Sports

1:20 AM ET ESPN staff The 2022 Stanley Cup playoffs represent a return to normalcy, after a bubble-encased postseason in 2020 and a 2021 tournament that featured realigned intradivisional play, followed by a rebracketing for the final two rounds. Sixteen teams have qualified for a shot, but only one will get to skate the sacred

7:00 AM ET It’s Memorial Day, MLB fans! And you know what that means: You can now officially look at the MLB standings. The saying goes, among baseball fans, that you should avoid checking the standings until Memorial Day, which puts us two months into the season. That gives teams time to play enough games

12:46 AM ET Associated Press CONCORD, N.C. — Denny Hamlin held off Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Kyle Busch in overtime Sunday night to win the longest — and perhaps wildest — Coca-Cola 600 in history. Hamlin won for the 48th time in the NASCAR Cup Series. “It is so special,” Hamlin said. “That is the

6:14 AM ET Associated Press LONDON — Lester Piggott, a jockey who won the English Derby nine times in his haul of victories in horse racing’s top events, has died. He was 86. Piggott’s death was confirmed to Britain’s PA news agency on Sunday by horseracing trainer William Haggas, who is married to Piggott’s daughter,

7:47 PM ET PARIS — And now it’s 14, which is more than the next two most successful clubs in Europe — Milan have seven, Liverpool six — combined. And now Carlo Ancelotti has four as a manager, which is more than anybody else. (“I am a record man!” he said, equal measures disbelieving and

4:00 PM ET Formula One. IndyCar. NASCAR. Breakfast in Monaco. Lunch at Indianapolis. Dinner in Charlotte. Mimosas. Bloody Marys. Beer. This is racing’s highest of holy days, and it’s not even close. A motorsports harmonic convergence that doesn’t happen every year but does more often than it does not. Thank the horsepower heavens. That perfect

6:22 PM ET D’Arcy MaineESPN.com It had been four-and-a-half hours of battling and sliding on the court. But in the end, Carlos Alcaraz, the Spanish teenager with sky-high expectations, outstretched his arms, first placing them atop his head, and then pointing them towards the crowd. For several seconds, he stood on the court, embracing every

8:00 AM ET Reed Kuhn Close Special to ESPN.com Reed Kuhn is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, and strategy and analytics consultant. He is the author of “Fightnomics: The Hidden Numbers and Science in Mixed Martial Arts,” the first book to quantify drivers and performance metrics in combat sports. Ian Parker The summer is filling up

5:45 AM ET Timothy Bradley Jr. Gervonta Davis will defend his WBA “regular” lightweight title against Rolando Romero on Saturday in the main event of a Premier Boxing Champions card at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York (Showtime PPV, 9 p.m. ET). Davis (26-0, 24 KOs), 27, of Baltimore, is coming off a decision victory

9:09 PM ET Kendra AndrewsESPN DALLAS — Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr didn’t want to talk about basketball in his pregame news conference heading into Game 4 of the Western Conference finals against the Dallas Mavericks on Tuesday night. Basketball, he said, didn’t matter. “Since we left shootaround, 14 children were killed, 400 miles

3:00 PM ET Two women who have accused Deshaun Watson of inappropriate sexual conduct condemned the Cleveland Browns for giving the quarterback an NFL-record $230 million guaranteed contract after trading for him. “It’s just like a big screw you,” Ashley Solis said of the Browns in an interview on HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel,”

9:00 AM ET ESPN staff After 10 FBS games (plus Howard–Alabama State in the MEAC/SWAC Challenge) kick things off in Week 0, everyone will start getting in on the action when Week 1 kicks off exactly 100 days from now, on Sept. 1. The arrival of the 100-day mark to the beginning of the college

7:00 AM ET EDMONTON — Connor McDavid is putting on a masterclass of postseason performance, and it’s pushing the Edmonton Oilers to greater heights. Take, for example, McDavid’s play in Game 2 of Edmonton’s second-round Stanley Cup playoff series against the Calgary Flames. The Oilers were trailing 3-1 after a disallowed goal and McDavid had

4:47 PM ET ESPN News Services Major League Baseball has suspended New York Yankees third baseman Josh Donaldson for one game for “inappropriate comments” made to Chicago White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson on Saturday. Donaldson, who also was fined an undisclosed amount, is appealing the punishment, MLB announced. He will be eligible to play for

8:17 AM ET TULSA, Okla. — Justin Thomas‘ long wait to win another major championship is over after he defeated Will Zalatoris in a playoff to win the 104th PGA Championship at Southern Hills Country Club. Zalatoris will have to wait again for his first PGA Tour victory, along with Mito Pereira, whose costly mistake

May 20, 2022 The 2021-22 Premier League season is down to its final 90 minutes, and there are still several key issues to be resolved on what promises to be a dramatic day of highs and lows on Sunday. Manchester City and Liverpool remain in the hunt for the title, with Jurgen Klopp’s team still

9:42 PM ET Mark Schlabach Close ESPN Senior Writer Senior college football writer Author of seven books on college football Graduate of the University of Georgia Kevin Van Valkenburg Close ESPN Senior Writer Senior Writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine Born and raised in Western Montana Spent 11 years as a feature writer for

9:00 AM ET For the first time in nearly 10 years, Holly Holm is thinking about professional boxing. To be clear, Holm’s primary focus is still very much on MMA and recapturing the UFC bantamweight championship that she won in 2015 and surrendered in 2016. Holm (14-5) faces Ketlen Vieira in the main event of

8:51 AM ET David Benavidez wasn’t surprised when he saw one of the biggest boxing upsets in recent years. He had believed for years that even a prime version of Canelo Alvarez could be beaten, and it came to fruition on May 7 when Alvarez, pushing himself into a new weight class, failed to capture

7:00 AM ET NASCAR is hitting its annual All-Star break (yes, I realize there’s not an actual break, and there won’t be one for another month, but Sunday is the All-Star Race, so work with me here), and the Cup Series season now has 13 of the 26 regular-season events in the books. We’re halfway