Sports
Kevin Fiala injury could force Kings to make another big move before trade deadline
Drew Doughty had a day off Monday and planned to spend part of it visiting with NHL teammate Kevin Fiala. But he hadn’t planned on having to go to the hospital to do that.
Fiala, who is third on the Kings in goals, points and assists, underwent surgery over the weekend to repair multiple fractures in his lower left leg and will miss the rest of the season. Fiala was playing for Switzerland against Doughty and Canada in the Milan-Cortina Olympic hockey tournament Friday when he backed into a hit by Washington Capitals’ forward Tom Wilson along the side boards with less than three minutes left in Canada’s 5-1 win.
Both players’ legs became tangled and Fiala’s foot got caught on the ice as they fell, with the 225-pound Wilson landing hard on Fiala’s leg. Fiala, who was laying face down on the ice, was able to prop himself on his elbows but did not move his lower body before being placed on a stretcher and taken to a hospital.
“Not the ending I imagined for my first Olympics,” Fiala wrote in an Instagram post from the hospital.
The Kings released a statement confirming that Fiala, 29, will miss the rest of the season, dealing a severe blow to the team’s push for a fifth straight playoff berth. The Kings entered the Olympic break fifth in the Pacific Division, three points behind the Ducks in the battle for the Western Conference’s final wild-card berth.
“It’s just part of the game,” Doughty, who was on the ice at the time, said of the injury. “People get hurt all the time. I’ve missed 80 games in the last three years. It’s just the way she goes.
“It’s unfortunate and I feel for Kevin big time. But it’s just part of the game.”
NHL players haven’t participated in the Olympics since 2014, but every team sent at least one player to the tournament this year, leaving team owners and general managers watching the tournament with fingers crossed, hoping their players come home healthy.
Switzerland’s Kevin Fiala is attended to by medical staff after sustaining a broken leg against the Canada on Feb. 13.
(Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
That’s a gamble the Kings lost. Doughty said the players are aware of the risks but the opportunity to play for your country is worth the gamble.
“We don’t care,” he said. “We want to play and it’s best-on-best hockey. We don’t come here worrying about being hurt. We just come here to try to win games and win a gold medal.”
Earlier this month the Kings acquired forward Artemi Panarin from the New York Rangers in an effort to boost the league’s third-worst offense for a playoff push. The loss of Fiala might prompt general manager Ken Holland to look for more help ahead of the March 6 trade deadline.
“It sucks to see something happen like that to him,” said Kings teammate Adrian Kempe, who is playing in the Olympics for Sweden. “Especially when you’ve been waiting all your life to play in a tournament like this, [then] he goes down in the second game.”
Wilson was not penalized for the hit, which appeared to be clean.
“I don’t see any bad intention at all. Things happen,” Switzerland’s Nico Hischier said. “They got tangled up there and fell on the ground. It’s just an unfortunate play.”
The Olympic tournament resumes Tuesday with four quarterfinal qualification games. The U.S. and Canada, both unbeaten, plus Slovakia and Finland have already advanced to the final eight. On Wednesday the U.S. will play the winner of the Sweden-Latvia playoff while Canada will face the Czechia-Denmark winner.
Sports
Toronto Maple Leafs top pick Gavin McKenna reveals that he’s changing his jersey number
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Toronto Maple Leafs No. 1 draft pick Gavin McKenna has already been on the ice with the team as it held its development camp this week, but the highly-touted rookie is going to have to make a big change for this fall.
His number.
When he was playing for the Western Hockey League’s Medicine Hat Tigers and then again at Penn State this past season, McKenna wore the No. 72.
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Toronto Maple Leafs top pick Gavin McKenna has revealed that he’ll be opting for a new number for his rookie campaign. (Photo by Brian Babineau/NHLI via Getty Images)
The expectation was that McKenna would wear No. 72 with the Maple Leafs, and he did so this week at development camp. Plenty of fans have also already ordered No. 72 jerseys with his name on the back.
On most rosters, No. 72 is unique enough that he wouldn’t run into any issues wearing it. However, on July 1, the Leafs signed two-time Stanley Cup champion goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky, who has worn No. 72 for most of his career, except during his first two seasons with the Philadelphia Flyers, when he wore No. 35.
So, some were wondering how this would work out. Would the Leafs want their new franchise player to get his pick of the number litter, or would they defer to a two-time Vezina winner?
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Gavin McKenna wore No. 72 in juniors, as well as last season at Penn State. (Photo by Richard T Gagnon/Getty Images)
Well, it turns out that McKenna will be the one swapping numbers, and he’ll be switching to No. 92 this season.
McKenna had to get creative here because the obvious number changes were a no-go in Toronto. Adding 7 and 2 would be 9, but that was retired in honor of Charlie Conacher and Ted Kennedy.
Another option would’ve been to flip the digits and go with No. 27, but that was retired in honor of Frank Mahovlich and Darryl Sittler.
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So, 92 it is.
However, McKenna reached out to one of the three previous players to wear the number, Jeff O’Neill, to ask whether he was comfortable with him using it.
It’s fair to say he was down with the idea.
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McKenna will be a key piece of a Maple Leafs team that is looking to bounce back after a nightmare 2025-26 campaign that saw them finish last in the Atlantic Division.
Sports
Dodgers’ Eliezer Alfonzo praying his sister and stepmother will be found in Venezuela
It’ll be the culmination of nine minor-league seasons. But Eliezer Alfonzo‘s major-league debut on Sunday won’t include his family watching from Dodger Stadium.
Alfonzo’s younger sister, Eliana, and stepmother, Patricia, have been missing since last month when earthquakes caused widespread devastation in his home country of Venezuela.
“I’ve been trying to support my dad a lot, every day talking to him, trying to be with him,” Alfonzo said of the elder Eliezer Alfonzo, a retired major-league catcher. “It’s a little tough from here because I would like to be there with him, supporting him every day.”
His father, of course, would love to be in attendance for his son’s debut. He told him as much when he heard the Dodgers were calling him up.
The Dodgers switched their backup catchers Saturday, optioning Chuckie Robinson. They saw an opportunity to give Alfonzo some runway behind Dalton Rushing, with starting catcher Will Smith’s stay on the injured list expected to extend through the All-Star break.
The elder Eliezer Alfonzo, however, is doing whatever he can to locate his wife and daughter. Their dog was found alive, which gave the younger Eliezer Alfonzo hope.
“We’ve just gotta stay together as a family, as a country,” Alfonzo said. “Because I feel like we’re a beautiful country, we’re a really beautiful people over there. It’s not just about my family, it’s all families that have lost people already. But we’ve got hope. We just pray, we ask God to give them back to us alive.”
Alfonzo’s locker in the clubhouse is next to countryman Miguel Rojas’ stall. Rojas’ wife, Mariana, and their two children were in Venezuela, planning to renew Mariana’s passport and seek Venezuelan citizenship for their children, when the earthquakes hit. They managed to stay safe and have returned to the U.S.
“I just want to be here for him,” Rojas said. “At the end of the day, that’s the best thing I can do for him, is being a good teammate and being a friend for him. Because I know there’s going to be ups and downs. He’s going to have a lot of time to be caught [up] in baseball, and that’s going to probably take his mind away from stuff. But sometimes he’s probably going to feel weak, and he’s going to start thinking about his family. So I’m going to be here, I’m right next to him. And that’s what I told him.”
Rojas, who played against the elder Eliezer Alfonzo for years in Venezuela, reached out Saturday morning and promised him he’d save the ball from his son’s first major-league hit.
Sports
Kylian Mbappé’s seventh goal of the World Cup lifts France past Paraguay in physical Round of 16 match
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The United States may not have been in action on Independence Day, but France — who fittingly played an important role in the Revolutionary War — was on the pitch in Philadelphia against Paraguay in a massive Round of 16 clash for a trip to the quarterfinals.
It was a hot day in the birthplace of our nation, and that made things difficult for both teams in more ways than one.
While Paraguay is a great squad, they were significant underdogs against a heavily favored French team led by superstar Kylian Mbappé, who has been lighting it up this tournament.
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French and Paraguayan players get into a shoving match during their Round of 16 match on Saturday in Philadelphia. (Kyle Ross-Imagn Images)
Obviously, the heat itself is a factor, but it also made for a slower pitch, something that was believed to play into the hands of Paraguay.
However, most of the action in the first half was played on their end as France put the pressure on through the first half hour of the match.
It was intense, and that intensity boiled over in the 35th minute with some pushing and shoving after Mbappé and Paraguay’s Andrés Cubas started a wild shoving match.
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But while the intensity ramped up — and stayed high for pretty much the entire game — Paraguay weathered the storm and had every reason to feel good about reaching halftime with the game scoreless.
France got some more scoring opportunities in the early part of the second half, including a near-breakaway for Mbappé.
France’s Kylian Mbappe scored the go-ahead and ultimately game-winning goal against Paraguay on a penalty kick. (James Lang-Imagn Images)
In the 67th minute, France was awarded a penalty kick for a foul against Desire Doue that had to go to VAR for review, and it was Mbappé who took it.
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Mbappé has tended to do most of his damage in the second half, and that trend continued here with him drilling the penalty past Paraguay goaltender Orlando Gill.
That was his 19th career World Cup goal, and his seventh of this tournament alone, tying him with Argentina’s Lionel Messi for the tournament lead.
Paraguay seemed to fade after the Mbappé goal, but turned it on again late, forcing Mike Maignan to make his first save of the day about 89 and a half minutes into the match.
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It seemed like Paraguay’s plan was to try and get a rise out of the French, and they succeeded in drawing three yellow cards. In fact, they even tried to keep that going after the match with players meeting near midfield for some more pushing and shoving.
But France is moving on, and they will take on Morocco in a quarterfinal match on Thursday in Boston.
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