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.

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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.”

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A wild night in the Eastern Conference playoff race resulted in the Maple Leafs drawing the Boston Bruins in the first round.

We all know about the psychology of the Leafs vs. Bruins playoff history, the season series between the teams (4-0 Bruins), Boston’s studs on defense (Charlie McAvoy + Hampus Lindholm), their strength in goal (Linus Ullmark + Jeremy Swayman), and David Pastrnak’s career splits against the Leafs (19 goals, 36 points in 29 games). But it’s also Zacha – Coyle – Geekie down the middle for Boston instead of Barkov – Bennett – Lundell for Florida.

Just a few weeks ago, Boston’s head coach Jim Montgomery said, “We’re not ready for the playoffs,” following a loss to Philadelphia (if you’re a Leafs fan seeking some reassurance, read this doom-and-gloom Reddit thread revealing the average Bruins fans’ mindset at that time). While the Bruins went 5-1-0 after the coach’s call-out, they lost three of their last four to close the regular season (10-7-0 since the trade deadline).

To argue there was a clearly preferred matchup here seems unfounded. There is not much separating these teams (FLA, BOS, TOR), and after they slayed the Lightning dragon last spring, maybe it’s exactly what the Leafs need this year. Bring on Boston.

Your game in 10:

1.    The Leafs got off to a great start to this game that belied the end result. Mitch Marner was feeling it early as he weaved through the Panthers’ defense and created a great scoring chance on his first shift of the game. With Max Domi out of the lineup and Marner back in his most familiar spot next to Auston Matthews, usually an early shift like that from Marner is a promising sign of some magic to come from the pair (and possibly Matthews’ 70th, in this particular case).

Tyler Bertuzzi drew an early penalty crashing the net for a rebound. 20 seconds into the power play, the Leafs were on the board, with Marner sifting a shot from the perimeter to which John Tavares applied the slightest of deflections to make it 1-0.

Mitch Marner 27th of the Season vs Panthers courtesy of Joe Bowen and Jim Ralph. #LeafsForever @Bonsie1951 @Jim_Ralph @LeafsJelly

4/16/2024 pic.twitter.com/XThcscgpXB

— Maple Leafs Hotstove (@LeafsNews) April 17, 2024

The Leafs controlled play, got out to an early lead, and held a 7-2 shot advantage through the first five minutes. It’s hard to ask for a better road start against a top team.

2.   The Leafs’ recent win over Florida in Toronto was not a night particularly high on physical intensity despite the hype around the matchup. Early on tonight, there was a little more message-sending and gamesmanship (the assumption at the time was these two teams were likely round-one opponents).

Matthew Tkachuk took a few shots at John Tavares in front of the Leafs’ bench and Simon Benoit jumped into the scrum, picking up the extra penalty in the skirmish. The calls by the officials on the play were an ominous sign as far as the rest of the game was concerned; Tavares was not an equal participant to Tkachuk in the rough stuff by any stretch, but he got a roughing penalty. Benoit didn’t really throw a punch at any point or go overboard — he pushed Tkachuk away from actively punching his captain, which is pretty standard. How the Leafs got the extra two here was hard to fathom. Fortunately, the Leafs got the kill.

3.   The Leafs’ strong first period continued when, just after the midway point, Noah Gregor put the Leafs up by two after a strong third-line shift. Pontus Holmberg applied good pressure on the forecheck and went straight to the front of the net afterward. Gregor picked up the loose puck and threw a puck toward the net from just inside the blue line, which Stolarz could not track through an effective screen by Holmberg.

Noah Gregor 6th of the Season vs Panthers courtesy of Joe Bowen and Jim Ralph. #LeafsForever @Bonsie1951 @Jim_Ralph @LeafsJelly

4/16/2024 pic.twitter.com/dtCcpAAfQu

— Maple Leafs Hotstove (@LeafsNews) April 17, 2024

The physicality picked up again afterward when Jake McCabe got into a slashing match with Evan Rodrigues. Despite Tkachuk jumping in as the third man into the scrum — a similar scenario to what occurred earlier in the period, leading to a Benoit roughing call — Tkachuk escaped unpenalized. The officials then tabbed Bertuzzi for an extra slash in the scrum. The referees failed to set a consistent standard in tonight’s game, to put it mildly, and it really put a damper on what started as a competitively intense, physical, high-paced contest.

In the opening 20 minutes, the Leafs outshot the Panthers 14-6, led 2-0, and were credited with 3.72 xGF over all situations. Unlike their recent games at home vs. Detroit and New Jersey where they opened up 1-0 leads and then got carried away, they built a lead and gave Florida very little (one strange Matthews giveaway in his own zone aside).

4.   The game flipped on its head on the second period, beginning with the dreaded goal inside 30 seconds of a period starting. This was a self-inflicted wound.

Morgan Rielly initially committed a sloppy giveaway on the breakout, but the Leafs should’ve still been fine. Ilya Lyubushkin misread the play and unnecessarily stepped up in the neutral zone, scattering the Leafs’ structure off the entry and creating a fast-developing odd-man situation. Although Joseph Woll made the initial save on a wobbling shot from Carter Verhaeghe, the rebound placement off the blocker wasn’t ideal, and Verhaeghe slipped the stick check of Matthews in front to bury the second opportunity.

The Leafs pushed back with a few good shifts from the bottom-six forwards, including a great one from the fourth line where Ryan Reaves banged some bodies and they ground on the Panthers on the cycle for a long spell. At the beginning of the shift, David Kampf and Connor Dewar created a breakaway for Morgan Rielly, who was stopped blocker-side by Stolarz.

Rielly had a few big chances offensively tonight but failed to cash in. As the game wore on, he made some puzzling decisions with and without the puck en route to a big dash in the plus/minus column. He’s always been at his best when it matters (playoff time), and there is no sense in jumping on him for a sloppy game #81, assuming that will remain the case this spring, but this wasn’t his sharpest night at the office.

It’s easy to look at the shot total in the second period (29-4) and assume it was a travesty from beginning to end, but the Leafs’ initial response after Florida’s 2-1 goal was quite positive. With around 16 minutes left in the second, shots were 16-8 and it really should’ve been 3-1 Toronto.

5.   The tide turned significantly at the end of a shift of extended zone pressure from the Matthews line, who followed up the great fourth-line sequence. A goalie interference penalty was called on Tyler Bertuzzi, who attempted to skate between Stolarz and his net. The contact perhaps wasn’t as substantial as Stolarz made it appear, but it was a risky maneuver from Bertuzzi, and there was some contact made.

The Leafs were nearly done with the kill when Joel Edmundson was handed an interference penalty on Sam Bennett right at the end of it. When Bennett chipped it in deep and attempted his retrieval, Edmundson ran the kind of off-the-puck pick play on a forechecker we see defenders execute all the time; usually, it’s about running a form of “legal” interference without latching onto the attacking player for too long or getting overzealous with the contact. Whether Edmundson overstepped is debatable on this play, but Bennett definitely sold the call.

6.   By this point, the Leafs should be well and truly familiar with Florida’s renowned gamesmanship, which played a major role in this game tonight several times.

There was a play later in the game—at 4-2 in the third period—when Matthew Tkachuk did most of the work to knock off the net with a loose puck available and the Florida net empty, preventing a possible goal. John Tavares immediately skated away from the incident without a peep while Tkachuk gabbed and gesticulated at the refs in his own defense.

Those are the kinds of moments when making your case and selling a call are necessary in this league. Influencing the officials’ perception of events as best you can is a part of the game, and it’s something the Leafs—led by their captain—have to embrace against teams such as Florida (and Boston), especially.

7.  The Leafs’ PK was hanging tough, but six minutes of PK time in the period, including four minutes consecutively, seemed to really breathe life into Florida’s game and suck the life out of Toronto’s.

While the PK should feel good about the six-for-six night, it did lose six of seven draws on the PK in the middle frame. All the shorthanded time made for a lot of puck time Florida/a lot of time without the puck for the Leafs, and a lot of time on the bench for some of the Leafs’ top players.

In the second period, Florida won 68% of the draws overall. The Leafs could not find a way to dig in, win a few more battles, and reverse the momentum for the remainder of the middle frame, which ended at 29-4 in shots on goal and 3.68-0.51 in expected goals.

8.   The Panthers took the lead with two goals within 10 seconds of each other. The first was a nice tip play by Sam Bennett on a Florida point shot where Rielly was a little too puck-focused instead of engaging Bennett on the way by and disrupting his path/stick.

Immediately afterward, Joel Edmundson was not able to handle a rolling puck in his own zone, and Aleksander Barkov picked his pocket, creating a rebound that was cashed in by Sam Reinhart, with Timothy Liljegren caught in between on the play at the back post.

Before exiting the lineup a second time due to injury, Edmundson struggled in his initial return from his first injury, losing the puck in his feet a fair bit and lacking his timing and sharpness; he could use more reps to shake the rust off of his game, and there is only one game left in the regular season to do it. It seems like a no-brainer to include Edmundson among the six or seven D dressed in the lineup tomorrow while giving a few others with a lot of miles/wear and tear on their bodies (Jake McCabe comes to mind) a night off.

9.   The 4-2 dagger goal with six minutes remaining came on a rough shift from the Knies – Tavares – Nylander line. A couple of times, William Nylander didn’t make a solid play on the puck on the half wall to get it out after Tavares initially won a defensive-zone draw, and the line was then scrambling around the defensive zone. Montour seeing-eye knuckled one in from the point to make it a two-goal Panther lead, with all four goals scored inside a 13-minute span.

Joseph Woll needed to make the save, prevent the fourth goal, and help the team survive the 10-minute Panther barrage down only one. He made a nice save on Vladimir Tarasenko shortly beforehand, but there was no traffic at the top of his crease on this Montour shot, and the point shot knuckled high but did not deflect at any point.

Woll is now 4-6-0 with a .890 since returning from his injury. It’s tempting to give him more time in the net tomorrow to work his way through it—he hasn’t played a ton since his return, with Samsonov staking a pretty firm claim to the #1 job—but the injury risk probably isn’t worth it. Martin Jones could also use the game action, knowing it’s not totally inconceivable that he could be called on at some point in the playoffs.

10.  The last thing the Leafs needed as they attempted to manufacture a third-period push was another penalty in the first minute of the final frame, but during an offensive zone shift for Toronto, another highly debatable call (holding on Tavares) sent Florida to the power play. At this point in the game, the penalties were 6-2 in favour of the Panthers.

The Leafs did finally get some calls to go their way in the third period (the Bennett hook on Tavares was a really soft penalty). With a chance to get themselves back in the game with 14 minutes remaining, the power play couldn’t convert. There were a few frustrating moments where Rielly or Marner threw pucks away high in the zone to start the PP, but there was one glorious chance that would’ve changed the complexion of the final 13 minutes of the third if it went in. Rielly found Auston Matthews alone at the back post, where he outwaited Stolarz but jammed it off the bar. It trickled in the crease but somehow stayed out.

With seven minutes remaining, the Leafs went on another power play—their last real chance to make a game of it. Marner skated downhill and slipped Matthews a pass in the slot that Matthews didn’t fully connect on with his redirect attempt, with an empty net waiting. John Tavares‘ stick then shattered on a pass, ending their in-zone possession.

Alas, it wasn’t the Leafs’ night. Their push at five-on-five wasn’t overly dangerous — they only generated eight shots on goal total in the third period — and they weren’t able to bear down or catch a break on the couple of power-play chances they created.

All eyes are now watching Sheldon Keefe to see how he will manage Auston Matthews tomorrow against the Tampa Bay Lightning. The injuries to Max Domi, Bobby McMann, and Calle Jarnkrok leave the Leafs with just 12 available forwards, but they have nine available options on defense, so they could consider 11/7 if they really wanted to rest him.

This has become more of a delicate situation than is ideal; the Leafs, Keefe, and everyone with a rooting interest in the team obviously wanted Matthews to seal the deal vs. Detroit or Florida so that this decision would be brainless.

The Leafs do need to shift gears and focus on the most important priority. Notably, the team has lost three in a row and conceded 15 goals in those games, though. The goal of the team wanting to enter the playoffs feeling better about their game does align with Matthews dressing tomorrow. It actually might be trickier if the Leafs had won a few games in a row, were feeling really good about the state of their game and the recent results, and Matthews was sitting on #69. The Leafs can’t rest an unlimited number of players tomorrow, and you could just as easily argue it should be Nylander or Tavares sitting.

Ultimately, Matthews has earned the right to make the call. Ideally, if he does play, with Tampa likely to rest players (including Vaislievsky), Matthews can clinch it earlier than later in the game, and Keefe can lean on his full bench the rest of the way.

with notes from Alec Brownscombe

Game Flow: 5v5 Shot Attempts

Heat Map: 5v5 Shot Attempts

Joe Bowen & Jim Ralph Game Highlights

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