Brad Jacobs is heading West. 

The 2013 Brier champion and 2014 Olympic gold medalist will take over the rink previously skipped by Calgary’s Brendan Bottcher, it was officially announced on Wednesday night. 

“We are extremely excited to announce that Brad Jacobs will be joining our team for the upcoming curling season,” the team said in a statement on X. 

Marc Kennedy, Brett Gallant and Ben Hebert stunned the curling world on Tuesday when they announced that they had parted ways with Bottcher after just two seasons together, highlighted by back-to-back third-place finishes at the Montana’s Brier. 

“Brendan Bottcher has been an outstanding teammate and friend. We thank him for the time we spent together, during which we won multiple Grand Slams and bronze at the last two Briers,” the statement read in part. “We know that Brendan, who is an elite skip and has already represented Canada at the Worlds, will have great success wherever his curling pursuits take him. We wish him the very best.”

Jacobs announced earlier on Wednesday that he was parting ways with Manitoba’s Team Reid Carruthers following a short two-year run.

After representing Northern Ontario at 14 Briers, the 38-year-old native of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., took a brief hiatus from competitive curling following the Lethbridge Brier in 2022. 

Jacobs joined Team Carruthers as a third for a handful of events during the 2022-23 campaign before becoming a permanent member of the squad this season. He took over full skip duties in December, leading the rink to the Montana’s Brier in Regina after winning the provincial championship in Manitoba. 

Team Carruthers finished the season ranked sixth in Canada and 11th in the world after posting a 43-28 record, highlighted by a win at the PointsBet Invitational near the start of the season in September. 

Team Bottcher posted a 53-21 record in 2023-24, finishing No. 2 in Canada and No. 4 in the world. They won three Tour events, but lost two Grand Slam finals.

The 32-year-old Bottcher, who won the 2021 Brier inside the Calgary bubble, has yet to announce his plans for the future. 

Bottcher, Kennedy, Gallant and Hebert came together ahead of the 2022-23 curling campaign with the expectation they would be major contenders to represent Canada at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy. 

Adblock test (Why?)

Source link

Toronto Raptors two-way player Jontay Porter was banned from the NBA on Wednesday after a league probe found he disclosed confidential information to sports bettors and wagered on games, even betting on the Raptors to lose.

Porter is the second person to be banned by commissioner Adam Silver for violating league rules. The other was now-former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling in 2014, shortly after Silver took office.

In making the announcement, Silver called Porter’s actions “blatant.”

“There is nothing more important than protecting the integrity of NBA competition for our fans, our teams and everyone associated with our sport, which is why Jontay Porter’s blatant violations of our gaming rules are being met with the most severe punishment,” Silver said.

WATCH | CBC Sports’ Myles Dichter discusses NBA’s ban of Porter:

The investigation started once the league learned from “licensed sports betting operators and an organization that monitors legal betting markets” about unusual gambling patterns surrounding Porter’s performance in a game on March 20 against Sacramento. The league determined that Porter gave a bettor information about his own health status prior that game and said that another individual — known to be an NBA bettor — placed an $80,000 US bet that Porter would not hit the numbers set for him in parlays through an online sports book. That bet would have won $1.1 million.

Porter took himself out of that game after less than three minutes, claiming illness, none of his stats meeting the totals set in the parlay. The $80,000 bet was frozen and not paid out, the league said, and the NBA started an investigation not long afterward.

“You don’t want this for the kid, you don’t want this for our team and we don’t want this for our league, that’s for sure,” Raptors President Masai Ujiri said Wednesday in Toronto, speaking shortly before the NBA announced Porter’s ban. “My first reaction is obviously surprise, because none of us, I don’t think anybody, saw this coming.”

The league has partnerships and other relationships with more than two dozen gaming companies, many of whom advertise during NBA games in a variety of ways. Silver himself has been a longtime proponent of legal sports wagering, but the league has very strict rules for players and employees regarding betting.

And what Porter was found to have done was in violation of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, which states: “Any Player who, directly or indirectly, wagers money or anything of value on any game or event in the Association or in the NBA G League shall, on being charged with such wagering, be given an opportunity to answer such charges after due notice, and the decision of the Commissioner shall be final, binding, and conclusive and unappealable.”

‘Cardinal sin’

Silver cautioned last week that this move was possible, saying what Porter was accused of represented “cardinal sin” in the NBA. Porter has not commented since the investigation began, and never played for the Raptors again — he was listed as out for all of Toronto’s games for the remainder of the season citing personal reasons.

Those wagers did not involve any game in which Porter played, the NBA said. But three of the wagers were multi-game parlays, including a bet where Porter — who was not playing in the games involved — wagered on the Raptors to lose. All three of those bets lost.

“While legal sports betting creates transparency that helps identify suspicious or abnormal activity, this matter also raises important issues about the sufficiency of the regulatory framework currently in place, including the types of bets offered on our games and players,” Silver said. “Working closely with all relevant stakeholders across the industry, we will continue to work diligently to safeguard our league and game.”

WATCH | Background on league investigation into Porter:

NBA investigates Toronto Raptors’ Jontay Porter in alleged gambling plot

22 days ago

Duration 2:36

The NBA is investigating Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter for his alleged role in a gambling plot in a pair of games he briefly played in this season before suddenly leaving.

Pair of games in question

The 24-year-old Porter averaged 4.4 points, 3.2 rebounds and 2.3 assists in 26 games, including five starts. He also played in 11 games for Memphis in the 2020-21 season.

ESPN first reported the investigation, which it said surrounded Porter’s performance in games on Jan. 26 and March 20. In both games, Porter played briefly before leaving citing injury or illness. Porter played 4 minutes, 24 seconds against the Los Angeles Clippers in the first of those games, then 2:43 against Sacramento in the second game.

In both of those games, Porter did not come close to hitting the prop-wager lines for points, rebounds and 3-pointers that bettors could play at some sportsbooks. For example, one set of prop wagers for Porter for the Clippers game was set at 5.5 points, 4.5 rebounds and 1.5 assists; he finished with no points, three rebounds and one assist. For the Kings game, they were around 7.5 points and 5.5 rebounds; Porter finished that game with no points and two rebounds.

The league said its probe “remains open and may result in further findings,” and that those findings are being shared with federal prosecutors.

Adblock test (Why?)

Source link

MONTREAL — To fully understand the complicated puzzle Montreal Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis will face heading into his third full season behind the bench, a brief synopsis of the day of his team’s final game of the 2023-24 season is necessary.

Before the game, defenceman David Savard was speaking to reporters about winning the Jacques Beauchamp Trophy, awarded to the team’s unsung hero of the season. Savard is entering the final year of his contract and will turn 34 roughly two weeks into the next season. There is an urgency for Savard that is not the same for many of his teammates.

“I believe next year we have the group to make the playoffs,” he said. “That’s my goal in September: to get here, stay in Montreal and get to the playoffs. I want to experience that once in my life, to be in the playoffs in Montreal. It would be pretty special to wear that uniform in the playoffs. I saw it as a fan, and I think the city goes pretty crazy, so it would be fun to see it from the right side of things.”

The Canadiens scored a go-ahead goal against the Detroit Red Wings in Tuesday’s third period. It was set up by Lane Hutson, who was playing his second career game, and tipped in by Juraj Slafkovský, who was playing his 121st game. It was Slafkovský’s 20th goal of the season, earning him a $250,000 bonus. Slafkovský and Hutson were drafted in 2022, the Nos. 1 and 62 picks; it was the first NHL Draft engineered by the current administration led by Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes.

JURAJ SLAFKOVSKY HAS 20 GOALS 🚨

The Habs take a 4-3 lead. pic.twitter.com/CV92fzOPOP

— TSN (@TSN_Sports) April 17, 2024

Logan Mailloux — the No. 31 pick in the 2021 draft, the last one of the previous administration led by Marc Bergevin — got an assist in his NHL debut. The other goals were scored by Alex Newhook and Cole Caufield, two players selected back-to-back in the middle of the first round of the 2019 draft, and Brendan Gallagher, who will turn 32 in May and has three years left on his $6.5 million contract. Hutson and Slafkovský were 6 years old when Gallagher was drafted in 2010.

All of them are at different stages of their careers, and all of them have different needs. But they will all be expected to push together to reach the goal Savard stated so emphatically before the game, the same goal captain Nick Suzuki stated with equal conviction in Ottawa on Friday. The Canadiens are definitely at a crossroads, and though much of the burden for executing that transition to having playoff aspirations falls on Gorton and Hughes, St. Louis will be the one tasked with executing it.

And in that sense, St. Louis might also be at a crossroads in his young coaching career.

Up until now, the Canadiens have had no expectations — either internally or externally — to do what Savard and Suzuki clearly stated they expect the team to do next season. At the preseason Canadiens golf tournament, Gorton wouldn’t even say the word playoffs, preferring to call them the “p-word” and stating that was not the expectation for the season. It is hard to imagine him having the same reluctance at next season’s golf tournament in September.

St. Louis was an intense competitor as a player, and he remains so as a coach, but he is more measured in that intensity because he has more information and more people to consider than just himself. Wins and losses are no longer black and white. Nuance and context go into every win or loss, and all of that is painted with the brush of the Canadiens being in the middle of a rebuild.

Well, the Canadiens will now be hoping to be coming out of a rebuild, expected to make the same kind of steps made by the Red Wings, who were eliminated from playoff contention Tuesday night despite beating the Canadiens for the second night in a row, this time 5-4 in a shootout. The Canadiens have been out of contention, essentially, for months.

How will St. Louis change as the expectations change? He doesn’t know, but he also doesn’t seem to think he needs to change all that much.

“It’s a balance,” St. Louis said. “I don’t want to lose myself with results, because you lose your sanity. You want to go back and watch the film, maybe look at a little bit of data, but have some truth of where you are. Sometimes I’m going to be positive, and sometimes I’m not going to be as positive. Do I like to win? Absolutely. But I feel like the last couple of years I’ve been OK, I guess, to lose because we rarely got outplayed. Rarely got outplayed. So it’s hard to not be positive when you don’t get outplayed. So, for me next year? I don’t know. If we’re getting outplayed, I’m probably not going to be positive much.”

It is not fair to say St. Louis has always been positive with losses because he hasn’t. When the Canadiens lost 5-2 on the road to the Boston Bruins on Nov. 18, St. Louis was disappointed in his team’s performance, and he acted in kind. He basically spent the next week working on the Canadiens’ forecheck and nothing else because that was what he identified as being the reason they were so badly outplayed in Boston.

“For me, that game, it was obvious that we didn’t touch the puck in Boston because we did not forecheck well,” St. Louis said. “And we really spent a lot of time focussing on that, and it became a big part of why we were able to play with top teams and why we were able to find more consistency in our game. That’s where it started.”

Gallagher called the Canadiens’ forechecking the team’s identity, of being tough to play against and continually sending pucks deep and forcing opposing defencemen to do something they are not all that enthusiastic about doing. But the Canadiens also needed to be willing to do something they were not enthusiastic about doing because every hockey player would prefer carrying the puck into the offensive zone and making plays offensively.

“When you’re talking about creating an identity as a group, it’s not going to be easy; it’s going to take a bit of time,” Gallagher said. “Rightfully so, he was frustrated with us because we probably weren’t picking it up as quickly as he would have liked. But we stuck with it, and eventually you get results, players understand this is the way it’s going to be to have success.”

On the other hand, St. Louis loves to say everything starts with the truth. And the Canadiens’ truth is changing. Talented young players will be taking spots on the team, the talented young players already on the team have taken steps and will take further steps, the older players on the team have an urgency to win, and management seemingly feels a similar urgency to at least put the team in a position to win.

The Canadiens, for the second year in a row, finished close to the bottom of the NHL standings and left the ice after their final game to cheers from the fans at the Bell Centre despite losing their final game. It is hard to imagine those fans reacting the same way if the same scenario presents itself for a third year in a row or if the players or management will be quite as understanding, either.

St. Louis has to manage all that and appears up to a challenge he has yet to face as an NHL coach: meeting expectations, internal and external, to guide a winning product, a playoff product.

“I would be very surprised if we didn’t improve, whether that’s internally or externally,” St. Louis said. “Our young players will be a bit older. That’s always the goal, and it will be up to Kent (Hughes) to juggle that.

“I’ll see my lineup and I’ll go with that, and I won’t make excuses.”

Adblock test (Why?)

Source link