Yahoo Sports AM: The NHL is back

Yahoo Sports AM is our daily newsletter that keeps you up to date on all things sports. Sign up here to get it every weekday morning.

🚨 Headlines

🏈 Chiefs stay perfect: The Chiefs beat the Saints, 26-13, on “Monday Night Football” to improve to 5-0 for the first time since 2018 — Patrick Mahomes’ first year as their starting QB.

🏀 Shams replaces Woj: Shams Charania is leaving The Athletic for ESPN, where he’ll replace Adrian Wojnarowski as the network’s new Senior NBA Insider.

⛳️ Clark hits the links: Caitlin Clark will compete in the pro-am next month at The Annika, the penultimate event on the LPGA schedule.

🏈 Expensive celebrations: Vanderbilt and Arkansas both received six-figure fines from the SEC after fans stormed the field following their upset wins over Alabama and Tennessee on Saturday.

🌪️ Milton’s impact: Several college football games this weekend could be impacted by Hurricane Milton, expected to make landfall in Florida by Wednesday. The Buccaneers are also evacuating Tampa and spending the week in New Orleans before playing the Saints on Sunday.

🏒 The NHL is back

The NHL season begins in earnest tonight with a tripleheader on ESPN, as the 2024-25 campaign gets underway stateside after the puck officially dropped in Prague this past weekend.

Familiar favorites: The Oilers and Panthers, last year’s finalists, open the season as Stanley Cup favorites ahead of a quartet of teams sitting not too far behind in a tie for third.

• Oilers (+800 at BetMGM): Just four months removed from their heartbreaking Game 7 loss, Edmonton will again try to snap their three-decade championship drought behind the superstar duo of Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl.

• Panthers (+900): Fresh off their first Stanley Cup title and second consecutive appearance, Florida could become the second team this century to reach three straight Finals (Lightning, 2020-22).

• Avalanche (+1100): Only the Bruins (163 wins) and Hurricanes (158) have more wins in the last three years than Colorado (157), who seek an eighth straight trip to the playoffs.

• Stars (+1100): Dallas has made at least the conference finals in two consecutive years, and three of the last five, but still haven’t won the title since 1999. Is this the year they get over the hump?

• Devils (+1100): New Jersey has made the playoffs just twice in the last decade, but got off to a great start by sweeping the Sabres in the Global Series over the weekend.

• Rangers (+1100): New York won the Presidents’ Trophy* (best record) and reached the conference finals in their first year under Peter Laviolette (third-most wins among active coaches). What does Year 2 hold?

More on the season ahead:

• Welcome to Salt Lake City: The Utah Hockey Club debuts tonight after the Arizona Coyotes were sold and relocated to Salt Lake City. They share an owner (Ryan Smith) and an arena with the NBA’s Jazz.

• Coaching carousel: Eight of 32 teams have a new head coach this season: Blue Jackets (Dean Evason), Sharks (Ryan Warsofsky), Kraken (Dan Bylsma), Jets (Scott Arniel), Devils (Sheldon Keefe), Maple Leafs (Craig Berube), Senators (Travis Green), Sabres (Lindy Ruff).

• 4 Nations Face-Off: In lieu of this season’s All-Star Game, top players from the USA, Canada, Sweden and Finland will play a week-long tournament in February as an appetizer for the 2026 Winter Olympics, which will include NHL players for the first time since 2014.

• Chasing Gretzky: Alex Ovechkin (853 goals) is 42 goals away from passing Wayne Gretzky (894) for the most in NHL history. The 39-year-old scored a career-low 31 goals last year (not including shortened-seasons), but he scored 42 just one season earlier.

*Beware the curse: The Rangers were the 11th straight Presidents’ Trophy winner that failed to win the Stanley Cup. In fact, none of those 11 teams even reached the Finals.

⚾️ Tigers tie the series on Carpenter’s clutch blast

Not all postseason home runs are created equal, and Kerry Carpenter’s game-winning blast on Monday in Cleveland is one Detroiters will be talking about for years.

ICYMI: The Tigers DH hit a 423-foot, three-run bomb in the ninth inning to give Detroit a 3-0 win over the Guardians and tie the ALDS at one game apiece.

• Carpenter’s moonshot came off his bat at 110.8 mph — the hardest-hit ball of his career — and it made him the first MLB player with a two-out, two-strike, go-ahead postseason HR in the ninth inning since Kirk Gibson’s iconic homer in the 1988 World Series.

• It was all the more unlikely because it came against all-world closer Emmanuel Clase, who’d gone 16 straight appearances without allowing a run and didn’t give up a HR to a lefty all season.

Wild stat: Clase allowed nearly as many earned runs on that one swing (3) as he did the entire regular season (5).

Yes, but: This is what Carpenter has done all year. Only four players had a higher OPS than him against RHP this season (min. 250 PA). Their names? Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, Bobby Witt Jr. and Juan Soto.

Shoutout to Skubal: Triple Crown winner Tarik Skubal was yet again untouchable for Detroit, striking out eight and allowing just three hits in seven innings to extend his scoreless streak to 24.1 innings.

Meanwhile, in New York… The Royals used a big fourth inning to beat the Yankees, 4-2, and tie their ALDS at one game apiece, too.

⛳️ Welcome to the big leagues

Braden Thornberry picked a great time to earn his first professional victory, winning the Korn Ferry Tour Championship to secure PGA Tour membership for the 2025 season.

Flawless round: Thornberry, who entered the weekend in 51st on the season-long points list, needed to finish at least solo second to climb into the top 30 and earn his PGA Tour card. He did one better, shooting a bogey-free 66 on Sunday for a one-stroke victory.

• The win vaulted him all the way up to No. 16, knocking 2023 Masters breakout star Sam Bennett out of the top 30. They were the only golfers whose fates flipped over the weekend.

• It’s the first time Thornberry, the former top-ranked amateur and 2017 NCAA champ from Ole Miss, has earned a spot in the PGA Tour in five years since turning pro.

What he’s saying: “My dad texted me this morning and kind of put it in my head, ‘You know, one good round, you could be on the Tour,'” he said. “So it’s crazy to actually go out there and have that one-in-a-hundred round that you needed at the exact right time. It’s just amazing.”

Welcome to the big leagues: Thornberry was one of 30 golfers to earn that potentially life-changing PGA Tour card.

• 1-10: 1. Matt McCarty*, 2. Max McGreevy, 3. Frankie Capan III, 4. Steven Fisk, 5. Tim Widing, 6. Taylor Dickson, 7. Brian Campbell, 8. Harry Higgs, 9. Thomas Rosenmueller, 10. William Mouw

• 11-20: 11. Quade Cummins, 12. Ryan Gerard, 13. Kevin Roy, 14. Cristobal Del Solar, 15. Kevin Velo, 16. Thornberry, 17. Paul Peterson, 18. Isaiah Salinda, 19. Karl Vilips, 20. Jackson Suber

• 21-30: 21. Jeremy Paul, 22. Mason Andersen, 23. John Pak, 24. Kris Ventura, 25. Kaito Onishi, 26. Ricky Castillo, 27. Trevor Cone, 28. Danny Walker, 29. Aldrich Potgieter**, 30. Noah Goodwin

*Pure domination: McCarty clinched No. 1 two weeks ago and earned his PGA Tour card in August after his third Korn Ferry win of the season, making him just the 13th golfer to win a Three-Victory Promotion.

**Second-youngest ever: Potgieter (20 years, 23 days) is the second-youngest Korn Ferry graduate ever, trailing only Jason Day, who was just shy of his 20th birthday when he graduated in 2007.

📆 Oct. 8, 1956: Larsen’s World Series perfecto

68 years ago today, Yankees righty Don Larsen pitched the only perfect game in MLB postseason history, beating the Dodgers, 2-0, in Game 5 of the World Series.

Completely in control: Larsen threw 71 of his 97 pitches for strikes and reached just one three-ball count. Vin Scully, calling the game for the visiting Dodgers, summed up Larsen’s achievement with his patented gravitas and simplicity: “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the greatest game ever pitched in baseball history.”

World Series MVP: The Yankees went on to win the series in seven games and Larsen was named MVP, an award that had been introduced just one year earlier — and one you’d never have expected him to win just three days earlier.

The unlikely hero: Larsen was hardly a bad pitcher, but the man with a 30-40 career record to that point was an unlikely candidate to make this kind of history. As sportswriter Dick Young said, “Damn. The imperfect man just pitched a perfect game.”

• Larsen had allowed nine runs in 5.2 innings across his only two postseason starts before the perfecto. That included the Yanks’ Game 2 loss three days earlier, when he got chased in the second inning after walking four batters and allowing four runs.

• In fact, after his Game 2 dud he didn’t even expect to pitch again in the series. He learned he was starting only after arriving to the clubhouse that morning to find the warm-up ball in one of his shoes — a Yankees ritual.

Another reason his feat was so unlikely? No MLB pitcher had thrown a perfect game since 1922, a 34-year drought that is by far the longest ever between perfectos.

Exclusive club: There have been just two other postseason no-hitters in MLB history: Phillies RHP Roy Halladay in the 2010 NLDS and a quartet of Astros (Cristian Javier, Bryan Abreu, Rafael Montero and Ryan Pressly) in the 2022 World Series.

📺 Watchlist: Win or go home

The Lynx host the Sun tonight (8pm ET, ESPN2) in a winner-take-all Game 5, with the victor securing a trip to the WNBA Finals against the Liberty.

Superstars face off: Minnesota’s Napheesa Collier (27.2 pts, 9.3 reb, 3.8 ast, 1.7 blk through six playoff games) and Connecticut’s Alyssa Thomas* (16.2 pts, 8.7 reb, 10 ast, 1.2 stl) — both top-five MVP finishers — have been superb this postseason.

More to watch:

• ⚾️ NLDS: Phillies (1-1) at Mets (5pm, FS1); Dodgers (1-1) at Padres (9pm, FS1)

• 🏒 NHL: Blues at Kraken (4:30pm, ESPN); Bruins at Panthers (7pm, ESPN); Blackhawks at Utah (10pm, ESPN)

• ⚽️ Women’s Champions League: Matchday 1 (12:45-3pm, YouTube)

• 🏈 NCAAF: FIU at Liberty (7pm, CBSSN)

• 🏀 NBA Preseason: Pacers at Hawks (7:30pm, NBA)

*Triple-double machine: Thomas recorded her WNBA-record fourth playoff triple-double last month. No one else in league history has more than one. Her 15 career triple-doubles (regular season and playoffs) are also nearly four times as many as second place (Sabrina Ionescu, 4).

🤔 Team name trivia

The Utah Hockey Club (formerly Arizona Coyotes), which debuts tonight, is one of 11 teams across the “Big Four” leagues whose name doesn’t end in “S.”

Question: Can you name the other 10?

Hint: Four NHL, four NBA, two MLB, zero NFL.

Submitted by: Matthew K. (Dayton, Ohio)

Answer at the bottom.

🏈 The kids are (better than) alright

Jayden Daniels, Caleb Williams and Bo Nix have already combined for 10 wins, the second-most by rookie QBs in the first five weeks of a season since the 1970 merger.

• Daniels* (4-1) has led the Commanders to their best start since 2008 while powering the league’s highest scoring offense (31 ppg).

• Williams (3-2) has as many 300-yard games in the past three weeks (two) as all other Bears rookie QBs ever.

• Nix (3-2) is the first Broncos rookie QB to win three consecutive starts.

*MVP watch? Daniels’ MVP odds are up to +1000 at BetMGM, fifth-best in the league behind only Patrick Mahomes (+300), Josh Allen (+600), Lamar Jackson (+650) and C.J. Stroud (+700).

Trivia answer: Lightning, Kraken, Wild, Avalanche (NHL); Heat, Magic, Thunder, Jazz (NBA); White Sox, Red Sox (MLB)

We hope you enjoyed this edition of Yahoo Sports AM, our daily newsletter that keeps you up to date on all things sports. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.