News
The NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs begin Saturday. Here's what to watch for
Oliver Ekman-Larsson of the Florida Panthers celebrates with the Stanley Cup following their victory over the Edmonton Oilers in Game Seven of the 2024 NHL Stanley Cup Final on June 24, 2024. The 2025 playoffs begin Saturday with hopes of an equally thrilling ending.
Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
WASHINGTON — Hockey’s Stanley Cup Playoffs begin Saturday.
It’s a tall order to live up to last year’s dramatic seven-game final. But the pieces are in place for an entertaining playoffs, with contenders for first-time Stanley Cup winners and generational stars looking for a last trophy to cap off their career.
The puck drops on the first round with a pair of games on Saturday and three more to follow Sunday. And with no New York, no Boston and no Chicago in the mix, it’s a chance for smaller(-ish) markets to shine — including the NHL’s smallest market, Winnipeg, whose Jets finished with the best record in the league and head into the playoffs with a top seed.
Here’s who to watch for:
The Washington Capitals
Pre-season expectations were low, low, low for the Washington Capitals last fall.

In October, the Athletic gave the Caps only an 18% chance of making the playoffs — and less than a 1% likelihood of earning more than 110 points. Franchise cornerstone Alex Ovechkin turned 39 and had just posted the second-lowest goal-scoring season of his career. The only two other remaining pieces of the roster that won the Stanley Cup in 2018 — winger Tom Wilson and defenseman John Carlson — also looked to be past their primes.
Instead, Washington has blown those expectations out of the water.
The Capitals have the best record in the Eastern Conference. Ovechkin has the fourth-most goals in the league, and his chase for Gretzky’s all-time career goals record energized the whole team. Younger players like Dylan Strome, Connor McMichael and Aliaksei Protas have all played the best seasons of their careers.
Alex Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals scores a goal against the Pittsburgh Penguins Thursday. Coming into the season, the expectations for the Capitals were low. But the team has the best record in the Eastern Conference.
Justin Berl/Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Justin Berl/Getty Images
Yet now that the Ovi-Gretzky chase is over and the playoffs are nigh, there is cause for concern. The Caps have slumped. Injuries and perhaps a post-chase energy comedown have contributed to losses in eight of their last 12 games.
“It’s like, has this chase drawn too much out of them, or has this raised their game to another level and they’re just kind of patiently waiting now to start playing playoffs and ramp it back up again?” said ESPN analyst P. K. Subban, who played 13 seasons in the NHL.
No team ever wants to enter the playoffs on a cold streak, yet that’s exactly where the Capitals are. Now they’ll look to shake it off in a first-round matchup against the Montreal Canadiens.
The Tkachuks
Whether you see Tkachuks as the heroes or the villains might depend on your national allegiance … or your political persuasion. But it’s undeniable that last February’s 4 Nations Face-Off, the NHL’s wildly successful replacement for an All-Star Game, propelled the two brothers from hockey stars into actual stars.
Both Tkachuks — Matthew, of the Florida Panthers, and Brady, of the Ottawa Senators — were already big names in the hockey world. And as Americans with six NHL All-Star Game appearances between them, they were locks for Team USA.

The 4 Nations Face-Off began just a couple weeks after President Trump’s inauguration. When Team USA traveled to Montreal to play Canada, the Canadian fans showered the arena with boos as the Star-Spangled Banner was sung. And Matthew Tkachuk “didn’t like” that, as he said later, and the moment the puck hit the ice, he dropped his gloves to fight a Canadian player. Brady did the same moments later. It was an electric moment for hockey. (The U.S. won that game, which was the most-viewed non-Olympic hockey game ever in the U.S. But Canada got the last laugh when it won the final in overtime.)
Ahead of the final, Matthew Tkachuk told ESPN that he viewed 4 Nations as more important than the previous year’s Stanley Cup Final between his Panthers and the Edmonton Oilers, which went to seven games. “Even comparing it to last year’s game, this feels bigger. It feels bigger than Game 7,” he said.
For both Tkachuk brothers, the spring has been a bit of a comedown since then. Matthew sustained a lower-body injury during the 4 Nations event that has sidelined him for the past 25 games. And Brady has dealt with an injury of his own that has caused him to miss eight games.
But both are set to return in the playoffs. Matthew’s Panthers open with a first-round matchup against fellow Floridians, the Tampa Bay Lightning. And Brady’s Senators will take on the Toronto Maple Leafs in a “battle for Ontario.”
No matter the results, get ready to see them back with Team USA next February in the 2026 Winter Olympics.
The Winnipeg Jets celebrate a win against the New York Rangers last month. Winnipeg is a long-suffering hockey town. But this year, the Jets finished 56-22-4, the best record in hockey. And the pressure is on to deliver.
Cameron Bartlett/Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Cameron Bartlett/Getty Images
Winnipeg’s first Stanley Cup?
Winnipeg is a long-suffering hockey town.
The first iteration of its NHL team, the Jets, played in town from 1979 to 1996 — and never won a Stanley Cup, or even advanced past the second round of the playoffs. Then, the team packed up and moved to Arizona, and Winnipeg went without an NHL team until 2011. When the new version of the Jets arrived in town, local fans were so hungry for an NHL team that tickets to the home opener went for $1,000 or more.
Yet this new version of the Jets hasn’t won a Stanley Cup, either. And it’s not because the team has been bad: They’ve reached the playoffs in seven of the past eight seasons.

This year, the Jets finished 56-22-4, the best record in hockey. And the pressure is on to deliver. A mere appearance in the Stanley Cup Final would be the best result in franchise history, new or old.
One player to know: The Jets’ hopes rest, in large part, on the shoulders of goaltender Connor Hellebuyck, who leads the NHL in both wins and save percentage. No team allowed fewer goals all season than the Jets. (Hellebuyck was another star for Team USA in the 4 Nations Faceoff.)
“The kind of year that he’s stitched together for himself this year is really, really, really impressive,” said Mark Messier, the six-time Stanley Cup champion who is now an analyst for ESPN. “And it hasn’t been all Hellebuyck. They’ve played excellent structurally. They’ve got great scoring, timely scoring, depth at position.”
News
Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income
Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaks at the Reagan Library on Sept. 9, 2025, in Simi Valley, Calif. Barrett discussed and signed copies of her new book, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Mario Tama/Getty Images
Even as the Supreme Court was handing down one legal thunderbolt after another last week, the justices were quietly releasing their annual financial reports. Justice Samuel Alito was the only sitting justice to request an extension, which he has done for 15 years. The disclosures do not give a complete account of the justices’ total income and wealth, but they give insights into their concertgoing, guest professorships and even their involvement in youth sports.
In addition to their salaries, much of the justices’ reported income came from their book deals. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson led the pack earning more than $1.1 million last year for a total of roughly $4 million since her memoir, Lovely One, was published in 2024.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and retired Justice Anthony Kennedy also reported income from published books. Earnings from their books ranged from $849,000 for Barrett, to $300,000 for Gorsuch and $88,000 for Sotomayor, whose books include her 2013 autobiography and five children’s books. Justice Clarence Thomas, who previously earned $1.5 million for his 2007 memoir, listed no publisher payments last year, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of 13 co-authors of a 2016 legal treatise, also received no payments last year. Kavanaugh is said to be working on a memoir but he listed no payments for the anticipated book. Alito does have a book coming out in the fall, but with his financial report still outstanding, there is no data on how much he was paid for the work in 2025.
The only two sitting justices who have not written books are Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan.
Many justices also earned income from teaching at law schools. Roberts reported income from New England Law, located in Boston, and Gorsuch reported teaching income from George Mason University in Virginia. Thomas taught classes at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and Barrett and Kavanaugh taught at Notre Dame Law School. Barrett graduated from the school and began teaching there 23 years ago; Kavanaugh has family connections to Notre Dame.

The disclosures also report gifts, travel, food and lodging that the justices received in 2025. Jackson and Sotomayor were the only two to report gifts. Jackson was given a painting for her chambers valued at $2,500, and Sotomayor reported a trip to Kansas City to watch the opening of a musical based on her children’s book, Just Ask.
In addition, she reported receiving free tickets worth $4,333 while on “a private trip to Puerto Rico.” The tickets were from the record label that represents Bad Bunny, and her trip coincided with the artist’s months-long concert series in San Juan. Sotomayor’s parents were from Puerto Rico, and she has spent much time there over the years.
The justices also disclosed significant reimbursements for travel throughout 2025. Thomas’ travel, food and lodging expenses were paid for by the Hoover Institution for speaking at a celebration of conservative economist Thomas Sowell.
Sotomayor, Gorsuch, Barrett and Jackson were reimbursed for international travel, where they gave speeches, spoke about their books or taught. Roberts was the only sitting member of the court not to report any gifts or travel reimbursements.
The annual filings also shed some light on the justices’ activities off the bench. Kavanaugh reported that in addition to his duties as a Supreme Court justice, he serves as a coach to multiple D.C.-area Catholic Youth Organization girls’ basketball teams. Coach K, as he is known by his players, wrote the court’s June decision declaring that states can ban transgender women and girl athletes from playing on women’s and girls’ sports teams.

The justices’ salaries are established by law. The chief justice earns the most, at $320,700 per year. The eight associate justices earn $306,600 per year. While that is a lot of money to most Americans, the justices and even their law clerks could earn more the minute they leave their Supreme Court jobs for large law firms.
Roberts was the only member of the court to report investing in individual stocks. Alito in the past has also owned shares of individual stocks, but his report is not due for three months when his extension runs out. For the most part, the justices do not own individual stocks, but do invest in index funds, mutual funds and other such investment programs in order to both make money and limit potential conflicts of interest that would require their recusal from certain cases.
However — and this is a big however — the financial reporting forms the justices are required to fill out are so unspecific and the reporting ranges for investment earnings are so broad that it is impossible to determine any justice’s overall wealth. In addition, the current value of the justices’ homes isn’t reported. Neither is their spouses’ income, which in the case of the chief justice, for instance, likely far exceeds his take-home pay.
News
Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show
At least two structural columns buckled and failed in a 37-story office tower in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday, prompting evacuations of nearby streets and buildings. While city officials asserted that the tower was in no danger of collapsing completely, outside engineers said further failures in the structure could not be ruled out.
A pair of columns that failed completely were part of the tower’s existing structure. A New York Times review of images and videos from inside the building has found that several floors were added atop these columns.
City officials said in a news conference on Tuesday that the building was continuing to move, while they simultaneously assured the city that the building would not suffer “total collapse.” “The way this building is constructed, it’s a steel-frame building,” John Esposito, a chief in the Fire Department in New York, said at the afternoon news conference. “So, it would not be a total collapse. It would be more of a localized collapse.” Still, he said, “that remains our concern, that it’s moved.”
Engineers said that the movement itself was cause for concern. In a properly designed steel building, they said, loads should redistribute quickly to surviving structural supports if columns failed.
Joe DiPompeo, a former president of the Structural Engineering Institute at the American Society of Civil Engineers, said that if the structure had been overloaded, he would expect any movement “to happen very quickly,” rather than gradually.
“Generally when a column buckles, it’s a sudden failure,” Mr. DiPompeo said. He said that a full collapse remained unlikely given the redundancies built into the building codes.
Engineers often refer to the most dangerous possibility as a progressive collapse, a process in which structures near the initial failure become overstressed and also fail, potentially bringing down the building if the sequence continues. While unlikely, it cannot be ruled out, Mr. DiPompeo said.
Footage recorded from inside the building shows at least two structural columns appear to have failed completely, Mr. DiPompeo said. Other nonstructural, interior walls — or at least the metal “studs” that were in place to hold them up — also appear to have deformed.
“The only way that really happens is if the floor above them dropped. It looks like the floor above could have dropped a foot or two, which is obviously not a good situation,” Mr. DiPompeo said.
The 37-story building is in the process of being converted from office space into residential units. Four new floors and a large vertical portion were added onto the existing building in recent months. The vertical portion consists of a stack of over a dozen new floors cantilevered out over the existing building below.
Engineers said that there was nothing inherently wrong with adding residential floors or the cantilevered section above the columns that failed, as long as the original structure and the modifications had properly accounted for the added weight and wind loads.
“The cantilever alone doesn’t change anything,” Mr. DiPompeo said, but it does put additional load on the columns underneath — a factor that should have been reflected in the design.
Nathan Berman, managing principal and founder of MetroLoft, the developer overseeing the conversion, said on Tuesday that “this incident is nothing more than a typical construction mishap.”
He said two columns near the northwest corner of the tower had bent under the weight of additions to the building above, most likely because those columns had not been properly reinforced, though he said an investigation would determine the cause. The rest of the columns, he said, “picked up the weight.” He estimated the affected floors above the failed columns had sagged by a maximum of four inches.
Mr. Berman said that he expected the problems to be fixed and the project to be completed with, at most, a slight delay.
On Tuesday evening, installation of temporary shoring was set to begin shortly, in order to help stabilize the 20th and 21st floors of the building.
News
DOJ warns of criminal charges for state election officials if noncitizens vote
The Justice Department sent letters warning election officials in all 50 states and the District of Columbia that they could face criminal prosecution over noncitizen voting, a spokesperson for the Justice Department confirmed Tuesday.
The letters, signed by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who heads up the department’s Civil Rights Division, give states five days to explain how they will comply with federal voter eligibility laws and how they will maintain “clean voter lists.”
“The Department sent these letters to all 50 states and the District of Columbia, asking for voluntary compliance in a timely manner with their obligations under federal law to ensure only citizens vote in federal elections,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement.
Noncitizen voting in federal elections is extremely rare, but Trump and his administration have falsely portrayed it as a widespread issue.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar and Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson are among those who said they received the letters from the Justice Department.
The letters say state election officers “could be criminally prosecuted for aiding and abetting” noncitizen voting. They further specify that any election officer who knowingly retains noncitizens on a statewide voting registration list or who facilitates noncitizens’ receiving and casting ballots could be subject to criminal liability.
“An intentional act that is aimed at diluting the votes of citizens could also constitute a violation” of federal law, the letters said.
Henderson wrote on social media that the threats constitute “truly bizarre behavior.”
“Got another love letter this morning from the DOJ sprinkled throughout with threats of criminal prosecution,” she wrote. “I’m sure I’m not the only chief election officer of a state who is being targeted for following state and federal laws by resisting DOJ’s demands for private voter data that have thus far been ruled illegal by at least a dozen courts.”
The letters are the latest move in the Justice Department’s campaign to assert more federal control over state elections.
While some states have complied with the administration’s demands that they hand over voter roll data, the Justice Department has sued 30 states and Washington, D.C., for resisting. So far, 11 different federal courts have dismissed the Justice Department’s efforts to seize voter rolls.
-
Ohio11 minutes agoWoman missing for more than 2 weeks found dead in Ohio
-
Oklahoma14 minutes agoLANZAMIENTO: Local organizations aiming to continue Tulsa’s food industry growth
-
Oregon19 minutes ago
Oregon Country Fair set to open Friday as crews finish preparations in Veneta
-
Pennsylvania26 minutes ago60th annual Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts now underway in State College
-
Rhode Island29 minutes agoHandshake Initiative instills confidence, motivation in students
-
South-Carolina34 minutes agoESPN recruiting writers break down five-star Josh Dobson’s fit with South Carolina
-
South Dakota41 minutes agoSouth Dakota man faces abuse charges after authorities called to NW Iowa casino
-
Tennessee44 minutes agoData centers driving up Tennessee power bills, report finds