Deadspin | Surging Knights visit scuffling Kraken as they battle for playoff position Apr 7, 2026; Vancouver, British Columbia, CAN; Vegas Golden Knights forward Nic Dowd (26) and forward Cole Smith (22) celebrate Smith’s goal against the Vancouver Canucks in the third period at Rogers Arena. Mandatory Credit: Bob Frid-Imagn Images At this time of the season, a glance at the standings doesn’t always tell the full story. For example, take the Vegas Golden Knights and Seattle Kraken — who are set to meet Thursday night in Seattle. The Golden Knights (36-26-16, 88 points), winners of four straight games since John Tortorella replaced Bruce Cassidy as coach, are even with Edmonton in points atop the Pacific Division but are in second place because they have three fewer regulation wins. The Kraken (32-34-11, 75 points) are clinging to their Western Conference playoff hopes despite six consecutive losses — the last five by multiple goals — and a 1-8-2 record over their past 11 games. The Kraken are in seventh place in the wild-card race. Eighth-place Calgary, with 73 points, already has been eliminated. The Golden Knights are coming off a 2-1 victory Tuesday at Vancouver, the team that’s last in the NHL’s overall standings. “Good teams win those games. Teams that don’t get there in the end lose those games,” Tortorella said. “To me, it’s a good sign for the hockey club.” Fourth-liner Cole Smith scored the go-ahead goal in the third period, defenseman Brayden McNabb also tallied and goaltender Carter Hart made 10 saves. “We’re doing a really good job of going north, and I think when you do that, you stay out of your end, you don’t play defense, you don’t mess around with the neutral zone, and then you end up playing more offense,” said Golden Knights center Nic Dowd, who assisted on the winning goal. “And then, in my opinion, our (defensemen) are doing a great job of allowing our forwards to play offense by pinching, keeping pucks in, making us go north. I think it starts in our back end.” Tortorella said he was encouraged that the Golden Knights won with their top point producers — Jack Eichel, Mitch Marner, Mark Stone, Pavel Dorofeyev, Ivan Barbashev and Tomas Hertl — all kept off the scoresheet. “On a night where it was just a grind, we just stayed with it and we got a goal by a defenseman, we get a goal by Cole Smith, which I think is a really good sign for our team, not leaning on the top guys all the time,” Tortorella said. “Just stayed with it and we checked forward most of the night, certainly wasn’t pretty … we found a way to win.” The Kraken have won both of their meetings with Vegas this season — 2-1 in Seattle on Oct. 11 and 3-2 on Jan. 31 in Sin City — with the teams also set to meet April 15 in Las Vegas. Seattle is coming off a 6-2 loss Monday in Winnipeg and a 5-2 defeat Tuesday at Minnesota. “It’s another loss, and it’s a 5-2 loss and another empty-net goal against, and I sit here and I say, ‘I thought we played a pretty good hockey game,’” Kraken coach Lane Lambert said. “And it’s like, ‘Really? You do?’ It’s another loss, but I do actually think we played pretty good (Tuesday). We out-chanced them and we just can’t get out of our own way.” A Kraken turnover led to Minnesota’s tying goal 38 seconds into the second period. Seattle later appeared to regain the lead, but it had a goal disallowed on video review because of goaltender interference. “I liked our first period, and then after that, I mean, we didn’t generate much,” said defenseman Brandon Montour, who scored one of Seattle’s goals. “Same stuff,” he continued. “Turnover at the blue line, odd-man rush goal. A guy backdoor by himself, goal. Spin around in the slot to a guy backdoor by himself, goal. Empty net. I guess you could say another easy one for the opposing team. Mental mistakes that obviously have been hurting us for the last little bit.” –Field Level Media #Deadspin #Surging #Knights #visit #scuffling #Kraken #battle #playoff #position

The last witness to a first belief — Remembering C.D. Gopinath C. D. Gopinath, the last surviving member of India’s first Test-winning side, passed away on Thursday at the age of 96, closing a living link to a morning in 1952 when Indian cricket, after years of waiting, finally believed in itself.Against England, at the M. A. Chidambaram Stadium, then still Madras, Gopinath was the youngest member in a team led by Vijay Hazare. He made 35 runs in a brisk, obedient cameo, and, more enduringly, took the winning catch to seal India’s first ever Test victory. The ball, signed and now faded, sat in his Coonoor home for decades, a modest relic of a historic triumph. C.D. Gopinath’s souvenir match ball from the 1952 Test win finds a place at his Coonoor residence.
| Photo Credit:
Special arrangement

C.D. Gopinath’s souvenir match ball from the 1952 Test win finds a place at his Coonoor residence.
| Photo Credit:
Special arrangement
When I met him in 2021, in a sunlit garden in Adyar, he was 91 but alert, amused by memory, and generous with it. Time had softened neither his wit nor his clarity. Asked about a proposed documentary on that match, he laughed: with no teammates left to contradict him, he could “say anything I want.”His story resisted the tidy arc. He began cricket only at 17, almost by accident, handed keeping gloves because “nobody else could.” Soon, he was opening the batting and making 70. In First-Class cricket, he would compile 4,259 runs at an average of 42, with nine hundreds, before business interests drew him away after 1962-63. The numbers are solid; the life around them, richer.He spoke often about what that 1952 win meant and what it did not. There was no strategy, no huddles, no theatre. “We won, said ‘well done,’ and went home,” he recalled, half in wonder at modern celebrations. Yet beneath that restraint lay something more searching. Gopinath was clear-eyed about the limits of his era: a team that was not quite a team, a country still learning to think as one. Parochialism, he said, seeped into selection and dressing rooms alike. He had felt it, even as his runs against touring sides forced recognition.And still, he believed the game could do what politics struggled to: bring India together. He delighted in the modern side’s plurality, in captains from unexpected places, in the idea that talent could emerge from any corner. The 1952 victory, he felt, changed the internal grammar of Indian cricket. For the first time, it allowed a fragile thought to take hold: that India could beat those it had learned from.In person, he carried that history lightly. There was no bitterness, only perspective, and a storyteller’s instinct for the telling detail: the impatience of a declaration that never came, the regret of a dismissal taken on trust, the small, private satisfaction of a catch held in front of a pavilion.Gopinath’s passing leaves no eyewitness to that first triumph. But his voice, wry and lucid, endures in the stories he chose to tell, and in the way he told them: without fuss, without embellishment, and with an unwavering sense of proportion.Published on Apr 09, 2026 #witness #belief #Remembering #C.D #Gopinath — C.D. Gopinath’s souvenir match ball from the 1952 Test win finds a place at his Coonoor residence. | Photo Credit: Special arrangement

#witness #belief #Remembering #C.D #Gopinath">

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C. D. Gopinath, the last surviving member of India’s first Test-winning side, passed away on Thursday at the age of 96, closing a living link to a morning in 1952 when Indian cricket, after years of waiting, finally believed in itself.
Against England, at the M. A. Chidambaram Stadium, then still Madras, Gopinath was the youngest member in a team led by Vijay Hazare. He made 35 runs in a brisk, obedient cameo, and, more enduringly, took the winning catch to seal India’s first ever Test victory. The ball, signed and now faded, sat in his Coonoor home for decades, a modest relic of a historic triumph.
C.D. Gopinath’s souvenir match ball from the 1952 Test win finds a place at his Coonoor residence. | Photo Credit: Special arrangement
C.D. Gopinath’s souvenir match ball from the 1952 Test win finds a place at his Coonoor residence. | Photo Credit: Special arrangement
When I met him in 2021, in a sunlit garden in Adyar, he was 91 but alert, amused by memory, and generous with it. Time had softened neither his wit nor his clarity. Asked about a proposed documentary on that match, he laughed: with no teammates left to contradict him, he could “say anything I want.”
His story resisted the tidy arc. He began cricket only at 17, almost by accident, handed keeping gloves because “nobody else could.” Soon, he was opening the batting and making 70. In First-Class cricket, he would compile 4,259 runs at an average of 42, with nine hundreds, before business interests drew him away after 1962-63. The numbers are solid; the life around them, richer.
He spoke often about what that 1952 win meant and what it did not. There was no strategy, no huddles, no theatre. “We won, said ‘well done,’ and went home,” he recalled, half in wonder at modern celebrations. Yet beneath that restraint lay something more searching. Gopinath was clear-eyed about the limits of his era: a team that was not quite a team, a country still learning to think as one. Parochialism, he said, seeped into selection and dressing rooms alike. He had felt it, even as his runs against touring sides forced recognition.
And still, he believed the game could do what politics struggled to: bring India together. He delighted in the modern side’s plurality, in captains from unexpected places, in the idea that talent could emerge from any corner. The 1952 victory, he felt, changed the internal grammar of Indian cricket. For the first time, it allowed a fragile thought to take hold: that India could beat those it had learned from.
In person, he carried that history lightly. There was no bitterness, only perspective, and a storyteller’s instinct for the telling detail: the impatience of a declaration that never came, the regret of a dismissal taken on trust, the small, private satisfaction of a catch held in front of a pavilion.
Gopinath’s passing leaves no eyewitness to that first triumph. But his voice, wry and lucid, endures in the stories he chose to tell, and in the way he told them: without fuss, without embellishment, and with an unwavering sense of proportion.
Published on Apr 09, 2026

#witness #belief #Remembering #C.D #Gopinath">The last witness to a first belief — Remembering C.D. Gopinath

C. D. Gopinath, the last surviving member of India’s first Test-winning side, passed away on Thursday at the age of 96, closing a living link to a morning in 1952 when Indian cricket, after years of waiting, finally believed in itself.

Against England, at the M. A. Chidambaram Stadium, then still Madras, Gopinath was the youngest member in a team led by Vijay Hazare. He made 35 runs in a brisk, obedient cameo, and, more enduringly, took the winning catch to seal India’s first ever Test victory. The ball, signed and now faded, sat in his Coonoor home for decades, a modest relic of a historic triumph.

C.D. Gopinath’s souvenir match ball from the 1952 Test win finds a place at his Coonoor residence. | Photo Credit: Special arrangement

C.D. Gopinath’s souvenir match ball from the 1952 Test win finds a place at his Coonoor residence. | Photo Credit: Special arrangement

When I met him in 2021, in a sunlit garden in Adyar, he was 91 but alert, amused by memory, and generous with it. Time had softened neither his wit nor his clarity. Asked about a proposed documentary on that match, he laughed: with no teammates left to contradict him, he could “say anything I want.”

His story resisted the tidy arc. He began cricket only at 17, almost by accident, handed keeping gloves because “nobody else could.” Soon, he was opening the batting and making 70. In First-Class cricket, he would compile 4,259 runs at an average of 42, with nine hundreds, before business interests drew him away after 1962-63. The numbers are solid; the life around them, richer.

He spoke often about what that 1952 win meant and what it did not. There was no strategy, no huddles, no theatre. “We won, said ‘well done,’ and went home,” he recalled, half in wonder at modern celebrations. Yet beneath that restraint lay something more searching. Gopinath was clear-eyed about the limits of his era: a team that was not quite a team, a country still learning to think as one. Parochialism, he said, seeped into selection and dressing rooms alike. He had felt it, even as his runs against touring sides forced recognition.

And still, he believed the game could do what politics struggled to: bring India together. He delighted in the modern side’s plurality, in captains from unexpected places, in the idea that talent could emerge from any corner. The 1952 victory, he felt, changed the internal grammar of Indian cricket. For the first time, it allowed a fragile thought to take hold: that India could beat those it had learned from.

In person, he carried that history lightly. There was no bitterness, only perspective, and a storyteller’s instinct for the telling detail: the impatience of a declaration that never came, the regret of a dismissal taken on trust, the small, private satisfaction of a catch held in front of a pavilion.

Gopinath’s passing leaves no eyewitness to that first triumph. But his voice, wry and lucid, endures in the stories he chose to tell, and in the way he told them: without fuss, without embellishment, and with an unwavering sense of proportion.

Published on Apr 09, 2026

#witness #belief #Remembering #C.D #Gopinath

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