Dein erstes Forum » d.TRAINERS ROOMYankees: Carlos Beltr

TORONTO -- The things that make hockey beautiful are the same things that limit its popular appeal. Its almost too exotic for its own good. It requires ice, and not a little bit: great big sheets of it, clean and flawless. The ice means that hockey also requires skating. Like mastering a language, learning to skate rewards early adoption. Most of us can run, so we can come to understand and even play a lot of sports that we didnt grow up playing. We have already met their first demand. Hockey has a higher barrier to entry. If you cant skate, you cant play.I cant skate. Im Canadian, but my family is an immigrant family, and I was too late to the pond. A Canadian who cant skate is like an American who cant light a firework. Youre surrounded by people taking delight in something that has escaped you, everybody laughing at a joke thats gone over your head. Theres a fountain in front of Torontos iconic City Hall. In the winter it becomes a rink, of course, and I cant tell you how many times Ive watched people circling that square with a grace and speed that fills me with envy.World Cup of Hockey schedule: Watch on ESPN, ESPN2, WatchESPNBut I still love hockey, and I can identify the moment I fell for it and why. When I was very young, maybe 5 or 6, my dad took me to my first hockey game. We watched the Toronto Maple Leafs at Maple Leaf Gardens. We didnt have a lot of money, and its the only game we ever attended together. I can remember walking to that fabled arena, holding my dads hand so I wouldnt get lost in the bustle of the building crowd. I can remember being almost blinded by the glare off the ice. I can remember watching the first period and maybe part of the second, trying to take in all of hockeys crazy action, to parse its peculiar brand of collision physics.And then I can remember leaning into my dad and falling fast asleep.In Canada, hockey occupies the same place in our collective consciousness that baseball does in America, only it has inspired more riots. The rink, the heart of so many of our small communities, is our version of the ballpark as cathedral. The back of our $5 bill used to have an engraving of kids playing shinny on it. The prime minister prior to our current dreamboat was a hockey historian. Arguably the most famous song by The Tragically Hip, our unofficial national band, is about a hockey player who was killed in a plane crash. Most Canadians can tell you that the last goal Bill Barilko ever scored won the Leafs the Cup.If you havent watched a lot of hockey, that romance and poetry will probably be lost on you. Thats understandable. On the surface, its a brutal game, bloody and ferocious, with its welts and bruises and lost teeth. It moves at a frenetic pace, too, the tiny puck sometimes lost in the blur, the shifts only a minute long, the changes in momentum almost too quick to appreciate. Baseball is complicated but slow enough to digest. Hockey is simple but too fast to see.I think everything changed that night at the Gardens when I fell asleep. Thats when hockey started making sense to me, when I didnt try so hard to watch it and instead let it filter through my dreams. The sound of the game stuck in my brain like a song that makes you smile every time you hear it.The distinctive sound that hockey makes is one of its happier accidents, the twin benefit of constructing a game exclusively out of hard surfaces and playing it during the quietest time of year, when the birds are gone and no leaves are rustling in the trees. Ice instead of grass, boards instead of chalk, skates instead of shoes, sticks instead of hands, pucks instead of balls -- each of its base elements makes a noise when it comes in contact with any of its others, all of them frozen solid. The hiss of a blade carving into a wet rink or the bang of a puck shot wide are unmistakable, as distinctive as fingerprints.Hockey might be the only sport that you can follow nearly as well in the dark, which is handy when the winter sun sets well before dinner. Other sports have their telltale noises -- baseballs crack of the bat, basketballs infernal squeaking of sneakers -- but hockeys sounds combine to make a symphony that tells so much more of its story. In other sports, the best plays are often lauded for their relative quiet: the swish of the perfect basket, the soundless connection between a quarterbacks spiral and the soft hands of his receiver. Hockey might never be still, but it is also never silent.I didnt wake up that long-ago night in Toronto until my dad carried me outside the Gardens and the cold hit my face. I can remember looking up at him and feeling confused and lost, except that I was in his arms. That was good enough for me. I closed my eyes again, and for the second time in the same night, I didnt need to see to know everything I needed to know. Fake Yeezys Store . And follow TSN.ca right through Deadline Day for all the updates. From Pierre LeBrun While Anaheim GM Bob Murray said earlier this season he was not going to trade Jonas Hiller despite the fact hes an unrestricted free agent on July 1, some sources have told TSN Hockey Insider Pierre LeBrun that Murray might be willing to move another goalie. Cheap Fake Yeezys . 8 Iowa State on Saturday, sending the Cyclones to their third consecutive loss. The Longhorns (14-4, 3-2) got their biggest win of the season with their third in the row in the Big 12. http://www.fakeyeezysforsale.com/fake-yeezy-boost-350-v3/ . -- Gus Malzahn finally had his day in Fayetteville. Fake Yeezys Online . For the Wild it was their first win of the season and they now have a record of 1-1-2 while the Jets fall to 2-2. Jets start a six game home stand Friday with another divisional game, home to the Dallas Stars. Fake Yeezys From China . But Bourque, who has missed three games with a lower-body injury, wont be in the lineup when the Habs travel to Buffalo to take on the Sabres on Wednesday. NEW YORK -- The Yankees four-game set against the AL-leading Rangers started Monday with what Chase Headley called maybe the toughest loss of his career.On Wednesday, Texas was two outs from winning the first three games. And yet the series ended Thursday with New York somehow earning a split when Headley scampered home on a passed ball for his teams second straight victory in the bottom of the ninth.Headley just beat the throw with two outs for a 2-1 win. Four Yankees pitchers combined to strike out 16 Rangers -- 12 by starter Michael Pineda.Didi Gregorius, who had the winning home run hours earlier when the Yankees rallied from a four-run ninth-inning deficit Wednesday night, hit a solo shot in the fifth to tie the score. Shin-Soo Choo had homered to lead off the game.Reliever Tony Barnette (5-3) walked Headley to lead off the bottom of the ninth. With runners on second and third and two outs, Robinson Chirinos dropped a fastball from Barnette.Headley had been concerned that Chirinos might try to throw behind him, and when he saw the pitch wasnt low, he started to take a half-step back before he saw the ball squirt away.Once it got by, though, theres no going back, he said. You just hope that you make it.Chirinos said he knew which pitch was coming and its location.Its my fault, he said.Barnette blamed himself for the leadoff walk.Its unacceptable, he said. You walk a guy to start an inning, most of the time hes going to score.Aroldis Chapman (2-0) worked around Adrian Beltres leadoff single in the top of the ninth to earn the win.In what manager Joe Girardi called his best outing of the season, Pineda was sharp after a shaky first inning, when Choo crushed the fourth pitch of the game for his 18th career leadoff homer.Pineda struck out Rougned Odor with two runners on to prevent further damage, and he didnt allow a hit the rest of the way -- reaching what is a magical six-inning mark for Yankees starters because of their trio of hard-throwing relievers.Dellin Betances, Andrew Miller and Chapman each pitched a scoreless inning.After a rough start to the season, Pineda had a 2.75 ERA in June, though he has just one win to shhow for it because of a lack of run support.ddddddddddddLike Pineda, Rangers starter A.J. Griffin cruised after laboring through the first. Both pitchers struck out the side in the second, and overall nine straight batters struck out from the bottom of the first through the top of the third.Griffin retired 12 in a row before Gregorius tying homer. Griffin departed after throwing 88 pitches in five innings. He allowed the one run and two hits with two walks and eight strikeouts.After Headleys walk in the ninth, Gregorius came up again with a chance to win it -- but this time he sacrificed, bunting Headley to second with one out. Aaron Hicks then walked.Starlin Castro, who hit a walk-off home run of his own eight days earlier, grounded out to first to put the runners on second and third with two outs.MOMENTUM SWINGOn Monday, the Yankees blew a ninth-inning lead after a 3 1/2-hour rain delay, and the game didnt end until 2:44 a.m. But now they start a 10-game road trip back at .500.Hopefully this is what really got us going, Girardi said.TRAINERS ROOMYankees: Carlos Beltran, who didnt start for the second straight game because of right hamstring tightness, can bat, but he cant run. He pinch-hit for No. 9 hitter Ronald Torreyes in the seventh, and after he walked, Castro, who didnt start with a day game after a night game, pinch-ran for him. Girardi is concerned about Beltrans ability to play the field during this weekends interleague series at San Diego and doesnt expect him to start Friday. ... C Brian McCann played a day game after a night game even though tendinitis in his knee flared up Wednesday.UP NEXTRangers: Texas continues its 10-game road trip with a three-game series at Minnesota, with LHP Martin Perez (7-4) seeking his seventh straight victory when he faces RHP Ervin Santana (2-7) on Friday.Yankees: New York opens a 10-game road trip with an interleague series at San Diego, when RHP Nathan Eovaldi (6-5) looks for his first win in more than a month in a matchup against RHP Colin Rea (4-3). ' ' '