Oilers superstar Connor McDavid has won three Most Valuable Player awards, five scoring titles, a Conn Smythe Trophy, and was the centerpiece of Canada’s triumph in this year’s 4 Nations Face-Off. A still-elusive Stanley Cup title, however, could represent the final piece to solidify him as the face of the NHL and one of the sport’s all-time greats.

McDavid is leading the Oilers in the Stanley Cup Final rematch against the Panthers, beginning Wednesday night in Edmonton. After Florida’s seven-game triumph last year, McDavid said he only focused on beating the defending champions. 

“There’s a big circus. You can feel like it’s larger than it is,” McDavid said. “At the end of the day, it’s another series, and we’re playing another great team, and you’ve got to beat them before anything else happens. So they have our complete focus. All of our energy is going into beating the Florida Panthers. There should be nothing else on anyone’s mind.”

The bigger storylines, however, are quite prevalent. In many ways, McDavid is mirroring the on-ice path of his boyhood hero, Penguins star Sidney Crosby, and Wayne Gretzky, the NHL’s all-time leading scorer who is honored with a statue outside of the Oilers’ Rogers Place. Both Crosby and Gretzky lost in their first trips to the Stanley Cup Final, ultimately setting the stage for subsequent success and helping burnish their legacies. 

“I see, obviously, the parallels that everyone wants to write about,” McDavid said. “At the end of the day, this is a different story. Different teams, a different group. [I’m] just excited to have another kick at the can here. That’s all.”

As the Oilers host the first two games of the Stanley Cup Final at Rogers Place, a model for downtown redevelopment sparked by sports, the NHL said those contests are projected to generate more gate revenue than any other games in league history. 

Multinational Factors

The Oilers, meanwhile, are attempting to become the first Canadian franchise to win the Stanley Cup since the Canadiens in 1993. Since then, seven Canadian teams, including Edmonton twice, have reached the Stanley Cup Final but fallen short. 

While the presence of another Canadian team in the championship series this year will complicate how viewership is evaluated—likely depressing U.S. audiences while boosting those north of the border—this year’s matchup is also happening against the backdrop of an ongoing trade war sparked by President Donald Trump, and more fan booing of the U.S. national anthem at the Stanley Cup Final games is possible. 

While tensions between Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney are not necessarily as palpable as earlier this year, the relationship between the two countries has still fundamentally changed, with Carney calling the prior dynamic with its southern neighbor “over.” Carney has repeatedly resisted Trump’s calls to make Canada the 51st U.S. state, responding with his own “Elbows Up!” rallying cry.

Carney also hails from Edmonton, has made no secret of his love of the Oilers, and even has taken in a morning skate with the team. 

“Time to finish the job,” Carney said in a social media post about the Oilers’ playoff march.

In sports, there are unprecedented underdog feats. And then there’s what Lois Boisson is doing at the 2025 French Open, her home Grand Slam.

Boisson, a wild-card qualifier ranked No. 361, defeated world No. 6 Mirra Andreeva on Wednesday to advance to the women’s singles semifinals at Roland-Garros. According to ESPN, she’s the third-lowest-ranked player to advance to a Grand Slam semifinal in the last 30 years. She’s also the first player to make the semis in her Grand Slam debut in 35 years.

She was supposed to make her debut last year but sustained a torn ACL the day before the 2024 French Open, which was a few days after her 21st birthday. She was ranked No. 152 last May, the highest of her career.

This year, she’s already beaten two top-10 players (Andreeva and world No. 3 Jessica Pegula in the fourth round) and is assured a semifinals payday of around $785,000, more than five times what she’s earned in her pro career ($148,009). 

Her path to an improbable French Open title will only get tougher as she’ll need to beat two more Grand Slam champions. Boisson is set to battle world No. 2 Coco Gauff in the semifinals. A win will assure her of at least $1.4 million in winnings.

The French Open title will come against either world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka or four-time French Open champion Iga Świątek. A record $2.9 million prize awaits the champion.

Despite her relative anonymity, Boisson made headlines in April at the Rouen Open. Her opponent, Harriet Dart, went viral for asking the umpire whether Boisson could wear deodorant because the smell was “really bad.”

Boisson made light of the incident, even posting a photo of herself playing tennis while adding a photo of a deodorant bottle.

In a time of marked transition for Warner Bros. Discovery, particularly for its TNT Sports, investors have made no secret of their disapproval of CEO David Zaslav earning nearly $1 million per week.

Company shareholders this week strongly rejected Zaslav’s $51.9 million compensation package for 2024 by a roughly 59–41 margin. More than 1.06 billion votes were cast against a “Say on Pay” vote, while 724.5 million were for it.

The vote is only symbolic in nature and is not binding. It will bear watching, however, whether there will be any adjustments to Zaslav’s pay, either retroactively or looking forward, as other companies have made changes in the wake of similar shareholder rebukes.

WBD’s board said in a statement following the vote that it “takes the results of the annual advisory vote on executive compensation seriously. The compensation committee of the board looks forward to continuing its regular practice of engaging in constructive dialogue with our shareholders.”

The compensation issue arises as TNT Sports remains in a period of significant flux, one now heightening after the formal conclusion last week of its live NBA rights after a four-decade run. Under Zaslav, TNT Sports has aggressively sought to reshape its sports portfolio, including picking up rights to the French Open in tennis and several pieces in college sports. 

That effort, however, has not fully resonated with investors, as WBD stock is down nearly 8% this year, and by nearly two-thirds since the 2022 merger between AT&T’s Warner Media and Discovery Communications to create the current company. Zaslav, meanwhile, continues to prioritize fully owned intellectual property in entertainment as opposed to acquiring live sports rights for more limited periods.

“Sports is a rental business,” Zaslav said in March. 

WBD is also considering a spin-off of its cable networks, similar to what NBC Sports parent company Comcast is now pursuing. 

Zaslav’s 2024 pay, up by more than 4% from the year before, included a base salary of $3 million, $23.1 million in stock awards, $23.9 million in bonuses, and $1.9 million in other compensation.

The legal fight between Florida State, Clemson, and the ACC is now officially over, for now.

After agreeing to a landmark settlement in March, court records in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida this week show the conference and two schools have formally dismissed their lawsuits against each other, ending more than 17 months of litigation.

FSU first sued the ACC—and the conference quickly countersued the school—in December 2023 after the Seminoles were left out of the College Football Playoff, despite having a perfect 13–0 record that the CFP selection committee did not grade as strong as the schedules played by the four teams that reached the Playoff that year.

To leave the ACC (and improve its future chances of making the CFP), FSU argued the conference’s “draconian” Grant of Rights contract—which stated the school would owe $572 million in exit fees—was unenforceable under Florida state law. Clemson sued the ACC, and the conference countersued in March 2024.

The Path Ahead

The settlement had two main components: allowing for a new revenue-incentive structure based on television money and reducing the exit fees for leaving the conference. 

In 2026, exit fees will cost $165 million and will fall by $18 million every year until 2030–31. At that point, the exit fees will level off at $75 million per school until 2036.

While the settlement primarily serves as a measure to keep FSU and Clemson in the ACC for the time being, it also has ramifications for college sports at large.

With the new framework, it appears all major television contracts will bind the Power 4 conferences together for the next several years. The industry could see the next iteration of seismic conference realignment when they come due in the early 2030s.