rangers, too.

Question for you: Who is the Blue Jays’ biggest rival right now? Take your time. Uh-huh. Thought so. Can’t name one, can you?

There was all that nonsense last season when Aaron Judge was caught peeking into the Yankees dugout before homering off Jay Jackson and Blue Jays pitching coach Pete Walker wanted to get at Yankees third base coach Luis Rojas because of his positioning. Meanwhile, manager John Schneider could be lip-read saying “Shut up, fat boy,” to somebody in the Yankees dugout. But that’s more general pissiness than stuff that transferred to the field. How starved is this division for nastiness? Vladimir Guerrero, Jr., has for a couple of years at least put his forefinger to his mouth in a “shushing” motion whenever he rounds third on a home run — home and away — but it became a wire story out of New York earlier this month because the Blue Jays first baseman has been booed at Yankee Stadium for saying he would never play for the team. That’s how far the division has fallen.

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Unfortunately, it’s now lame stuff in the AL East, by virtue of the high bar that was once set by the Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays and Orioles. That Red Sox-Yankees rivalry pretty much died with Alex Rodriguez’s retirement, although there was a gradual mellowing after the departure of protagonists like Derek Jeter, Roger Clemens, Pedro Martinez, Johnny Damon and the like. Rodriguez kept the flame alive, but he wasn’t considered a true Yankee. Besides, everybody in every ballpark in every division disliked A-Rod. We’re talking Bondsian-level dislike.

Maybe Soto re-signs with the Yankees and becomes that guy. But for now, we turn our eyes to the Orioles, because they are so young and so deep that they will run this division for the rest of the decade. Goodness knows this division needs a refresh, because the truth is the East really hasn’t been all that in the post-season. In fact, since the Yankees won their last World Series in 2009, AL East teams have advanced to the World Series just three times, with the Red Sox winning it twice. One of those wins came in 2013, with an over-achieving team featuring guys like Mike Napoli and Shane Victorino. Tough to work up any anger for that group. Maybe it’s because playing within the division took a lot out of its teams. Maybe the rebalanced schedule will be a cure. But it wasn’t in 2023.

Meanwhile, I haven’t seen anything from the Orioles’ Gunnar Henderson or Jackson Holliday that makes me froth at the mouth. Adley Rutschman is the centre of it all and he’s already shown himself to be Jeter-esque in terms of poise and presence, without the hype that comes from playing in the world’s media capital or, it seems, the collection of A list, uh, companions. However, he might well collect an MVP award and he’ll be a better offensive player than the captain. Besides, he’s a catcher, and I have a hard time hating catchers.

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I guess it’s possible we’ll get tired of the hype surrounding Holliday, but seriously the guy looks like he could be doling out scoops at Baskin-Robbins or whipping up a mean Frappuccino and seems completely at ease with himself. Hate? No. Jealous? Yep. Beyond that, the Orioles no longer have the Angelos nepo babies as owners, and they’re managed by Brandon Hyde, who got into an in-game, shouting match with then-Blue Jays pitcher Robbie Ray a few years ago… and immediately apologized post-game.

Hyde, who must no longer care why the Blue Jays chose Charlie Montoyo over him as John Gibbons’ replacement, cuts a far different figure in the dugout than the smug, self-righteous Showalter. As long as Hyde remembers that he didn’t invent the game — a realization that escaped Showalter — we in this market are going to need to continue searching for that defining AL East personality that raises our hackles, and long for a simpler time.

Jeff Blair hosts Blair & Barker from 2-4 p.m. ET on Sportsnet 590 The Fan and Sportsnet. Blair & Barker also host Blue Jays Talk following Blue Jays weekday games.

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More specifically, is Andrei Kuzmenko’s recent goal spree a mere hot streak or something fans can expect to see moving forward?

While no one is suggesting the Russian winger is capable of keeping up a pace that has seen him score nine times and add six assists in his last nine games, the question is a hot topic. 

“He’s got a skill-set we don’t have,” said Flames coach Ryan Huska when asked about the recent sample size Kuzmenko has produced.

“We know when he feels good about his game he wants the puck on his stick and he can make things happen with it. So, I hope it’s seeing some things that we’re going to see in the future consistently from him.

“I mean, at this time of year sometimes it’s hard to tell because the games are a little bit different for us because of the situation we’re in. He looks much more comfortable on the ice right now, so if this is what a comfortable Kuzy looks like, then we’ll take that for sure.”

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“Comfortable Kuzy” scored 39 goals as an NHL rookie in Vancouver last season, meaning the No. 1 goal the Flames have is finding the right situation for him to play in.

The answer seems to revolve around playing him with Nazem Kadri, with whom Kuzmenko has meshed with for all nine of these games.

As part of Kadri’s second consecutive three-point outing Sunday, his seeing-eye pass to set Kuzmenko up for his fourth goal in the last two games was a thing of beauty.

In Vancouver, it was Elias Petterrson who helped Kuzmenko rack up 74 points in 81 games as a 27-year-old rookie out of the KHL.

Whether Kadri and Kuzmenko can combine to recreate similar offensive magic next season remains to be seen.

All told, Kuzmenko has 14 goals and 24 points in 27 games as a Flame, which would have him challenging for the team points lead over a full season.

Not bad for a salary-dump throw-in as part of the Elias Lindholm swap with the Canucks.

“Difficult start in Calgary, but now I understand guys in the locker room – very important for me, good guys,” said Kuzmenko, whose Flames battled back from a 5-3 deficit with three third-period goals, including one set up by Kuzmenko. 

“Not back to level I can play. How I play now and how I play last season for me is a big difference.”

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Try as he might through broken English to explain his growing comfort level, he suggests the wear and tear of the NHL grind is something he’s better coping with.

“It’s very important moment for next season – I understand how to prepare,” said Kuzmenko, whose 45 points on the year (including half a forgettable season in Vancouver) has him second in the league in points for a player averaging under 15 minutes.

“My last league in KHL was not 82 games. Back-to-backs is big difference in this league.

“I understand how I can work.”

Time will tell if he does, as the knock on Kuzmenko as he struggled to find a way into Rick Tocchet’s good books, was his inconsistency, his lack of engagement at times.

Suddenly, he’s playing a big role in helping Kadri claw his way to 30 goals – a mark his two-goal performance Sunday has him just one goal short of.

“I think it’s just that kind of rejuvenation feeling, obviously coming to a new team, trying to prove some doubters,” said Kadri when asked of Kuzmenko’s secret to success of late. 

“I think that chip on your shoulder can be motivating for some players.

“Just playing with me, trying to read off each other and I think if he continues to do those little things that have got him in these situations, we’ll continue to have success.”

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As for the Coyotes, who are a press conference away from relocating to Utah, the players have clearly been told to pretend there’s no elephant in the room.

“There’s lots of stuff going on around the league with every team,” shrugged Alex Kerfoot, whose club has one final game at Mullett Arena left on its schedule Wednesday against the Edmonton Oilers.

“There’s always distractions, always stuff that’s going on. This is no different. 

“We’ve just got to be professionals out there, go about your business and try and win hockey games.”

Asked about how the organization has handled reports of the team’s imminent relocation, Andre Tourigny cut his post-gamer short.

“Game-only related questions,” he said.

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