The Show Goes On

Morning! It’s still championship season as the Oilers fight back in the Stanley Cup Finals. We’ll dig into this and also cover the Boston Celtics' 18th Title, which they won on Monday.

We’re just chatting about championships today, so it’s a quick one.

Here we go.

The Show Goes On

🏒 The Edmonton Oilers forced a game 5 in the Stanley Cup Finals on Saturday night when they bulldozed the Florida Panthers 8-1. We threw all the stats at you as to what made that an epic win and the general consensus was that the Oilers were going to Florida last night for game 5 and would probably lose.

Well, that’s not what happened. The Oilers won 5-3, but it didn’t come from complete domination, either. The Oilers got off to a hot 3-0 lead early in the second, but that didn’t keep the Panthers at bay. Florida had the edge 37-25 in the face-off circle and 32-24 with shots on goal, but where Edmonton led was on special teams.

The Oilers scored two goals on their power play and even scored a short-handed goal, the short-handed goal being the opening score. Connor McDavid scored two of his own last night and had two assists, and now Edmonton is right back in this thing.

We’ve got ourselves a series!

Game 6 is back in Edmonton on Friday at 8 pm.

One Of The Best Teams To Ever Win A Title?

The Dallas Mavericks didn’t get the message from their head coach, Jason Kidd, who said, “We’ve got nothing to lose”. The Mavs played game 5 like they thought they had a game 6. Yeah, it was pretty darn bad.

The Celtics got off to a 21-point first-half lead, and Dallas was never getting back into this thing. Jayson Tatum and Finals MVP Jaylen Brown combined for 52 points and finally got the title they’ve been chasing.

The final score on Monday night was 106-88, and this is now the Celtic's 18th title, which gives the franchise the edge in the record books over the LA Lakers, who have 17.

The Celts were one of the heavy favorites at the beginning of the year, and that became even more solid when trades happened and they added Jrue Holiday to the roster. Tatum and Brown got their titles. Kristaps Porzingis finally got his after moving around the league(Knicks and Mavs fans can’t be happy). Even Al Horford finally got his title after almost breaking the record for the most playoff games played without a title.

But the question now is whether this might be one of the best teams ever to win a finals. Sure, the East was a weak conference this year, and Boston ran through practically every team. They only lost 18 regular-season games and 3 playoff games. They played some hobbled teams in the playoffs, but it was still domination.

So here are some stats we grabbed from the NBA to see how good this team was.

🏀 The Celtics combined record of 80-21 is the 13th best record of all time

🏀 They were the fourth team in 28 years to finish top 3 in both offensive and defensive efficiency. They were first and second this year, respectively.

🏀 The 122.2 points per 100 possessions the Celtics scored in the regular season was the highest in NBA history.

🏀 The Celtics held the Mavs to just 106.7 points per 100 possessions. If you take away the Mavs’ last two regular season games (in which they rested both Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving), the Finals were their worst five-game stretch of offense all season.

Congrats to the city of Boston. If you can’t have Tom Brady, this is the next best thing.

Rapid Fire Headlines

⚾️ The great Willie Mays has passed away at the age of 93

⚾️ Yankees Aaron Judge took a pitch off the hand yesterday and will need x-rays.

🎾 Novak Djokovic is looking to compete at the Paris Olympics after his knee surgery. Watch out, world!

🏊️ The US might have the next great swimmer lined up for the Olympics. Regan Smith broke the world the world record when she competed in the 100m backstroke at the US Swim trials.

⛳️Want more Tiger Woods? So does everyone else. The PGA Tour has just created a new policy that will allow Tiger Woods to qualify for eight signature events based on his “exceptional lifetime achievement” aka even when Tiger isn’t playing well, people watch. This is a pretty awesome move by the PGA Tour.

⛳️ Speaking of signature events, the PGA has the Travelers Championship this weekend that has a $20,000,000 purse. You can learn more about it here.

As we said, it’s a quick one today.

We’ll see you on Friday where we’ll preview game 6 of the Cup and take a closer look at the weekend.

-The DB