Monday Morning Sports Roundup: Newton’s Fade, PC Escapes, Rams Wallow, Celts Are Coming
GoLocal Sports Team
Monday Morning Sports Roundup: Newton’s Fade, PC Escapes, Rams Wallow, Celts Are Coming
The Friars escaped New Jersey with a win against the Seton Hall Pirates. The Friars should have won it in regulation time but an ill-advised foul by Jimmy Nichols in the final seconds gave Seton Hall an old-school three-point play and allowed the game to go to overtime.
- But, a win is a win and the Friars are 5-2.
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Rough Rams
While the Friars are streaking, the Rams are a bastion of inconsistency. The Rams this season lost 2, then won 3 and now have lost 3 in a row. The Rams have dropped to 3-5 and are looking confused.
- The Rams host St. Bonaventure on Wednesday at 4:00 PM - maybe the Bonnies will be just what the Rams need.
Pats Now Just Any Other Team
- Pats are out of the playoffs for the first time since 2008, the Brady ACL injury year.
- New England will have its first losing record in two decades.
- Cam Newton has only achieved QB ratings of 100 or more three times this season.
- GoLocal's sports contributor John Crowe tweeted on Sunday, "Fifth time this season the starting QB didn’t get the Patriots into end zone. That’s hard to do. Five of 14 games."
- We will soon see how good Celts' GM Danny Ainge's moves (or non-moves) were this off-season. The Celts are expected to start the season without Kemba Walker (knee) and potentially without new addition Tristan Thompson (hamstring). It is a different team without these two.
-The Celtics kick off their season Wednesday as they take on the Bucks.
The NHL Season
Here is the latest -- the NHL and NHL Players' Association reached an agreement Sunday to play a 56-game regular season starting January 13, 2021, and ending May 8.
"The National Hockey League looks forward to the opening of our 2020-21 season, especially since the Return to Play in 2019-20 was so successful in crowning a Stanley Cup champion," NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said. "While we are well aware of the challenges ahead, as was the case last spring and summer, we are continuing to prioritize the health and safety of our participants and the communities in which we live and play. And, as was the case last spring and summer, I thank the NHLPA, particularly Executive Director Don Fehr, for working cooperatively with us to get our League back on the ice."
Formal training camps will begin January 3. There will be no preseason games.
Under the agreement, the Stanley Cup Playoffs will feature 16 teams in a best-of-7, four-round format and conclude around mid-July with the plan of returning to a normal hockey calendar for the 2021-22 season (regular season beginning in October).
Games will be within realigned divisions only, including a division of the seven teams based in Canada. In reaching an agreement on the format for the 2020-21 season, the NHL and NHLPA determined that the ongoing closure of the United States-Canada border required realignment and also sought to minimize travel as much as possible by shifting to exclusively intradivisional play.