Sports
Lazerus: Bill Zito’s Panthers, Kyle Davidson’s Blackhawks and the road not taken
It’s entirely possible that four or five summers from now, Connor Bedard’s name will be etched on the Stanley Cup.
He’ll have won the Conn Smythe Trophy that spring, of course, after a truly absurd playoff run flanked by Michael Misa and Frank Nazar, with Artyom Levshunov logging a heroic 30 minutes a night on the back end. Kevin Korchinski will have racked up the points as his partner on the top pair, with Sam Rinzel lighting it up, as well. Alex Vlasic’s work as the shutdown defender will be the stuff of legends. That second line of Nick Lardis, Sacha Boisvert and Oliver Moore will have made those Blackhawks matchup-proof, forcing opposing coaches to pick their poison.
And man, who’ll be able to forget the way Samuel Savoie, Landon Slaggert and Marek Vanacker wreaked havoc on the newly christened Hair on Fire line, bringing energy to the team and fans out of their seats?
It absolutely could happen.
Kyle Davidson is counting on it, staking his reputation on it, testing Chicago’s patience on it. Davidson sold Danny Wirtz on his plan to gut the franchise and rebuild it through the NHL Draft, and that’s exactly what Davidson has done.
Eight first-round picks in the last three seasons. Two more this year. Two more the year after that. It’ll always be an amusing footnote in Blackhawks history that Davidson’s tank failed but the ping-pong balls fell his way anyway, landing him the centerpiece in Bedard. The rest has been done with ruthlessness and a lack of sentimentality. Davidson has had as clear a vision as any general manager in the game, and he has stuck with it every step of the way.
This is how professional sports teams operate these days, especially in a salary-cap league. When things are going poorly, you blow it up and start over. That’s just how it works.
The thing is, it hasn’t worked. Not in the NHL. Not in the cap era. Not yet. The Buffalo Sabres blew it up, tried to tank for Connor McDavid, and are going to miss the playoffs for the 14th consecutive season. The Detroit Red Wings blew it up, built through the draft, made some savvy picks that have worked out well, and are scratching and clawing to be the eighth seed in the East after eight long seasons without a playoff appearance. The Edmonton Oilers picked No. 1 four times in five seasons and landed the most talented player the game has ever seen, and they didn’t reach true contention until last spring — a decade after drafting McDavid and 14 years after taking Taylor Hall.
And the Blackhawks, eight years removed from their last true playoff appearance, are still years away from the next one.
Saturday, Davidson traded one of his three best players, defenseman Seth Jones, to the Florida Panthers, because Jones couldn’t take the losing anymore. Davidson did relatively well in the deal — getting goaltender Spencer Knight and retaining only $2.5 million a year of Jones’ massive contract — but it was still yet another trade that made the Blackhawks demonstrably worse. Always one step forward, two steps back.
Now let’s look at the team that acquired Jones. When Bill Zito took over as GM in Florida, the Panthers were still something of a league laughingstock. They hadn’t won a playoff series in a quarter-century. The roster was loaded with mediocre players in their mid-to-late 20s. They were stuck.
Florida Panthers GM Bill Zito hoists the 2024 Stanley Cup. (Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
But Zito didn’t tear it down. He didn’t rebuild the Panthers. He remade them. He used every tool at his disposal — trades, free agency, the waiver wire — to reconstruct the plane while it was still in the air. Within four years, the Panthers were Stanley Cup champions, a model franchise, the envy of the league.
Look at how that championship team was built. Zito made one of the gutsiest trades in modern NHL history to land Matthew Tkachuk. He saw players who hadn’t yet reached their potential and got them, trading for Sam Reinhart, Sam Bennett, Brandon Montour and Eetu Luostarinen. He made smart signings in free agency, inking Carter Verhaeghe, Evan Rodrigues and Oliver Ekman-Larsson. And he found gold on the waiver wire, picking up Gustav Forsling — cast off by the Vancouver Canucks, the Blackhawks and the Carolina Hurricanes — and watching him become one of the best defensemen in the league. He dealt away his first-round pick in 2022. And in 2023. And in 2024. And in 2025. And in 2026. The only key players who came through the draft were already there when he arrived: Aleksander Barkov (No. 2 in 2013), Aaron Ekblad (No. 1 in 2014) and Anton Lundell (No. 12 in 2020).
It certainly wasn’t easy, and there certainly was some luck involved. Surely, Zito didn’t see Forsling becoming the player he is. Nobody saw a 57-goal season from Reinhart coming after six unspectacular seasons in Buffalo. And he did all this with Sergei Bobrovsky’s $10 million cap hit weighing him down, an albatross that eventually took flight. What Zito did is incredibly difficult.
But what Davidson is doing might be even harder.
Davidson had his chance to do this more quickly, to spare the fans all this misery. The 2021-22 Blackhawks had a 23-year-old Alex DeBrincat and a 23-year-old Brandon Hagel. They had a 26-year-old Jones and a 24-year-old Dylan Strome. And they had Patrick Kane posting 92 points.
Now? DeBrincat is with the Detroit Red Wings, on the verge of his fourth 30-goal season. Hagel is with the Tampa Bay Lightning, a burgeoning superstar enjoying his second 30-goal season and first point-per-game campaign. Strome is with the Washington Capitals, riding shotgun to history as Alex Ovechkin’s center, with 59 points in 60 games. Kane, despite playing just 100 games, has more points over the last two seasons than every Blackhawks player other than Bedard.
That’s more than Florida had when Zito took over. But DeBrincat and Hagel were too old (despite being a year younger than Barkov and Ekblad when Zito took over). Bedard was too important. The draft was the only path forward. The teardown was the only way.
It’s facile, and perhaps folly, to point all this out in hindsight, of course. There’s a reason so few GMs are willing to be as bold as Zito has been. It usually ends in a firing. Had Davidson tried to retool around his young rising stars and Kane on the fly back then, it’s just as likely that the Blackhawks would be stuck in the mushy middle the past few years as in the Stanley Cup Final.
But either of those scenarios sounds pretty darn good compared to what the Blackhawks have been the last four years, what they’ll probably be the next few years, and what drove Jones out of the city he was so excited to come to in the first place.
What’s done is done, but it doesn’t have to stay this way. It’s long past time for Davidson to get aggressive, to start trying to win for real. Yes, he made a run at Jake Guentzel last summer, but he came up short. He somehow has to convince Mikko Rantanen or Mitch Marner this summer to sign up for seven years of playing with Bedard. Or go after Wyatt Johnston or Noah Dobson or Evan Bouchard with an offer sheet. Or package some of the myriad picks and prospects and young players he has amassed to land a ready-made rising star.
Or all of the above. It’s what Zito would do. It’s what Zito has done. It’s what works.
It’s time to get bold. It’s time to get creative. It’s time to start winning again. Because the current path is not just excruciating; it’s extremely unlikely to work. History has shown us that. And it’s better to aspire to be the Florida Panthers than risk becoming the Buffalo Sabres.
(Top photo of Seth Jones: Bill Smith / NHLI via Getty Images)
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The face of baseball will not be at Tuesday’s All-Star Game.
Shohei Ohtani was scratched from his start on Friday as the Los Angeles Dodgers said he will also miss the Midsummer Classic with what the team called left knee irritation.
Ohtani, for obvious reasons, has become an All-Star Game fixture. He has earned the honor in each of the past five seasons and made his first start in 2021.
Starting pitcher Shohei Ohtani #17 of the Los Angeles Dodgers warms up before the MLB game against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field on June 03, 2026 in Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images) (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
The two-way phenom is on his way to winning his fifth MVP award in his last six seasons as he is hitting .290 with a .939 OPS and pitching to a minuscule 1.79 ERA, the second-lowest in the sport among pitchers with 80-plus innings. His OPS is also the seventh-best mark in the league.
The Dodgers said Ohtani will be the team’s designated hitter up until the break, but he will “have some interventions on his knee to put him in the best position for the second half of the season.”
Ohtani dealt with knee issues earlier in the season.
It is certainly a big hit for the game as the other face of the sport, Aaron Judge, will miss the game due to a fractured rib that has kept him out since late May.
Shohei Ohtani #17 of the Los Angeles Dodgers gets ready in the on deck circle against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field on June 01, 2026 in Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo by Norm Hall/Getty Images) (Norm Hall/Getty Images)
DODGERS WILL AGAIN VISIT WHITE HOUSE TO CELEBRATE WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONSHIP, OFFICIAL SAYS
Ohtani hit 99 home runs combined in 2024 and 2025, leading the National League with a 1.025 OPS in that span. Ohtani did not pitch in 2024 after elbow surgery but returned to the bump last year and owned a 2.87 ERA and 11.9 K/9, a figure he also put up in 2022 that led the American League.
The “Japanese Babe Ruth” is the only player in MLB history to have 300-plus plate appearances and 40-plus innings in six separate seasons (Ruth only did it twice and never stole 50 bases), and he has more than excelled at both.
Shohei Ohtani pitches for the Los Angeles Dodgers against the San Francisco Giants at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, California, on May 13, 2026. (Gary A. Vasquez/Imagn Images)
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Ohtani is not hitting like he has in the past, but certainly the best pitching performance of his career will make up for it. He “only” has 20 homers and 56 RBI this season.
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If Mikel Merino is sleeping, please don’t wake him. If the last week has been a dream, he’d just as soon keep dreaming.
Because on Friday, for the second time in five days, Merino came off the bench for the final five minutes of a World Cup knockout game and scored the winning goal, the latest lifting Spain to a 2-1 victory over Belgium and into next week’s semifinal against France in Arlington, Texas.
“Not even in my wildest dreams could I have imagined what’s happening right now, right?” Merino said in Spanish. “Honestly, it’s crazy.”
How crazy? Merino has played less than 10 minutes in the last two games and has two goals. He’s taken four shots in the World Cup and put two of them in the back of the net, the first in stoppage time to beat Portugal in the Round of 16 and in the 88th minute Friday to beat Belgium in a quarterfinal and extend Spain’s unbeaten to streak to 36 games.
“I don’t really even know what to say. I still can’t quite believe it,” Merino said.
Yet Spain’s final substitution, which brought on Merino in the 86th minute, wasn’t the only one that figured heavily in the result. Fifteen minutes earlier Belgian coach Rudi Garcia sent backup goalkeeper Senne Lammens on for Thibaut Courtois — not by choice, by necessity.
The dropoff in talent wasn’t great — Lammens started 32 times for Manchester United this season — but the difference in experience was. Courtois was playing in his 21st World Cup game, second-most all-time, and he had been brilliant up to then.
But he tweaked a muscle making a save minutes earlier and dropped to the turf just before the second-half hydration break. After being attended to by the team’s trainers, he tried to continue but couldn’t, eventually hobbling to the sideline and collapsing on the bench in tears.
“We didn’t want his injury to get worse. That’s why I subbed him off,” Garcia said.
“It’s part and parcel of high-level sport. You need to be concentrated, 100% focused, and need to be able to perform. I did not want to put players on the pitch who were not 100%.”
The margin between Belgium and Spain, after all, is a small one, even if the teams took completely different routes to the quarterfinal.
Spain, which hadn’t gone past the Round of 16 in a World Cup since 2010 when it won its only title, had gone a record six games and 609 minutes without allowing a World Cup goal, dating to the group stage of the last tournament four years ago.
Spain midfielder Mikel Merino scores off a rebound in front of Belgium goalkeeper Senne Lammens during the second half of Spain’s 2-1 quarterfinal win in the World Cup quarterfinals Friday at SoFi Stadium.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
You could binge watch two seasons of “Abbott Elementary” in that time.
But if Spain, the reigning European champion, and goalkeeper Unai Simón were the immovable objects, Belgium, playing in the quarterfinals for the third time in four World Cups, was an unstoppable force. With 12 goals in the last three games, it entered the quarterfinals with the third-most goals in the tournament. And no team had taken more shots.
Spain struck first, with Fabián Ruiz giving La Roja a 1-0 lead with his first goal of the tournament in the 30th minute. The sequence started with Pedro Porro sending a cross into the box for Dani Olmo, whose shot was parried away by Courtois. But Ruiz pounced on the rebound and deflected a shot off defender Timothy Castagne and into the back of the net.
In any other game of this tournament, that would have been enough for Simón. But not against Belgium, which ended Spain’s shutout streak in the 41st minute on a brilliant header from Charles De Keterlaere, who shielded Pau Cubarsí with his body and one-hopped a Castagne cross past a flat-footed Simón for his third goal in two games.
“The record and the milestones are there,” Spanish coach Luis de la Fuente said of his goalkeeper’s record streak. “It’s been decades since the last record was set. And perhaps somebody will break the clean-sheet record.
“But it’s going to be many, many years before that happens.”
Belgium opened the game up a bit when Garcia brought Romelu Lukaku, the country’s all-time leading scorer, on at the hour mark. But Courtois was called to make two saves in the next three minutes and came up lame after the second.
Shorty after he came off, De la Fuente summoned Merino over.
“He didn’t say much to me,” Merino said. “He told me I was coming in as the No. 10. And then, as the game was coming to an end, he told me I was incredible.
“Those are the only two things he said to me.”
The first shot Lammens faced came moments later, when Cubarsí put a one-hop shot on goal from distance. The keeper dove to his right to stop it with both hands, but the ball skipped just before it reached he and Lammens had trouble with the rebound, pushing it toward the edge of the six-yard box for Merino, who tapped it in.
“Unfortunately, to beat a team of this caliber, you need luck on your side,” Garcia, the Belgian coach, said. And the stars didn’t align for us.”
So while Belgium goes home, Spain goes to Texas for Tuesday’s semifinal with France, the only team in the world ranked ahead of it.
“Ever since the World Cup started, everyone has been waiting for this match,” Spanish wunderkind Lamine Yamal said. “I’ve been really looking forward to it. To me, they’re the two best teams in the World Cup.
“If anyone can take on France with confidence, it’s us.”
Especially if Merino keeps dreaming.
Sports editor Iliana Limón Romero contributed to this story.
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Oba Femi and Brock Lesnar’s feud will come to a head at SummerSlam in August, and the showdown has the potential to be WWE’s match of the year.
Femi beat Lesnar at WrestleMania 42 and led to “The Beast Incarnate” deciding to retire – at least for a moment – at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. Lesnar made a dramatic return a few weeks later, challenging and beating Femi at Clash in Italy.
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Oba Femi looks on during Monday Night RAW at Allstate Arena on July 6, 2026, in Chicago, Illinois. (Melina Pizano/WWE via Getty Images)
At SummerSlam, Femi and Lesnar will do battle inside a Hell in a Cell.
WWE Hall of Famer John Bradshaw Layfield called the next meeting between Femi and Lesnar a “generational matchup.”
“I’ve never seen anything like Oba – well, I have. I’ve seen Brock,” he told Fox News Digital. “It’s very much the carbon copy of Brock coming in. Brock coming in was like, oh my God, who is this guy? The guy can even talk, and he’s gonna be one of the biggest stars in wrestling. Not only could he talk, he’s a really smart guy. Brock became one of the biggest draws in professional wrestling. He came one of the biggest draws in UFC. It’s an unbelievable story, and now you got somebody who can rival that character.
Brock Lesnar in action against Oba Femi during “Monday Night Raw” at TD Garden on March 23, 2026, in Boston, Massachusetts. (Michael Owens/WWE via Getty Images)
“This Oba Femi comes out with the silly little walk he does. Everyone kinda does it, it’s like The Bushwackers. But the whole arena does it. I was in Vegas and I didn’t want to go to the matches and deal with the traffic and deal with the backstage area, and so I kinda just watched it in a sports bar. I stood in the back where nobody could recognize me, and as soon as Oba came out, the entire sports bar was sitting there doing that Oba Femi dance. The guy is just unbelievably over.
“I really think that somewhere in the NFL this year, you’re going to see an entire NFL arena doing this dance. You’re gonna have somebody like Saquon Barkley or ‘King’ (Derrick Henry) or some of these guys do this dance, and it’s infectious. Once one of them does, one of these great running backs or wide receivers, or somebody scores a touchdown, that’s when I think you’re gonna see entire arenas doing it. I just think Oba Femi is lightning in a bottle and Brock has always been that way. This is, to me, a generational matchup.”
Brock Lesnar and Oba Femi face off during WrestleMania 42: Night 2 at Allegiant Stadium on April 19, 2026, in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Georgiana Dallas/WWE via Getty Images)
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SummerSlam will take place on Aug. 1 and 2 at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.
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