The part-owner of the franchise who was once more known for his exploits on the soccer field led the way off the bus, followed by players clad in white T-shirts and orange overalls as a tribute to the fishmongers working across town at Pike Place Market.
A few minutes later, a gaggle of Elvises — or would it be Elvi? — strode into the stadium in white jumpsuits, sunglasses and mostly fake hair.
“Believe it or not, Paul Cotter didn’t even wear a wig. That’s just naturally his hair,” the Vegas Golden Knights’ Keegan Kolesar said. “So he was pretty spot on.”
Photo: AP
The 15th version of the NHL Winter Classic had a decidedly local flair as the Seattle Kraken and Vegas Golden Knights tapped into two of the most well-known aspects of their communities.
Eventually, the theatrics were replaced by actual hockey. Playing in front of a sellout crowd of 47,313, the Kraken scored a 3-0 victory, with Joey Daccord posting the first shutout in a Winter Classic.
“Just to walk out to the ice like that and hear the roar of the crowd was insane and I’ll never forget it,” Daccord said.
Photo: AP
The victory capped a nearly perfect day for the home team. It started with Kraken minority owner Marshawn Lynch leading the team off the bus in outfits that paid tribute to the fishing industry and the workers at the nearby market who fling fish around every day.
Seattle’s Jordan Eberle said there was talk of ditching the T-shirts under the overalls, but “I thought we’d look like firemen strippers.”
For the reigning Stanley Cup champion Golden Knights, well, was there any other choice than Elvis? It was the brainchild of veteran defenseman Alec Martinez.
“I mean, it’s literally Vegas,” defenseman Zach Whitecloud said.
T-Mobile Park was transformed into a nautical landscape tapping into the region’s maritime influence for the meeting of the NHL’s two most recent expansion franchises. There were lakes created in the outfield, docks leading from the baseball clubhouses to the ice and a shipwreck in center field with the tentacles of a Kraken pulling the ship underwater.
The back of the shipwreck had a stage where Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Heart performed after the first intermission. The pregame featured Seattle native Sir Mix-a-Lot performing as the Kraken walked to the ice while stuffed fish were being thrown around them.
The NHL placed the game at the home of baseball’s Seattle Mariners in part because of the retractable roof in case protection from the Pacific Northwest’s notoriously wet weather was needed, but the league got its wish for an open-air game as fog burned off by late morning.
“I think we’d be silly to try to normalize it. It’s not. It’s a different environment. It’s an awesome environment,” Seattle coach Dave Hakstol said. “I think everybody should acknowledge that, but at the same time, you have to dial in and acknowledge that the two points are equally as important as any other two points throughout the year.”
The qualifying round of the World Baseball Classic (WBC) is to be held at the Taipei Dome between Feb. 21 and 25, Major League Baseball (MLB) announced today. Taiwan’s group also includes Spain, Nicaragua and South Africa, with two of the four teams advancing onto the 2026 WBC. Taiwan, currently ranked second in the world in the World Baseball Softball Confederation rankings, are favorites to come out of the group, the MLB said in an article announcing the matchups. Last year, Taiwan finished in a five-way tie in their group with two wins and two losses, but finished last on tiebreakers after giving
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
RSS