SI:AM | The Avs Still Look Like the Stanley Cup Favorites

Plus, everything that led to the new breakaway golf tour.

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. The NCAA baseball and softball tournaments have been just as good as advertised.

In today’s SI:AM:

🏒 “Holy s---!”

🏌️‍♂️ Phil on LIV Golf, gambling debts and more

🧀 Cheese rolling champ

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A game so dramatic an analyst swore

For the second time this postseason, the Avalanche have swept a playoff series. Now, they’re on their way to the Stanley Cup Final.

Colorado beat the Oilers 6–5 in overtime last night after a thrilling third period in Edmonton to reach its first Cup Final since 2001.

The Oilers carried a 3–1 lead into the third period, but the game went to overtime after the two teams combined for six goals in the final 20 minutes of regulation. Just over a minute into the extra period, Artturi Lehkonen scored an impressive goal to win it for Colorado. He tipped Cale Makar’s shot toward the goal, then corralled the rebound and slotted it into the gaping goalmouth.

There were a few tense moments as Lehkonen’s goal was reviewed to determine whether the tip was made with a high stick, at which point TNT brought in its rules expert, former NHL referee Don Koharski, to give his thoughts on the play. Koharski hilariously cut the tension with an accidental “holy s---!”

It was not a laughing matter for Oilers fans, though. With each passing season, Edmonton’s shortcomings become more and more frustrating. The Oilers have the best player in the NHL in Connor McDavid but have won just three playoff series since he made his NHL debut seven years ago, with two of those series wins coming this postseason.

The finger-pointing will start with hot-and-cold 40-year-old goalie Mike Smith, who allowed 19 goals in the four-game series. The complaints about Smith aren’t limited to letting shots past him, either. Midway through the third period, he allowed the Avs to cut the lead to 4–3 after straying from the goal and committing a costly turnover with a bad pass, leading to a Gabriel Landeskog goal.

Everything is hunky-dory in Colorado, though. The Avs have breezed through the playoffs thus far. While every other first-round series went to at least six games (five of them were settled in seven), the Avalanche swept the Predators. They needed six games to beat the Blues before recording another sweep against the Oilers.

As I wrote after their sweep against Nashville, the Avs’ postseason success should not come as a surprise. They had the best record in the Western Conference this year, boasting a top-notch offense and defense. The 23-year-old Makar has been the key all year, and especially so in the postseason. He had five points (a goal and four assists) last night and now leads the team with 22 points in the playoffs.

The Avs will now await the winner of the Rangers-Lightning series. New York leads that one 2–1 with Game 4 tonight in Tampa.

The best of Sports Illustrated

Ahead of this weekend’s first LIV Golf event, Bob Harig explains how the rival tour came to be in today’s Daily Cover. In an exclusive interview, Harig spoke with Phil Mickelson about joining the Saudi-backed golf league, his gambling debts and whether he will play in next week’s U.S. Open.

Emma Baccellieri spoke with the 21-year-old NC State graduate who won the women’s cheese roll race in England over the weekend. … WWE’s Cody Rhodes wrestling through a torn pectoral muscle was the stuff of legends, Dave Meltzer writes. … Jimmy Traina is fed up with ABC/ESPN’s lackluster NBA halftime show.

Around the sports world

Dustin Johnson and other golfers have resigned from the PGA Tour ahead of the first LIV Golf event. … Greg Norman claims Tiger Woods turned down a “mind-blowingly enormous” offer to join LIV Golf. … A 24th civil lawsuit has been filed against Deshaun Watson. … Aaron Donald’s new contract makes him the highest-paid non-quarterback in NFL history. … The Lakers are reportedly hiring Rasheed Wallace as an assistant coach. … Odell Beckham Jr. crashed Sean McVay’s wedding, but the Rams coach said he loved it.

The top five...

… biggest moments in the NCAA baseball and softball tournaments.

5. This barehand play by Arkansas third baseman Cayden Wallace.

4. This awful call in the Maryland-UConn baseball game. (The Huskies benefited from the call and went on to win the elimination game.)

3. Texas softball beats Oklahoma State to become the first unseeded team in WCWS to reach the championship series.

2. Stanford baseball’s back-to-back home runs to tie the game in the ninth.

1. Oklahoma softball’s 15–0 win over UCLA to advance to the championship series. (That’s the biggest margin of victory in WCWS history. It was the Sooners’ 40th win this season by the eight-run rule.)

SIQ

The Padres took Brown shortstop Bill Almon with the first pick in the 1974 MLB draft, held this week 48 years ago. Can you name the only three other Ivy League players who were first-round picks in the primary June draft?

Yesterday’s SIQ: Which two future Baseball Hall of Famers took part in the D-Day invasion?

Answer: Yogi Berra and Leon Day.

Berra, who had been drafted into the Navy as a 19-year-old after one season in the minors, served on a rocket boat during the invasion. The 36-foot craft was called a Landing Craft Small Support and manned by six sailors tasked with firing rockets at German defense positions on the beach as allied soldiers came ashore.

“You saw a lot of horrors,” Berra told the Associated Press in 2014, a year before he died. “I was fortunate. It was amazing going in, all the guys over there.”

Day drove an amphibious vehicle onto the beach as part of the 818th Amphibious Battalion on June 12, six days after the invasion began.

Unlike Berra, whose baseball career was just getting started when he entered the service, Day had already played parts of nine seasons before joining the military. He played just one more season in the Negro Leagues after he was discharged. In his first game back, though, Day threw a no-hitter for the Newark Eagles.

Day, who also pitched in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Venezuela and Canada, was elected to the Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee in March 1995, less than a week before he died.

From the Vault: June 7, 1999

Nathaniel S. Butler/NBA Photos

More than 20 years later, the 1999 Knicks remain one of the most improbable NBA Finals participants ever.

New York got off to a pedestrian start during the 50-game lockout-shortened season but won six of its last eight to secure the Eastern Conference’s final playoff spot, just a game ahead of the Hornets. They survived a hard-fought best-of-five series against the top-seeded Heat that included some final scores that would make modern NBA fans’ eyes bleed (like 83–73, 87–72 and, in the decisive Game 5, 78–77), then swept the Hawks to set up a meeting with the Pacers, their old rivals, in the conference finals. Writing in SI after the Knicks won Game 1 against Indiana, Jackie MacMullan reflected on how far the team had come:

“Just two months ago the notion that [Patrick] Ewing and the Knicks would be busy with anything but their golf games when June arrived seemed ludicrous. They were the bickering, dysfunctional band of malcontents who were teetering on the brink of lottery land, dragged down by a bloated payroll of self-involved stars who couldn’t—or wouldn’t—share the basketball. They were stuck in a rut the size of the Grand Canyon, pounding the ball into Ewing, then standing around murmuring disapproval while he clanged enough jumpers to wind up shooting a career-low 43.5%. As the cries to de-emphasize Ewing’s role grew louder, coach Jeff Van Gundy stubbornly left the ball in the hands of his battered warrior, knowing full well it could cost him his job.”

But luckily for the Knicks, MacMullan continued, they were forced to rethink their approach when Ewing sat out 12 games in March and April with an Achilles injury.

“​​Out of necessity, Van Gundy opted to go up-tempo, relying on a younger, more athletic unit that featured 6'6" Latrell Sprewell creating baskets in the open court, forward Marcus Camby igniting the fast break with his shot blocking, and shooting guard Allan Houston providing the finishing touch from the outside. It was the lineup that former general manager Ernie Grunfeld had envisioned in the off-season when he acquired Sprewell from the Golden State Warriors and Camby from the Toronto Raptors, in trades for two of the most popular Knicks, John Starks and Charles Oakley, respectively. By mid-April, when those deals still had shown no signs of paying off, Grunfeld was demoted. More heads were scheduled to roll—up next was Van Gundy’s—as soon as the underachieving team was bounced from the playoffs.”

And while the Knicks weren’t exactly done with the bickering (Sprewell was still not pleased with his role as the sixth man), the decreased focus on Ewing paid dividends. But the Knicks would suffer from his absence later in the playoffs.

Ewing reinjured his Achilles during Game 2 of the conference finals and, after trying to play through the injury in the second half of that game, missed the rest of the series and the entire NBA Finals against the Spurs. The Knicks lost to San Antonio in five games as San Antonio’s frontcourt duo of David Robinson and Tim Duncan bullied Camby and Kurt Thomas. Ewing recalled during a podcast interview last year that he was so disappointed not to be on the floor that he left the bench during one of the Finals games and broke down in tears.

“I actually broke down,” Ewing said. “I didn’t want anybody to see me, so I went on the team bus and I broke down because I wasn’t able to play in it, and we were losing.”

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