Sport

Lee Goldberg, the longtime sports anchor at Portland NBC affiliate WCSH, was the first to break the surprising news Wednesday that the city’s local minor league hockey team, the Portland Pirates, are being sold and moved to Springfield, Massachusetts. On Thursday, Goldberg has followed up on social media with additional news breaks that add to the drama. NEWS CENTER has learned that there was another bid to buy the @PortlandPirates…

Media playback is not supported on this device I don’t want big names at Leicester – Ranieri Leicester City manager Claudio Ranieri has asked his Premier League title winners to “stay one year more”. The Foxes completed one of sport’s greatest shocks when they won the league with a squad costing £57m. Winger Riyad Mahrez, striker Jamie Vardy and midfielder N’Golo Kante are among the previously unheralded players to be…

The Blues hosted a very special fan at Tuesday night’s playoff game against the Stars. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson) How does someone go from never having seen a hockey game to rinkside seats in just a couple of weeks? By (hilariously) live tweeting your first hockey-watching experience. Anthony Holmes, a self-proclaimed newcomer to the sport, was trying to catch the St. Louis Cardinals game April 25 but instead found himself watching the Blues’s 3-2 Game 7…

Updates a story posted Wednesday at 4:40 p.m. Springfield appears to be back in the American Hockey League, thanks to a group of local investors who are buying the Portland franchise with plans to bring it to the MassMutual Center. “I can confirm that a broad-based local investor group has signed a letter of intent to purchase the Portland Pirates,” said Frank Fitzgerald, attorney for the investors’ group. Fitzgerald said…

MOORESVILLE, N.C. — When Dale Earnhardt Jr. previewed the first installment of the upcoming three-part series “NASCAR: The Rise of American Speed,” the Hendrick Motorsports driver said he was amazed at what he witnessed.   “The first part I watched like a kid at Christmas,” the Hendrick Motorsports driver said Tuesday, adding that he kept thinking, “This is cool; I love what I’m seeing. I didn’t know it was like this; this is awesome.”…

Via @NHLonNBCSports Nascent Blues fan Anthony Holmes, who learned about hockey when he watched Game 7 of Blackhawks-Blues last week, was St. Louis’s guest for Tuesday’s Game 3 against the Dallas Stars. He had better seats than you’ll ever have. http://deadspin.com/man-discovers-… Man Discovers Hockey, Loves It Man Discovers Hockey, Loves It Man Discovers Hockey, Loves It The NHL convinced one more person to please like its sport last night. A…

RELATED: Cast your vote now   The Sprint Fan Vote is underway, and now, we have updates on (perhaps) your favorite driver.   There’s still plenty of time left to vote but, so far, the top-10 vote-getters are as follows, in alphabetical order: AJ Allmendinger, Trevor Bayne, Ryan Blaney, Clint Bowyer, Matt DiBenedetto, Chase Elliott, Kyle Larson, Casey Mears, Danica Patrick and Brian Vickers.   Patrick, who won the Sprint Fan Vote last year and in 2013, is the first two-time Sprint Fan Vote…

RELATED: Buy Darlington tickets | ’16 throwback schemes | SHOP: ‘Dinger gear AJ Allmendinger’s Darlington throwback paint scheme will honor Kansas native Bruce Hill’s 1970s-era No. 47 with a Kroger/Kingsford red, white and blue theme, JTG Daugherty Racing announced today. Allmendinger will drive the car in the Bojangles’ Southern 500 on Sept. 4 (6 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).   Allmendinger and Hill, the 1975 Cup series Rookie of the Year, will meet for the…

The No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team of Jimmie Johnson will lose 15 minutes of practice time this week at Kansas Speedway after NASCAR posted penalties coming out of Talladega weekend. The No. 48 team failed template inspection three times during pre-race for Sunday’s GEICO 500. NASCAR also gave written warnings to the No. 44 Richard Petty Motorsports team of Brian Scott and the No. 98 Premium Motorsports team of Cole Whitt, each for two failed pre-race inspections. In…

From a distance, an ocean away, it looks a cool breeze, doesn’t it? In truth, the line from European soccer star to NFL kicker is about as linear as a Christopher Nolan plot, a path lost in translation. There? The one that gets the girl. Here? The one that gets the water. There? Pecs on billboards. Here? Nipple envy. “There aren’t many underwear models that are a kicker,” Nate Kaeding…

RELATED: Buy Darlington tickets | ’16 throwback schemes | SHOP: ‘Dinger gear AJ Allmendinger’s Darlington throwback paint scheme will honor Kansas native Bruce Hill’s 1970s-era No. 47 with a Kroger/Kingsford red, white and blue theme, JTG Daugherty Racing announced today. Allmendinger will drive the car in the Bojangles’ Southern 500 on Sept. 4 (6 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).   Allmendinger and Hill, the 1975 Cup series Rookie of the Year, will meet for the…

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is the executive producer of a three-part series on NASCAR, its personalities and its history.(Photo: Mark J. Rebilas, USA TODAY Sports) MOORESVILLE, N.C. – NASCAR fans have heard about men like Raymond Parks and Red Byron, stock car racing pioneers who helped shape the sport. But most don’t know exactly what they did in NASCAR’s early days, and their personalities are even more of an unknown. Dale…

CANTON, N.Y. — St. Lawrence announced on Tuesday that Mark Morris has been named the third Charles W. Appleton II Hockey Coach and 14th overall in the men’s hockey program effective immediately. Currently, Morris serves as head coach for the Charlotte Checkers, a team in the American Hockey League (AHL) and affiliate for the National Hockey League (NHL) Carolina Hurricanes. Men’s ice hockey is a NCAA Division I sport at…

Going into her eighth Olympics, former shooting champion Nino Salukvadze has plenty of reasons to be proud of her long career. She has something even more special to celebrate in Rio de Janeiro: She and her 18-year-old son will both be competing. While there have been previous cases of parents and their children competing at the same games, this is believed to be the first time a mother and son…

NASCAR Chairman & CEO Brian France has gone from Talladega, Alabama, to Los Angeles over the past several days, taking in and sending out a wide view of the sport in the process.   France kicked off a Drivers Council meeting at Talladega on Friday, then served on a prestigious speaking panel for sports business leaders in L.A. on Monday   The initial stop was well-received by both the drivers…

The family of a 5-year-old Afghan boy who received autographed shirts from his soccer hero Lionel Messi was forced to leave Afghanistan amid constant telephone threats and a menacing Taliban letter, the boy’s father said Tuesday. Mohammad Arif Ahmadi — whose son grabbed headlines when he was photographed wearing a homemade Argentina shirt with No. 10 on the back — said they have moved to neighboring Pakistan and settled…

As part of a push to expand its U.S. presence, Spanish giant FC Barcelona is opening an official soccer school in Charlotte this fall, and tryouts are set to begin in a few weeks. FCBEscola is open to boys and girls 6-12 years old, FC Barcelona said in a recent statement. The first tryouts are May 13-14, May 27-28 and June 10-11, and the fall season runs Aug. 15-Nov. 23….