A Link of Her Own, September 8, 2016
Landon Donovan’s back, World Cup of Hockey captains + more
Football is back! You’re probably watching the Broncos-Panthers game right now, just like us. But in the rest of the sports world:
NBA Links
It’s easy to get nostalgic with Shaq, Yao Ming, Allen Iverson, and Sheryl Swoopes going into the Basketball Hall of Fame this weekend. So we’re going to look forward instead: the Washington Wizards debuted their alternate jerseys for the upcoming season, and we just might like them better than the originals:
Tennis News
No U.S. Open victory for Serena Williams this year — she was upset in the semifinals by Karolina Pliskova in straight sets on Thursday night.
NFL Links
- Remember all the hubbub about Joey Bosa’s contract? Turns out we’ll have to wait a little while longer to see him play: the Chargers rookie is out this week with a hamstring injury.
- The 49ers organization is following their quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s lead and donating $1 million to two San Francisco-area groups that address social inequality — the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and the San Francisco Foundation.
Soccer Links
- Megan Rapinoe’s planned peaceful protest was denied Wednesday night ahead of her team’s game against the Washington Spirit: the playing of the national anthem was purposefully played before the teams took the field so that Rapinoe couldn’t, in Spirit owner Bill Lynch’s words, “hijack the event.” As Rapinoe said afterward, that word choice is pretty poor considering the anniversary that’s coming up on Sunday.
- Landon Donovan has come out of retirement after a two-year hiatus to rejoin the injury-decimated L.A. Galaxy.
MLB Links
- Tim Tebow is officially a two-sport athlete. The New York Mets signed him to a minor league contract in their “instructional league,” which is what it sounds like — he’ll be in the very earliest stages of player development. He even gets to keep his day job — Tebow will continue as a college football broadcaster on the SEC Network; apparently the Mets were the only team that would let him do both.
NHL Links
Carrie Underwood wowed us in Wednesday’s Video of the Day, and today her husband Mike Fisher got some good news too — he’s the newest captain of the Nashville Predators. There are some captaincies to announce for the upcoming World Cup of Hockey, too (aside from the ones we’ve already told you about for Canada, the Czech Republic, and Sweden):
- While the news that Joe Pavelski of the San Jose Sharks would be leading Team USA was leaked early, his alternates were just announced, and they are Patrick Kane of the Chicago Blackhawks and Ryan Suter of the Minnesota Wild.
- As we expected, Connor McDavid will be captaining Team North America, the group of 23-and-under youngsters from both the U.S. and Canada, with Sean Couturier of the Philadelphia Flyers and Aaron Ekblad of the Florida Panthers as his alternates.
- Anze Kopitar of the L.A. Kings will be captaining Team Europe (a motley crew of hockey players from European countries that aren’t Russia, the Czech Republic, Sweden or Finland), while Mikko Koivu of the Wild will be Team Finland’s captain and Alex Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals will be leading Team Russia.
Longread of the Day
Team Canada member (but Pavelski’s Sharks teammate) Brent Burns took his family on a road trip this summer, and we wish we could have come along.
Must-Watch Video of the Day
When these high school football players learned that one of their cheerleaders had been diagnosed with leukemia, they decided to cheer her up as best they could:
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