The best men's program in college sports, NHL teenagers, the importance of never being more than a couple games under .500 in baseball, playoff Bruins, and did the Celtics just make history?

Sunday 4/12/26

What a men's hockey program the University of Denver has. It's as impressive a men's four-major-sports program as any in college sports. Another national title last night. Three in five years. College hockey program as machine, but the good kind of machine. They either win it or they're right there.

Max Plante won the Hobey Baker award. He's twenty. Macklin Celebrini is still nineteen. Puts what he's doing this year in even more perspective. If I had to guess, I'd say that he won't win the Hart, but he should. It's nuts what he's done this season. Historic. He has 110 points right now. The next closest scorer on that team has 56.

You don't see this. And, again, he's a teenager. It's a history-making season for a player. The type of thing a hockey historian would look back on--not that I expect there to be hockey historians, because that takes some intelligence, caring about things deeper than highlight clips and social media posts--appraise as still surprising and historically rare thirty years from now.

One of the other Hobey Baker finalists was twenty-four. Celebrini could be approaching 500 NHL points by that age. I'm always taken aback by players who are among the NHL's best at these earliest of ages. I still can't process how Tom Barrasso did what he did at eighteen-years-old, going from a public high school in Massachusetts one season to winning the Vezina with the Sabres in the NHL the next.

I've been doing some research about baseball teams that make the playoffs and the most number of games they were under .500 at any point in a season. And it's usually very few. Even if they were an 89 or 90-win team, that number will often be only 1 or 2.

The start of the baseball season is so important. I've addressed the "it's early" fallacy a couple times recently, but what you do early on as a team has an undeniable, often insurmountable bearing on where you finish. And for players, getting off to a good start can provide the confidence that's so important to baseball and carry you through your season. Is there a sport in which confidence plays a big factor than baseball? I say no.

Alex Cora sat Roman Anthony Friday for the team's first game of their series against the Cardinals in St. Louis. I don't understand that.

The Red Sox haven't hit many home runs. I was worried about this. They're trying to win without sluggers, or even a slugger. I don't believe you can do this in today's MLB. In 1985, yes, in 2026, no.

You need a big bopper or two given how the game is played, and given how the Red Sox themselves play it. Baseball now goes station to station. It isn't a fluid game of hit-and-run, hitting behind the runner, manufacturing runs. Players swing big. That's it. Why play that way if you don't have home run hitters? How much good can ultimately come of that approach over the long season? Where will it get you?

The Red Sox have been fortunate that so many other AL teams picked to contend have had slow starts as well.

The Bruins made the playoffs thanks to the Red Wings losing. The latter really fell apart. I don't mind. I'm no fan of Dylan Larkin. He's a weak leader and a weak-minded man. I see all these guys who sold out for the Olympics and not the NHL clubs they play for. You can't convince me that that didn't have a lot to do with who made the playoffs this year and who didn't. Priorities.

I'd expect James Hagens to make his NHL debut today. Why the Bruins are doing this now, I really don't know. If you wanted him to play in the playoffs, or wanted to see if that'd be worth pursuing, I think you should have gotten him into the line-up earlier. I guess maybe he had something to do with that, as I understand he expressed a desire to go to Providence first.

I'm sure the Bruins' front office doesn't expect the Bruins to be long for the playoffs and is mostly just pleased/pleasantly surprised that the team qualified for the postseason, which I suppose I am, too, if I'm being honest. I didn't expect them to make it. I'll take a few playoff games. I believe a Bruins-Canadiens series is a first-round possibility. That would be nice.

Jayson Tatum is very dramatic. The way he talked about returning to Madison Square Garden--where he had his injury last spring--you'd think he was a WWII vet revisiting Omaha Beach before the blood had dried on the sand.

The Celtics scored 144 points Friday night, with their leading scorer (Sam Hauser) having 24. I wonder how many times, if ever, a team has scored that much with its leading scorer only having scored that much.