Chris Branch

6 days ago | nytimes.com | Chris Branch

📣 | This is The Athletic's daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox. Good morning! I'd like to ask the new pope about Jermaine Dye. While You Were Sleeping: Maybe we should reconsider the OilersAmid all the NHL playoff hype this year, somehow we let the Oilers idle on the proverbial backburner. They weren't the best team in hockey this year. Not even in their own division.

1 week ago | nytimes.com | Chris Branch

📣 | This is The Athletic's daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox. Good morning! I will accept dried fish for soccer tickets. In the (Playoff) Kitchen: Two defending champs, two 2-0 deficitsLook, this feels mean. But after a most consequential night of playoff hoops and hockey, looking at our results through the lens of the losers is more important. Even more importantly: How cooked are these guys?

1 week ago | nytimes.com | Chris Branch

📣 | This is The Athletic's daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox. Good morning! Be like Mikal Bridges today. Pulse Power Rankings: They're all good series, but ... Don't get me wrong: This is a wonderful time of year. But if you happen to, say, like the extremely popular sports of hockey and basketball, it can be a lot to ingest, especially as both sports conduct the early rounds of their postseasons simultaneously.

1 week ago | nytimes.com | Chris Branch

📣 | This is The Athletic's daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox. Good morning! Don't lose in Game 6 today. Survival: HeadlineWhen a playoff series reaches Game 6, the matchup becomes primal. The team down 3-2 is likely playing at home, back against the proverbial wall, fighting for another day. Those with a chance to clinch want to avoid the sometimes suffocating pressure of a Game 7 at home. We had Game 6s (say that fast) last night across the NBA and NHL.

2 weeks ago | nytimes.com | Chris Branch

📣 | This is The Athletic's daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox. Good morning! Release a statement today. Bye Bye: Woof, LakersThere is nothing more basic in the sporting world than the consequences of one game. A loss that ends a season, a months-long effort from an entire group of people, snuffed out at a single point. Elimination was our common theme in last night's NBA and NHL playoffs.