We'll start in the NHL where Aleksander Barkov scored a hat trick to help lift the Florida Panthers to a 6-3 win over the suddenly slumping Montreal Canadiens, but Barkov overshadowed his own hat trick, the second of his career, with one of his three goals.
In a sequence destined to live on in GIF and Youtube to be played over and over again, and deservedly so, Barkov took a pass near center ice and turned on the jets to break in on Canadiens goalie Carey Price.
It was a partial breakaway as Barkov had Montreal defenseman Victor Mete draped all over him, trying to knock him off the puck, but Barkov kept control, and as he entered the crease in front of Price, he drew the puck back between his skates and with the blade of his stick behind his own legs deftly flicked his wrists and flipped the puck top shelf over Price for one of the most spectacular goals you'll ever see.
He makes it look so easy but when you realize the skill level it took to do this on skates, at full speed, with a defenseman using his body and stick to try and knock him off the puck, it's yet another example of why I believe pro hockey players are the best athletes on earth.
The NBA played its annual all-star game, aka "We don't need no stinking defense", and in the end it was Team LeBron defeating Team Giannis 178-164 in Charlotte, North Carolina. It won't be long before an all-star team scores 200 points in one of these games, but until then we'll have to settle for a paltry 342 total points. Golden State's Kevin Durant was named MVP of the game with 31.
Denny Hamlin won the Daytona 500 yesterday, his second win in the past four years. And the win was part of a podium sweep for the Joe Gibbs Racing team, which had Kyle Busch and Erik Jones finish second and third to become just the second team in NASCAR history to sweep the Daytona 500, the only other being Hendrick Motorsports in 1997.
The Eastern Intercollegiate Ski Association held its re-scheduled Dartmouth Carnival Giant Slalom event yesterday in Lyme, New Hampshire. The original race was canceled last week due to unsafe conditions. As a result, EISA staged a third day of racing after the Middlebury Carnival slalom and giant slalom races on Friday and Saturday.
But the event yesterday did not feature any team with the races counting only towards individual qualification for the NCAA Championships.
Without team scores on the line, Middlebury and Dartmouth benched some of their best skiers in the men's races. The top-10 men all finished within a half-second of each other.
The University of Vermont’s Patrick McConville won the race, a mere .02 seconds over Middlebury College’s Justin Alkier. Third place resulted in a tie: Saint Michael’s College Purple Knight Benjamin Throm shared the podium with Middlebury’s Pate Campbell.
In women's races, Dartmouth repeated their season-long habit of placing three finishers in the top-four. The Big Green’s Alexa Dlouhy won the race. Her teammate, Patricia Mangan, came in second, and UVM’s Mille Graesdal took third.
