ON CHRISTMAS DAY, with his team down by three late in the third quarter, New York Knicks wing Mikal Bridges decided he wasn't going to be denied.

Seeing teammate Deuce McBride launch a long jumper, Bridges ran to the block to get into position for a potential offensive board. After tapping McBride's miss back into the air to himself, Bridges caught the ball, squared himself to take a short corner jumper of his own, and absorbed contact from Spurs guard Keldon Johnson all in one fluid motion.

The shot went down, sending Madison Square Garden into a tizzy. And Bridges, who'd fallen to the ground due to Johnson's foul, remained on the floor to flex his right bicep and then his left one for the television cameras before tying the game with the ensuing free throw.

Bridges was flat-out dominant that day, notching 15 points in the fourth -- including two game-sealing jumpers -- to finish with 41 points. The performance, his strongest as a Knick by a mile, was the high point of a great month for Bridges, who had the NBA's best effective field-goal rate (65.7%) in December among players who took at least 15 shots per game.

The euphoria surrounding the showcase game helped balance what had been an up-and-down start from Bridges, the seventh-year veteran whom the Knicks traded five first-round draft picks to the Brooklyn Nets in order to acquire -- an outlay believed to be the most first-round picks dealt for a player who's never previously been an All-Star in NBA history.

Josh Hart, who won a national title with Bridges at Villanova before reuniting with him in New York, said his friend's Christmas showing was validation.

"When you see someone put the work in, you know what they're capable of, and the character that he has. We knew that," Hart said. "We knew it was a matter of time before he found 'it.' Now he's found it, and [the media] ain't saying nothing. Get your apology forms out. I'll be collecting them tomorrow. Give him his flowers."

With Bridges returning to play in Brooklyn on Tuesday for the first time since the deal, the jury is still out on how it's shaken out for the Knicks. And much of that stems from the fact that Bridges is still adjusting to a far different role from the one he carried with the Nets for a year and a half.

IT WAS HALFTIME of New York's season opener against the Boston Celtics, and alarms were already sounding among impatient fans on social media:

Is Mikal Bridges' jumpshot broken?

He had only launched five attempts in the first half against the Celtics, but all five were misses. "None of these shots are even close," TNT analyst Reggie Miller said on the telecast, sounding befuddled. (Bridges rebounded in the second half of the blowout loss to score 16 points on 7-for-8 shooting.)

Fan reactions, hasty as they might have been, weren't the result of a lackluster first half to begin the regular season. Bridges, a 37.5% career 3-point shooter who opted to overhaul his jump shot during the offseason, had shot just 11% (2-for-18) from deep in the preseason.

Bridges said he merely wanted to tweak his shooting form to make it more similar to the one he utilized throughout college, and said he wasn't worried. (His average wrist height on catch-and-shoot 3s is four inches higher than last season, the NBA's third-biggest increase among players with 100 attempts or more, per Second Spectrum tracking.)

The struggles from the perimeter lasted for the first 19 games, with Bridges -- who has hit the most corner 3s in the NBA over the past six years-connecting on 31.6% of his tries over that span. But a breakout showing against the New Orleans Pelicans, when he hit 7-of-12 from outside, helped him thaw out some.

For all the focus on his shooting, or the way his jumper looks compared to before, there have been even bigger changes to his game than that since he joined the Knicks. As the team's third or fourth option on offense, Bridges' ball handling responsibilities are down considerably from his Brooklyn days.

He's getting 67.9 touches per game, down 19% from the 82.4 he got last season as one of the Nets' lead playmakers. His usage rate is just 18.6%, his lowest since his last full season with the Phoenix Suns in 2021-22.

"You want everyone to make sacrifices for the betterment of the team, and he's done that," coach Tom Thibodeau said when asked to assess Bridges' season so far. "We know what he's done in this league. But when you have the players that we have, they all have to make sacrifices. He's played really good basketball for us. And as time goes on, it'll get better and better."

He's been fantastic from midrange, shooting 50% on 2-point jumpers, fifth in the NBA among players with at least 100 attempts. (He's been even more efficient at the basket, where he's shot almost 76% on layups and dunks; impressive since he shot a career-worst 57% last season.)

The tradeoff, though, is that Bridges appears to settle at times, opting to pull up or pass rather than challenging rim protectors. After averaging nearly four free-throw attempts per game last year, he now takes just one per night. During a 16-game stretch between Nov. 1 and Dec. 1 Bridges took just six free throws total.

But for all the adjustments there have been on offense playing alongside former college teammate Jalen Brunson and fellow offseason acquisition Karl-Anthony Towns, Bridges' biggest shift has taken place on the defensive side of the ball, where teams have forced him to work harder than ever before.

AS THE SECONDS ticked off the clock last month at the Garden, and Hawks star Trae Young knelt down on one knee to pretend to roll dice on the Knicks' massive half court logo, an exhausted Bridges began untucking his jersey and walking off the floor.

Bridges did a respectable job chasing around the three-time All-Star. Young finished with 22 points on 22 attempts in the Knicks' NBA Cup quarterfinals loss on Dec. 11 and was held scoreless on six shots in the fourth quarter.

And if Bridges, who leads the league in minutes this season and hasn't missed a game in his six-plus year career, wasn't tired enough:

That night, the Hawks set a whopping 50 screens on Bridges while he was defending the ball handler, the most any NBA player has faced this season. Overall, Bridges is being screened nearly 25 times per night, the highest rate since Second Spectrum started tracking it 12 years ago. Bridges did well defending Young in Monday's win, limiting him to 8-for-22 shooting while helping force him into nine turnovers against just six assists. (On one play, Bridges shadowed Young for an entire possession, forcing a shot-clock violation that brought the Garden to its feet.)

But in previous roles, he was defending big wings as opposed to floor generals for entire games, a defensive tweak that Thibodeau uses to free up the smaller Brunson, who isn't nearly as nimble or imposing defensively.

Asked about the shift in having to defend so many ballscreens from night to night, Bridges largely downplayed the task, and how taxing it might be on him. "With every team, it's obviously a slightly different role. I'm just trying to do the best I can, honestly," he told ESPN.

"Teams wanted to try attacking him, because it was a different spot for him; especially early on," a Western Conference scout said of Bridges repeatedly serving as a point-of-attack defender. "If you got past him initially, you could force all sorts of aggressive rotations because the team was still getting used to having Towns at the rim. And the collective trust didn't look like it was there."

It was a rough start for Bridges and the Knicks on D; particularly in terms of rim protection. But the team's fortunes skyrocketed as that end of the floor improved. Much of that stemmed from Bridges and Towns getting used to their roles. (Towns had plenty of experience as a rim protector, but had played alongside four-time Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert for the prior two seasons.)

As a duo, Bridges and Towns went from giving up 110 points per 100 possessions as a defensive pick and roll tandem through Nov. 28 to allowing just 101 points per 100 plays since.

The question that remains unanswered is how good Bridges and the Knicks can ultimately be. The club spent a ton of draft capital on Bridges, then signed on to pay OG Anunoby handsomely, with the goal of having one of the league's best wing tandems.

The Knicks, who have so far dominated a weak slate of competition in December and are 16-3 against sub-.500 teams -- have looked like a team that can soundly beat the teams they're supposed to. And Bridges was arguably the Knicks' best player during that stretch against mostly lesser competition. On the flip side, the Knicks have been a cut beneath the NBA's best units when playing better competition -- just 12-13 against teams .500 or better -- and often unable to get defensive stops in a handful of critical moments.

If Bridges can consistently lift them against the league's juggernauts, it would suggest that the historic haul of draft picks to acquire him were well spent.

ESPN Research's Matt Williams contributed to this story.

The Hall of Fame voting results from the Baseball Writers' Association of America will be announced Tuesday at 6 p.m. ET, with several players hoping to hear their names announced as part of the class of 2025.

This year's ballot is probably the weakest since the early 2000s -- with newcomer Ichiro Suzuki the only slam-dunk candidate -- especially compared to the middle of last decade, when an overstuffed ballot led to quality candidates getting knocked off after just a year or two. The nadir came in 2013, when no player was voted in from a ballot that featured 10 players who have since been elected to the Hall of Fame.

What has happened since? For starters, the PED logjam cleared -- and the post-steroid era downturn in offense means fewer hitters with big numbers. Starting pitchers who reach the ballot have now spent much of their careers in an era when they pitch fewer innings and thus win fewer games.

All this has led to players like Joe Mauer, Todd Helton and Scott Rolen getting elected in recent years -- players the general public might have viewed as borderline, but who were top candidates in their election years. That mindset is important to consider for the 2025 results: Voters will compare players not only to established Hall of Fame standards but also to the other players on the ballot. (Disclosure: I was a first-time voter this year.) That means while Ichiro might be the only surefire candidate, several other players have a chance to get elected.

Here's what to watch for on Hall of Fame reveal day, remembering the general guidelines:

A player needs 75% to get elected (not rounded up).

A player needs 5% to remain on the ballot.

Writers can vote for a maximum of 10 players.

A player can remain on the ballot for 10 years.

Will Ichiro become the second unanimous selection?

It's hard to imagine having a Hall of Fame ballot in your hands and not checking the box next to Ichiro's name, but Mariano Rivera in 2019 has been the only unanimous selection in history. One voter didn't vote -- or forgot to vote -- for Derek Jeter. Three didn't vote for Ken Griffey Jr. And don't even ask about some of the percentages for older players like Willie Mays and Henry Aaron.

Ichiro is polling at 100% of the public ballots revealed on the Hall of Fame tracker website. Ichiro's 60 career WAR doesn't scream inner-circle Hall of Famer or even a typical first-ballot selection, but he also didn't debut in the majors until his age-27 season -- and still registered over 3,000 career hits. He averaged 5.6 WAR his first three seasons with the Seattle Mariners, which doesn't even include his best season in 2004, when he set the record for hits in a season. He won 10 Gold Gloves, was the American League MVP winner as a rookie and was one of the most iconic players of all time.

Seven of Ichiro's peak seasons actually came in Japan. If you also add in those seven seasons, he's at 100 career WAR -- a figure only five position players who started their careers after 1969 have ever reached.

Does CC Sabathia make it on his first ballot?

It looks like it. Sabathia is polling at 93.3%, and while vote percentages revealed after the announcement almost always go down, Sabathia appears to have the cushion needed to get elected. Sabathia finished 251-161 with a 3.74 ERA, 62.3 career WAR, a Cy Young Award and a World Series title with the New York Yankees in 2009. During his five-year peak from 2007 to 2011, he ranked second to Roy Halladay in pitching WAR.

Many voters used to have a first-ballot rule, where they would only vote for a player the first time they appeared on the ballot if they were an inner-circle Hall of Famer, but that has mostly gone away. In recent years, we had Mauer in 2024 (55.2 WAR) and David Ortiz in 2022 (55.3 WAR) make it on the first ballot with less career WAR than Sabathia or Ichiro. It's also true that Sandy Koufax would be the only starting pitcher with less WAR than Sabathia to make it on his first try -- and Koufax, with his early retirement, was a special case. Sabathia is hardly an automatic selectio,n and while I voted for him, I'm a little surprised that it appears he'll get in on his first try.

Does Billy Wagner finally make it in?

The reliever with a 2.31 career ERA is on his 10th and final BBWAA ballot. It's been a slow climb. In his first two years in 2016 and 2017, back in those crowded ballot days, Wagner polled at just 10%. By last year, he was up to 73.8%, falling just five votes short. He's polling at 84.8% on the public ballots, up from the 78% he was polling before the results a year ago, but that's only a few extra votes, so it's going to be close. (I voted for Wagner, so that will help him.)

The non-Wagner supporters point to his 10.03 ERA in the postseason (in just 11 innings, however). There is also the reasonable argument that no team would have traded, say, Bobby Abreu or Torii Hunter or Ian Kinsler, to name three players on this year's ballot, for Wagner. So why should Wagner make the Hall of Fame and not players of that caliber? Again, fair argument, but voters have made the decision to compare Wagner to other relievers, not other players. While voters have been too lenient in selecting relievers, Wagner's dominance can't be ignored. He arguably ranks behind only Rivera among modern closers -- and Wagner had a 1.43 ERA his final season, so he had plenty left in the tank when he retired.

How close will Andruw Jones and Carlos Beltran get?

The two center fielders continue to see their totals go up and have a chance to get elected this year. Jones, now on his eighth ballot, received 61.6% of the vote last year, and is currently polling at 73.3%. Beltran finished at 57.1% on his second ballot a year ago and is polling at 80.6% this time around. Beltran first appeared on the ballot in the wake of the Houston Astros' sign-stealing scandal, and his vote totals certainly suffered as a result of his involvement. With 70.1 career WAR, 435 home runs, 1,587 RBIs and great numbers in the postseason (.307/.412/.609), his case is otherwise strong. He received my vote.

The case for Jones: He was one of the best defensive center fielders of all time (he won 10 Gold Gloves) and hit 434 home runs. That's a nice combination to sell. He also played for those Atlanta Braves teams when they were winning the division title every season, and that helps as well. Baseball-Reference credits him with 62.7 WAR -- just above that 60 career total that generally marks a strong candidate. Jones fizzled out early, however, with his last good season coming when he was 29. Additionally, in the context of his era, his offensive numbers, despite the power, aren't all that impressive: .254/.337/.486 and a 111 OPS+. Only four Hall of Fame outfielders have a lower career OPS+: Tommy McCarthy (an obscure 19th century player), Lloyd Waner (one of the worst players in the Hall) and speedsters Max Carey and Lou Brock.

I spent more time looking at Jones than any other player before deciding not to vote for him. In the end, I just don't completely trust the defensive numbers that prop up his WAR. Baseball-Reference credits Jones with plus-235 runs saved on defense (a combination of two different metrics, Total Zone through 2002 and Defensive Runs Saved after that). That's the most of any outfielder -- and the second most of any player, behind only Brooks Robinson.

Willie Mays, as a comparison, is credited with 185 fielding runs (second highest among center fielders) -- but Mays also played many more innings. On a per-inning basis, Jones comes out almost twice as good as Mays. Twice as good as Willie Mays?! Sounds skeptical. When digging into the numbers, an interesting thing is that for most of Jones' career as a center fielder, Braves' left fielders -- first Ryan Klesko and then Chipper Jones for a couple years -- had unusually low range factors. It seems likely Jones was taking all the either/or plays away from the left fielders, pushing up his putout totals. Since the Total Zone metric is an estimate, that gives him some eye-popping fielding numbers early in his career.

Jones was a truly generational center fielder, no doubt. But take a few wins off his WAR total and that puts him into the mid-50s, enough to make him fall short of the Hall of Fame to me -- not to mention that there are several more worthy center fielders deserving of Hall of Fame status in my book, such as Beltran, Kenny Lofton, Jim Edmonds and perhaps Bernie Williams (the latter three long gone off the ballot).

How will Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins fare?

The two longtime Philadelphia Phillies teammates have very different cases. Utley had an outstanding peak from 2005 to 2010 when he was one of the best players in the game, second only to Albert Pujols in WAR. Rollins won an MVP Award, was more durable and played longer -- but he finished with a career OPS+ of just 95, meaning he was a below-average hitter overall. Utley easily trumps Rollins in WAR, 64.5 to 47.6, and that helps explains why he's polling much better so far, 53.9% to 18.8%. I voted for Utley, with his peak level of performance carrying the day despite a relatively short career and fewer than 2,000 hits.

Will Andy Pettitte start getting some support? How about Mark Buehrle?

With Sabathia on the ballot and likely getting in, it's hard to ignore this comparison:

Sabathia: 251-161, 61.8 pitching WAR, 3577 IP, 3.74 ERA, 116 ERA+
Pettitte: 256-153, 60.7 WAR, 3316 IP, 3.85 ERA, 117 ERA+
Buehrle: 214-160, 60.0 WAR, 3283 IP, 3.81 ERA, 117 ERA+

I don't see much difference here between the three. Yes, Sabathia had that five-year stretch where he was one of the top starters in baseball, but his five-year peak (30.4 WAR) isn't all that higher than Pettitte's (28.2) or Buehrle's (27.2). That certainly helps Sabathia's case and is part of why he'll get in, but I voted for both Pettitte and Buehrle as well. I just didn't see how I could vote for Sabathia and not the other two.

Pettitte was on my TV screen every October for almost two decades, a key member of five World Series championship teams; that put him over the top for me, even if he was more of a "compiler" in the Don Sutton/Jim Kaat mode of starting pitcher. In Buehrle's case, I'm of the belief that each generation needs equal representation, and he was one of the best starting pitchers of his generation. He won fewer games than Sabathia, but that was mostly because he didn't hang around and extend his career -- he won 15 games his final season while Sabathia was 60-59 with a 4.33 ERA over his final seven seasons.

Who stays on the ballot?

Felix Hernandez was a "no" for me, but I'm glad he has already received enough votes to stay on. He won 169 games on terrible Mariners teams that never scored any runs, but while he had an outstanding peak, he was done at 30:

Hernandez through age 30: 154-109, 3.16 ERA, 126 ERA+, 51.2 WAR
Sabathia through age 30: 176-96, 3.51 ERA, 125 ERA+, 49.8 WAR

Sabathia wasn't hugely valuable after that, but he managed to hang around and win another 75 games. King Felix won just 15 more games. He'll at least get the chance to have his Hall of Fame case discussed -- unlike Johan Santana, who got bumped off the ballot. As pitchers continue to win fewer and fewer games, maybe the standards will change to focus more on peak and less on longevity (which would certainly help Hernandez's case).

Dustin Pedroia (on his first ballot) and David Wright (on his second) should also get enough votes to remain on, which will keep their careers in the public eye. Pedroia finished with 51.9 WAR and Wright with 49.2. Both likely had Hall of Fame careers shortened by injuries: Pedroia with the knee injury suffered on a Manny Machado hard slide; Wright with a back injury. Pedroia played just nine games after 2017; Wright just 77 after 2014.

Those are the two highest WAR totals among position players who suffered a career-ending injury (as opposed to a debilitating injury or series of injuries) and aren't in the Hall of Fame. The best comparison might be Kirby Puckett, who suddenly lost his vision due to glaucoma and never played again. He finished with 51.1 WAR and made the Hall of Fame on the first ballot. Pedroia and Wright are in a unique class of almost.

Wondering about Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez? Yes, they're still on the ballot.

A-Rod is polling around 40% on his fourth ballot and Ramirez at 36% on his ninth. It appears they're destined to be in the same club as Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Mark McGwire.

Ichiro Suzuki will become a Hall of Famer -- and possibly the second unanimous selection ever -- when the Baseball Writers' Association reveals its ballots Tuesday night. Ichiro's stat line over more than two decades of excellence, first in Japan and then in MLB, makes his induction a slam dunk, but the legend of Ichiro is about much more than his 3,089 major league hits and .311 career average during 19 seasons with the Seattle Mariners, New York Yankees and Miami Marlins.

As the iconic outfielder gets his Cooperstown call, we asked former teammates, opponents and other MLB greats to describe what it was like playing with, pitching to and simply witnessing Ichiro during his legendary career.

First impressions of Ichiro

When Ichiro came to the majors, there was plenty of skepticism about how a Japanese hitter would fare in MLB since nobody had made the jump. Starting with his Mariners teammates, he found ways to turn heads from the beginning.

John OIerud, teammate with Mariners, 2001 to 2003: "I heard Bobby [Valentine] talking about this one guy that was really good and that he could play here in the big leagues. Ichiro was the first Japanese position player to come so nobody knew if they could have success here at Major League Baseball. And so I remember the first time I met him in the clubhouse with Seattle, he knew who I was and I didn't immediately know who he was. And talking to Tom Robson, who's the hitting coach, he said Ichiro is bigger than Elvis in Japan, just to give me a frame of reference. And still as big as he was in Japan, there was still a question of whether position players could compete over here."

Mike Cameron, teammate with Mariners, 2001 to 2004: "My favorite story was his first year in spring training. Our manager was Lou Piniella. Ichiro was hitting foul balls over the third-base dugout and over the third baseman and he would get a lot of his base hits between first and second, short and third and over the shortstop's head. And one day Lou got pissed off. He was standing on the top step and Ichiro was coming back to the dugout. I think he had grounded out or something like that. And Lou always rattled out anything he wanted to say, and was talking so loud -- I'm sure Ichiro heard it -- he's asking our bench coach, 'Can this guy f---ing pull the ball one time?' And sure enough, the next at-bat, he got up there, he hit a homer to right.

"He came around the bases with no animation or anything, same dry face that he always has with his shades on, then he takes his helmet off, takes his gloves off, puts his bat in his bat rack, his personal bat rack that was on the bench, and he sat down and he said, 'How was that?'

"And everybody just died laughing."

Brett Boone, teammate with Mariners, 2001 to 2005: "We had no idea how to take him at first. I now had a teammate with his first name on his back. No one had ever seen that before. He had his own program and BP and things and everybody knew his credentials in Japan, but had no idea how it was going to translate. And he kind of went through spring training like a pro. Guys were asking him to do this and do that. And he kind of looked at you like, 'No, I know what I'm doing.' And he had an OK spring, still everybody's waiting to see what he was going to do and came out of the chute, bang. And that was that first season -- it was pretty awesome. He gave me rice balls every day. He was great and really fit into that dynamic. I mean, it was a strange year for all of us because the Japanese press was here and it was almost like having a postseason press conference every day."

Chef Jeremy Bryant began a 20-plus-year stint with the Mariners in 1999, when what's now called T-Mobile Park opened. He was told a year in advance that Ichiro would be joining the team, a staff member referred to him as "The Michael Jordan of Japan," and so Bryant spent a summer learning Japanese cooking. When Ichiro arrived, Bryant was ready -- his fridge stocked with gourmet Japanese food, his mind prepped for how to make it to the superstar's liking. Then, Ichiro walked into the room with a question Bryant was not expecting.

"Do you have cheeseburger?"

Bryant: "I didn't have a cheeseburger. I didn't even think he would want that. I was suggesting all these things and I'm like, 'How 'bout wings?' He goes, 'Oh yeah, wings! Very good.' I had started marinating them Mexican style. I put some lime juice, garlic, and before I went too far, I put a bunch of teriyaki sauce on them, and so I joked with him like, 'These are my signature Mexi-yaki wings.' He went out, had his Opening Day, everything went good. And the next day he was like 'Wings, again, please.' I left the stadium to buy some more wings, came back, made them again, and then Day 3, again. I swear to God, man -- 10 years, he had those wings. Every game that we played at night, Ichiro had those wings. ... Same time -- 5:05 every day because he was the first one out of batting practice. He ate them in the same exact chair. He never sat in a different place in our little dining lounge. And he used the same plate. I even cooked them in the same pan. ... And then on getaway days, whenever the team was flying out, he didn't want wings on those days. He wanted two corn dogs. Just two, and they had to be the basic, regular -- I would get them at Costco, the frozen ones. I had all this gourmet stuff ready for this guy, and he loved two corn dogs on getaway days."

Even as he quickly turned his teammates -- and team staffers -- into believers, Ichiro had to prove himself to the rest of the league. Of course, batting .350 on his way to American League MVP and Rookie of the Year honors in 2001 helped matters immensely.

Tim Salmon, opponent with Angels, 2001 to 2006: "I remember seeing him for the first time and how slight of build he was. He wasn't a big guy. My thought was, 'OK, this will be interesting to see how this plays out.' He's a right fielder. Most right fielders are big guys, power guys.

"He was such a slight build but had all this amazing talent, and he could be whatever he wanted to be. And his arm, I mean, he was just phenomenal. He had a cannon in the outfield and just the gracefulness that he went about things, whether he was charging the ball and his footwork and being able to get off that perfect throw every time or running the bases. He just glided and he just did everything with a gracefulness. That was really rare to see."

Joe Maddon, longtime opposing manager with Rays and Cubs (and bench coach for Angels in 2001): "I really believe that he could look at the field and decide where he wanted to hit the ball and then he would hit it in a manner that would fall in front of outfielders. Although he had pop in his bat, he knew how to just hit it over infielders -- almost like his bat was a fungo -- and as if the pitcher was just tossing it up in the air and he would hit it somewhere, it was just really maddening to defend it."

Mike Sweeney played with and against Ichiro for many years in the American League. They also shared an All-Star locker room several times. Sweeney remembers the first time he met Ichiro -- while Sweeney was playing first base for the Royals in 2001.

Sweeney: "He leads off the game with a line drive to left-center field for a base hit and he gets over to first base and all I could think about was when I was in Japan playing against the Japanese all-stars, anytime that an American would get a base hit up on the jumbotron would be this big huge graphic, almost kind of like a 1950s/1960s graphic from Batman and Robin. Like 'Pow!' or 'Boom!' And it would say, 'Nice batting.' And so over the loudspeaker, you'd hear the PA announcer say, 'Nice batting.' And you'd see these big graphics up on the jumbotron.

"So being a kid from Southern California that doesn't speak any Japanese, I don't know what to say to Ichiro. I don't even know if he knows English. He had just gotten here in spring training. So I look over at him and I pat him on the back and say, 'Ichiro, nice batting.' And I don't know what kind of response I'm going to get. And he looks at me -- never met him before -- and he goes, 'Mike Sweeney, nice ass.' I just started dying laughing. I'm like, oh my gosh, his English was perfect. No accent. And I'm going, oh my gosh, this guy, he's going to be great."

With a major league career spanning nearly two decades, Ichiro ended it playing with the same players who were watching him in awe from afar when he broke in with the Mariners.

Chris Rusin, Rockies pitcher who gave up Ichiro's 3,000th hit: "I watched him growing up. I went to a couple of Tigers games and they just happened to be playing Seattle. Never thought I'd be playing against him or pitching against him, let alone giving up the 3,000th hit."

Christian Yelich, teammate with Marlins, 2015 to 2017: "I grew up watching Ichiro as a kid. In middle school, high school and stuff like that. So when we first signed him, I was like, 'Oh s---, I'm going to be playing with Ichiro. That's crazy.' And you don't have very many moments like that. At least, I didn't in the big leagues where you're playing catch with a guy in the outfield and you're kind of like, 'Oh s---, I'm playing catch with Ichiro right now.' That's a weird feeling. And he was so normal too, though. He was a great teammate and a good friend and it was an awesome experience playing with him and getting to watch him achieve a bunch of milestones because it was later in his career, so it felt like every game he was passing or tying somebody."

A front-row seat to the Ichiro show

Randy Winn played 115 games batting one spot behind Ichiro in the 2004 season, when he set an MLB single-season record with 262 hits. Winn referred to his spot in the order as a "pleasure" because he benefited from how much energy Ichiro absorbed from opposing pitchers, either during long at-bats or consistently applying pressure on the bases.

Winn: "He had three 50-hit months. I'm fortunate enough to have one in my career, and it felt like I fell out of bed every day with two hits in my pocket. It was amazing. I'm serious. You went to the park every day like, 'Oh, I already got two hits? Wow, this game is easy.' He did it three times in one year! I can't even fathom. That to me is so mind-blowing, I can't even put it into words."

When Winn arrived in Seattle in 2003, he worried about a potential language barrier while sharing the outfield with Ichiro. Winn quickly learned it was a nonissue -- Ichiro spoke far more fluent English than he realized. Winn was intent on giving Ichiro his space, but he often sought opportunities to pick the brains of great players. One spring, he saw an opening with Ichiro. The two stayed back while most of the other veterans traveled for a Cactus League game, and Winn approached Ichiro in the weight room to ask him about his mindset leading off games.

"Randy," Ichiro replied, "I want five."

"What?" Winn responded.

"Five," Ichiro said in perfect English. "Every day, I want five hits."

"That's the expectation," Winn said. "'I put myself in a position where I expect to get five hits. I expect to execute and get five hits.' And then I was like, 'Heh, OK, now I understand why you get 262 hits.'"

Unforgettable moments

Long after the initial frenzy of his arrival in 2001, Ichiro captivated the sport again as a 42-year-old in pursuit of his 3,000th hit in the majors (in addition to the 1,278 he collected in Japan). He reached the milestone while playing for the Marlins in 2016 -- hitting a stand-up triple at Coors Field in Colorado.

Rusin: "The atmosphere, it was crazy. You could kind of feel the crowd was expecting something because for a Miami/Colorado game to have quite a few fans there, and it got pretty loud when he gets up to the box. You kind of could feel it a little bit.

"I think I went 2-and-0 on him and then I left a cutter over the middle of the plate. He kind of pulled off of it, hit off the end of the bat, and it traveled further than I thought it was going to go, and the outfielder kept going and going and going. I was like, 'Please don't go out. Just not a home run. I'll take anything but a home run.' And it went off the wall and he ended up getting a triple, and I think I ended up getting out of the inning. But yeah, anytime you faced a hitter like that in a big situation where he has something on the line or whatever, you don't want to be a part of it, but as long as it's not too bad, it's OK. It's not too bad to be a part of it.

"Then after the game, I'm sitting at my locker and I got all the media around me wanting to talk about giving up that hit and I explained everything and then at the end I said, 'The only thing that I asked for is you go back and ask him for an autographed bat. By the time he leaves, just send it over.' And by the time I left the stadium, he had already sent the bat over and signed it. Great guy."

Yelich: "After he got it, we were in the outfield together playing catch the next half inning, warming up for the bottom of whatever against the Rockies at Coors Field. And I remember playing catch with him and me thinking, 'Don't you dare throw this ball over Ichiro's head and have him go running to the wall to go get this ball or something.' With all these cameras and people watching him right now, all over the world, you just don't want to airmail it in the outfield and send him running. That's what I remember thinking."

It wasn't just milestones but Ichiro's ability to make any moment extraordinary. There's perhaps no better example than his unreal April 2001 throw from right field to get A's outfielder Terrence Long at third base.

Long: "When he threw me out at third, early in the year we were in Seattle, same scenario, ball hit to right field, but it was a little bit more towards the gap, and I went first to third, no problem. So this time I'm thinking, 'OK, I went first to third one time before,' but this one was right at him. And I watched the replay. I was already three or four steps across second before he got it. So I'm thinking, there's no way he's throwing me out, and I'm running, and then you can look at the third baseman's eyes and you can see him looking at this ball. And I'm saying to myself, I'm like, 'OK, this ball is about to pass me.' So I was like, two things are going to happen. Either way it goes, you're going to be on ESPN forever. So the smart thing to do is just slide, just to make it look close. The worst thing I could have done was just go in, stand it up, and it would've been even more embarrassing. So I was like, 'I'm just going to slide.' But as soon as I got ready to slide, you see this ball come right past me. I was like, 'Oh my God, there's no way he just made that throw.'"

Even routine plays became the stuff of legend when Ichiro stepped onto the field.

Salmon: "We were playing in Seattle one year, and the grass always has a dew on it, a dampness to it. Anyway, he hit a line drive at me. This is along the lines of how hard he hit the ball. They just rocketed off his bat. And it was just going to be a nice easy one-hopper. And I came up to get it, and it hit the ground and it skipped so hard. I didn't get my glove down in time, and it hit me in the nuts. And literally, I did everything I could to keep from rolling over or whatever. I mean, I picked up the ball and I threw it in and I was like, 'Oh my God.' And I was walking around the outfield and I swear it was burning so bad down there. I figured I must be bleeding. And I kept trying to glance down looking at it like, 'Am I bleeding?'

"I'm 200 feet away. That ball, it hit the ground and it just had so much on it. It looked like a normal line drive, one-hop routine, and it skipped on me -- but he hits the ball so hard that you really got to be on your toes. And I remember hearing infielders talk about that. He'd hit a hard one- or two-hopper that would just get through, past the infielder, because the ball came off that different."

Joe Girardi, manager with Yankees, 2012 to 2014: "My favorite Ichiro story is actually when he played with the Mariners against us. I remember him taking Mariano Rivera deep [a walk-off] in a game, throwing the cutter inside and it getting hit. He had the ability to pull his hands inside and hit the ball out of the ballpark. And when you would watch him take BP, he hit ball after ball after ball out. But he knew his game was getting on base and stealing bases. So he never tried to be something that he wasn't. The ground that he covered was incredible and people just didn't run on him, or he probably would've had a lot more assists. And it's a guy that had over 500 stolen bases. So I don't know if he could really ask a player to do much more."

Legendary skills and work ethic

None of his achievements would have been possible without a combination of baseball skills and work ethic that set Ichiro apart from his contemporaries.

Cameron: "He was a locker mate of mine and he was my right fielder for the three years that we played together. What jumps out is just his consistency. His consistency and his work ethic. He calls it a word in Japanese: it's called Kaizen, and in Japanese that means never-ending [or continuous improvement]. So he was never satisfied. And I don't think he really worked off the numbers other than the fact that he loved the idea of getting base hits. The guy was driven about getting base hits and obviously that's evident in that he came over here and played all those years and got 3,000-something hits and has the all-time hit record in a season. So he was driven by that, although he had the capability of hitting the homer, which I don't think everyone really knew that.

"The guy used to go in even on off-days and work out. It was every day for him. That's all he knew. I always used to ask him, 'What drives you to do this kind of stuff?' He's like, first of all, his name means 'the one.' So he's destined to be this one person. And he was also very particular about everything that he did, from his bats to having his own special bat case with a humidifier there. He was a competitor."

Mark Teixeira, teammate with Yankees, 2012 to 2014: "I got to see Ichiro at his best. There were only a handful of players in baseball that I thought were more impactful to the game. I just thought he was one of the top five players in all of baseball when I played against him.

"What impressed me the most is that he worked harder, took his job more seriously than anybody I've ever played with. And this is a guy who was a Hall of Famer, a legend in Japan. He could have just kind of ridden off into the sunset. He wasn't even playing every day, but yet, he took his craft more seriously than anybody."

Girardi: "I think his durability was absolutely incredible. Coming over here at 27 years old and playing really every day until he was 41. It was amazing. I'm looking at his stats when he was 41 years old. He appeared in 153 games and he worked really hard. There's really three facets of the game and he was really good at all of them. Offensively, just his bat-to-ball skills were absolutely incredible and [he] had the ability to hit a home run -- in a sense -- when the team needed it."

Beyond all of his other gifts, it was that unparalleled ability to put the bat on the ball that stands out most to those who watched Ichiro -- or attempted to get him out.

Mark Buehrle, opponent with White Sox, 2001 to 2015 (Ichiro hit .409 in 66 career at-bats against him): "He was so good with making contact and just putting the ball where he wanted to. I remember a game -- I think he had all the hits during that game -- he got on first base after his third hit, and I had run over to cover. It was like a base hit through the right side of the infield. And I went over to cover and he was standing on first base and I just threw my arms up. 'Are you sh--ing me?' And he just did his whole, 'My bad,' shrugging his shoulders. But he was just so good at putting the ball where he wanted to. I swear he would put it where guys were not at.

"I think the only time that I ever moved any position guys on the infield was against him. There was a game, he got two hits between third and shortstop. And I remember the third at-bat. I looked over at [third baseman Joe] Crede and I'm like, 'Scoot over, he hits the ball right there every time, scoot over.' So I pointed [him to] move over towards the shortstop and what's Ichiro do? He hits it right down the freaking line, right where Crede would've been at. And I'm like, 'Yep, I'm never moving anybody ever again.'"

Those who have witnessed his batting practice over the years swear there is another element to Ichiro's game that defies his modest 119 career home runs.

Long: "He just hits, hits, hits -- but what impressed me the most about that guy was batting practice. His first couple of rounds, he is just working on his line drives and then his last round of BP, he hits balls further than anybody I've ever seen. And still to this day, people don't believe it. I've watched him take BP a lot. He hits balls farther than any of the big guys you can name in that era in batting practice."

Olerud: "You watch him take batting practice and I would put him against any home run hitter in Major League Baseball because he just hit one home run ball after the other and way, way out. It was impressive how far he could hit the ball home run-wise and then get in the game and he'd go to slapping the ball the other way and running hard out of the box. It was just so different. And so for me, it was always, 'Hey, you practice like you play in the game.' And I never really asked Ichiro what his thinking was in batting practice, but he kind of blew that theory out of the water."

Bob Melvin's first managing job was in 2003 with the Mariners. Ichiro was a megastar in the United States by that point, and yet Melvin called him the easiest player he ever coached. He was so committed, so regimented, that Melvin often joked that his only job was to inform Ichiro what time the game started. But when Melvin first came on board, he was given a different task -- to schedule days off for Ichiro as often as he could. Ichiro never wanted to take them, but he often needed them. So Melvin identified an early date on the calendar that, in his mind, made sense -- Saturday, May 3, in the middle of a weekend series against the White Sox.

Melvin informed Ichiro earlier that week he would not be in the starting lineup for that game and reminded him the day prior. He told him not to take batting practice and to make it a point to arrive at the ballpark later than he normally would. If he needed him, Melvin said, it wouldn't be until the eighth or ninth inning anyway. Then Melvin walked into the dugout half an hour before the first pitch and saw Ichiro sitting on the bench in full uniform -- batting gloves on, bat to his side, one of his knees twitching uncontrollably.

"I'm ready," Ichiro declared.

Melvin: "Just then, this kid walked by with an Ichiro jersey on. And he looked at me and he just kind of nodded his head to the kid. And it just dawned on me that people come to watch him play, and he's very aware of it. And he's an entertainer, as well. And he wants to put on a show. And here we are in Chicago, the only time that year playing the White Sox, he's not in there, and it was almost his way of telling me, 'That's one of the reasons I don't want days off.' I just looked at him and I said, 'I get it.'"

One-of-a-kind personality

Two things were clear about Ichiro's off-field persona: He was really into fashion, and his comedic timing was impeccable.

Those two traits collided one afternoon in the mid-2000s. Kangaroo court was being held, and one of the Mariners' players proposed fining Ichiro $500 for wearing another one of his eccentric, fashion-forward, Italian-inspired outfits that seemed more appropriate for a European runway than a major league clubhouse.

Raul Ibanez, teammate with Mariners, 2004 to 2008, and Yankees, 2012: "So Ichiro stands up very calmly and starts speaking very eloquent Japanese in a calm, very distinguished cadence. And then the translator goes, 'Ichiro-san wants to know how much we're going to fine you for making him watch all the s--- that you guys wear every day.' It was sometime in September, I think everyone on the 40-man roster was there, and the whole room erupted."

When Ichiro returned to Seattle as a 44-year-old in 2018, it was Mariners president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto who orchestrated the deal with longtime agent John Boggs in early March, in the middle of spring training. But Dipoto had never met Ichiro.

A news conference was scheduled at the Mariners' facility in Peoria, Arizona. Dipoto and Boggs agreed that the front office people could wear polos and khakis and Ichiro would probably conduct his news conference in his baseball uniform. So, a casual affair. Then that morning, a row of black SUVs pulled into the parking lot. Ichiro hopped out of one of them.

Dipoto: "I'd be conservative in saying I think he's wearing about a $20,000 suit, his hair perfectly groomed and jet black, and he's got on what I would qualify as the nicest pair of sunglasses I've ever seen. He walks in and spreads his arms out and says, 'Jerry!' I looked at him, and my first instinct, I like give him a little backhand slap in the chest. I said, 'I thought we were going casual.' And he looked at me and laughed. He said, 'This is casual for me, my friend!'"

Ichiro's ability to surprise with his style and wit was evident from the beginning -- whether it was with an umpire ...

Boone: "One of my favorite moments was: He's running out for Opening Day and the second-base umpire [Kerwin Danley] was kind of following him out to right field and everybody thought [Ichiro] didn't speak English. And I believe the line he dropped on him because Danley came right over to me and he said, 'I can't believe what Ichiro just said to me.' I said, 'What?' He said he was running by Ichiro and he kind of gave him the, 'Hey, good luck to you' this and that kind of thing. And Ichiro kind of looked at him, he said, 'What's happening, home slice?' and kept running to right field. That stuck with me. That was funny. That's how he was."

... or when he charmed the game's greatest players at his first All-Star Game in 2001.

Sweeney: "[AL manager] Joe Torre gives this beautiful speech, you know, 'You guys are the best in the world in this locker room. Take a look around. You're in an elite class. There's only 70 people in the world that are going to play in this game tonight, and you're one of them.' And you look around, you see Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera, and you're looking around the room going, 'Oh my gosh, this is great.' So at the very end, we're all kind of in this feeling of you're in a cathedral, but yet you're in a baseball locker room at the same time, and you're going, where do we go from here? And Joe Torre says, 'Anybody have anything to add?' And we're kind of like, how can you top Joe Torre? And we look around and Ichiro stands up, raises his hand -- where's he going with this? And he goes, 'Let's go kick their motherf---ing ass.' And the place just erupted, the whole locker room.

"It was something I'll never forget. So then every year in the All-Star games to follow, it just was like, OK, whoever the manager is, you can say whatever you want, but No. 51 always gets the last word. And it was just an unspoken thing -- you look over and you see Jeter, the greatest players of our time. And when the manager would get done, it was like, OK, that was good, but wait until you hear what Ichiro has to say. He gets the last word."

It wasn't always easy

Sweeney's first year playing with Ichiro was in 2009, just after Ichiro had led Japan to a World Baseball Classic title. It came with a lot of stress -- amid reports of issues between Ichiro and some of his Seattle teammates and a bleeding ulcer.

Sweeney: "I had heard about Ichiro being alienated by his teammates. Some of them were jealous of him, some of them weren't incorporating him into the team as they should. And I was in shock. I'm like, this guy's the greatest hitter of all time. How can you not embrace this incredible player? So we go into spring training, Ichiro is in the corner locker right next to Griffey Jr. Then I'm next to Junior and I'm sitting around the locker room looking and saying, man, we have four future Hall of Famers in this locker room. It's Ichiro, Griffey Jr., Adrian Beltre and Felix Hernandez. And I'm going, man, how can we not win here? We have to find a way to unify this locker room.

"So during spring training, we did little things to bring our team together. We'd meet up for dinners and do fun things in the locker room together. And about halfway through spring training, the WBC started. So Ichiro was obviously on Team Japan and they win and Ichiro shows back up with five days to go before Opening Day in Minnesota. And he goes to our team doctor and says, 'Look, I don't feel good at all.' So they find out he has a bleeding ulcer and he's deathly ill. They're treating him in the hospital. But Ichiro was bound and determined to be ready for Opening Day. But the stress of putting his country on his back, he literally put the country of Japan on his back by representing them in the WBC. He willed the Japanese team to win the WBC championship in 2009, and then he tries to get back to a team that just six months before had turned their back on him and kind of ostracized him and put him on an island. They didn't embrace him.

"And he has all this internal stress going on, which leads to a bleeding ulcer. And Ichiro met with the doc and said, 'I'm playing for Opening Day.' And the doctor actually called the owner and said, 'Ichiro's adamant that he wants to play for Opening Day, which is in like four days, and I'm in no position as a team physician to allow that to happen.' Ichiro asked him what's the worst thing that could happen. And the doc says, 'If this bleeding ulcer, which is actively bleeding, if it ruptures, you could die.' And Ichiro looked him square in the eyes and said, 'I'll take my chances.' And the owner of the team had to step in.

"So as we went into Minnesota, Ken Griffey Jr, myself, Adrian Beltre, Felix Hernandez, we got the team together and we said, 'Hey, look, in the past, this is a teammate that you all have pushed to the side, but here's what he was willing to do for you. He's willing to die for you to play in tonight's game.' So it was very emotional. This is a time to honor him. This is a time to open up our arms to him and really bring him into the team. So that night in Minnesota, our clubhouse manager, Teddy Walsh, we asked for Ichiro's jersey, and we hung it in the dugout, in the Metrodome. And Ichiro told me that when he watched the game that night from a hospital bed back in Seattle, he knew that there was something different. He had teammates for the first time since his rookie year, he felt that loved him.

"So the team ended up just falling just short of the playoffs. On the last day of the season, we carry Griffey off on our shoulders thinking he was going to retire and sail off into the sunset. Carlos Silva [a Mariners pitcher, who reportedly had his issues with Ichiro] was so moved by his love for Ichiro, he thinks what the hell, I'm going to put Ichiro on [my] shoulders and carry him off.

"There's this beautiful image of us carrying Griffey Jr. off the field as a hero's exodus, and then Carlos Silva throwing Ichiro up on his shoulders, carrying him off just because he loves his teammate. And Ichiro told me that that was the most fun he had in the major leagues since his rookie year. He said the way his teammates loved him, the way his teammates celebrated him brought him great joy again in baseball for the first time since his rookie year."

Watch Alexander Zverev argue with the umpire after he halts play mid-rally because of a feather on court during the German's Australian Open quarter-final victory over Tommy Paul.

READ MORE: Zverev earns hard-fought win over Paul to reach semis

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A 10th career Grand Slam semi-final for Sabalenka was starting to look unlikely at the start of the third set.

Sabalenka's serve wavered and Pavlyuchenkova broke five times in a row to take the second set and go up a break in the third.

But despite having momentum on her side, the Russian 27th seed could not make the most of her early lead, and Sabalenka levelled immediately.

The three-time major winner settled herself with a hold to go 3-2 up, claimed a crucial break for a 5-3 lead before serving out a 19th successive victory at Melbourne Park.

Sabalenka, who has reached the semi-finals in eight of her past nine Grand Slam appearances, joked afterwards that she would make her team get tiger tattoos if she won the Melbourne title.

The 26-year-old said the tattoo of a tiger on her forearm is a "reminder of never giving up, staying aggressive, staying hungry and pushing myself no matter what is going on in life."

She added: "If I win the Australian Open, which hopefully I do fingers crossed, we are going to celebrate.

"Then I'm going to call a tattoo specialist so they wake up with a tiger tattoo."

Forwards: Fin Baxter (Harlequins), Ollie Chessum (Leicester), Arthur Clark (Gloucester), Luke Cowan-Dickie (Sale), Chandler Cunningham-South (Harlequins), Ben Curry (Sale), Tom Curry (Sale), Theo Dan (Saracens), Ben Earl (Saracens), Ellis Genge (Bristol), Joe Heyes (Leicester), Ted Hill (Bath), Maro Itoje (Saracens), Curtis Langdon (Northampton), George Martin (Leicester), Asher Opoku-Fordjour (Sale), Henry Pollock (Northampton), Bevan Rodd (Sale), Will Stuart (Bath), Tom Willis (Saracens).

Backs: Oscar Beard (Harlequins), Elliot Daly (Saracens), Fraser Dingwall (Northampton), George Ford (Sale), Tommy Freeman (Northampton), Ollie Lawrence (Bath), Cadan Murley (Harlequins), Raffi Quirke (Sale), Harry Randall (Bristol), Tom Roebuck (Sale), Henry Slade (Exeter), Ollie Sleightholme (Northampton), Fin Smith (Northampton), Marcus Smith (Harlequins), Ben Spencer (Bath), Freddie Steward (Leicester),

Continuing rehabilitation in Girona: Alex Mitchell (Northampton)

If Alex Ovechkin was going to shatter Wayne Gretzky's NHL career goals record as a member of the Washington Capitals, he had some conditions that needed to be met.

Before re-signing, Ovechkin told Capitals owner Ted Leonsis that he didn't want to be "a third-line guy playing 8 to 10 minutes a game." He didn't want to be someone the team "trotted out on the power play" just to pad his goal totals, according to Leonsis.

Most of all, he didn't want to play for a rebuilding team. Before signing a five-year contract extension in 2021, he asked Leonsis to promise him that the owner would keep the team competitive, that the Capitals would be the annual playoff contender they had been for most of Ovechkin's career. In turn, he promised Leonsis that he'd stay in shape and that his eyes wouldn't be fixated on breaking Gretzky's record of 894 goals, but on bringing another Stanley Cup to Washington.

Leonsis promised him that the Capitals would not enter a rebuild if Ovechkin was still on the roster. "To me, a rebuild is when you look the players, the coaches, the fans in the eye and say we're gonna be really, really bad. And if we were really, really bad, I don't think Alex would break the record," Leonsis told ESPN in 2022.

This season is the fourth year of Ovechkin's contract extension.

It appears everyone has kept their promises.

The Capitals' captain has smashed the scoring expectations for a 39-year-old player. He had the best goal-scoring start of his career, collecting 17 tallies in 20 games before a broken leg interrupted his season. With 21 goals in 30 games, he's just 21 goals from becoming the NHL's all-time goal-scoring leader.

Rather than ice a shambolic roster playing out Ovechkin's record chase, Washington was the NHL's best team after 46 games, compiling a .728 points percentage. The Capitals were a surprise playoff entrant under first-year coach Spencer Carbery last season. An aggressive offseason augmentation of that roster propelled them to the top of the league.

"There has to be an expectation that we're going to win," forward Tom Wilson said. "That's a culture that's been built. The new guys came in this year and complemented that."

This isn't how it usually works for teams that contend for a dozen seasons.

Look at the Chicago Blackhawks, who followed their dynastic run by tearing down the roster to the foundations in order to draft Connor Bedard and subsequently linger in the league's basement. Look at the Pittsburgh Penguins -- home to Ovechkin's greatest rival Sidney Crosby -- who have unsuccessfully surrounded a veteran core with whatever talent they can scrounge. Their goal was a fourth Stanley Cup in the Crosby era. The result has been prolonging the inevitable.

Since Ovechkin entered the NHL in 2005-06, the Capitals have the third-best points percentage as a team (.608) behind the Vegas Golden Knights and Boston Bruins. The Capitals won the Stanley Cup in 2018. If they had skated into hockey purgatory, waiting for Ovechkin to play out the string before transitioning to the next thing, it would have been understandable.

But that's not what he wanted. That's not what the Capitals wanted.

Instead, the present is potent and the future is bright in Washington. Here's how they pulled it off.

OVER THE PAST 42 years, the Capitals have had four general managers. When David Poile left to join the expansion Nashville Predators in 1997, George McPhee was imported from Vancouver to become the next general manager. Since then, the line of succession has been internal: Brian MacLellan had been McPhee's assistant GM when he was elevated to replace him when McPhee was fired in 2014. Chris Patrick was MacLellan's assistant when he was elevated to replace him last offseason, with MacLellan moving up to president of hockey operations.

"It's pretty similar to how we've interacted over the years. I'm just making more phone calls now and dealing with agents at the NHL level than I was before," Patrick told ESPN. "I think what Mac does really well is understanding what a team's needs are, how the team's playing, what areas we need to address."

Assistant general manager Ross Mahoney, team president Dick Patrick and Leonsis have been the other constants.

"We all put our time in, we all learned from our mistakes," Mahoney said.

Mahoney believes there are three key areas for building a team: drafting and developing, signing free agents and making trades. He has seen teams master one or two of those tasks but struggle to succeed in all three facets. But this Capitals team has aced all three tests.

In July 2021, Ovechkin announced he had re-signed for five years ($47.5 million). He would be over 40 years old by the end of the deal. The majority of the team's core -- center Nicklas Backstrom, forward T.J. Oshie and defenseman John Carlson -- were also signed long term, and not getting any younger.

"I think there was a recognition, probably around when we signed that deal with Ovi, that we were kind of moving to the next phase here," Patrick recalled. "You just look at the history of the league and how guys perform as they age. Let's be realistic and understand that we can't just rely on [Ovechkin and Backstrom] to carry the team anymore. It's not physically something they're going to be able to do."

The realization for Capitals management was that supporting Ovechkin's record chase with a competitive team did not mean propping up the roster with veteran mercenaries until he retired.

"If there are opportunities to add players that are in their early 20s outside of the draft, we should be looking at those types of deals," Patrick said. "It doesn't feel like teams would ever trade guys like that, but it happens more than maybe you realize. You just have to make sure you're kind of on those opportunities."

Like when the Blackhawks didn't tender Dylan Strome a qualifying offer in 2022, and the Capitals signed the 25-year-old center. He's their leading scorer.

Like when the Toronto Maple Leafs traded 23-year-old defenseman Rasmus Sandin to Washington in 2023, as the Capitals flipped a first-round pick they acquired in sending Garnet Hathaway and Dmitry Orlov to the Bruins at the deadline. He has been a mainstay on the team's second defensive pairing.

Washington added two more players like this with their biggest swings of the offseason: trading for 25-year-old Los Angeles Kings center Pierre-Luc Dubois and 26-year-old Ottawa Senators defenseman Jakob Chychrun.

Patrick cited Matthew Tkachuk as the kind of young player who could become available via trade; the star winger was available for the Florida Panthers in 2022. Though he's not Matthew Tkachuk, the Chychrun trade was similar in that the Senators did not expect him to re-sign after this season. The Capitals pounced, sending defenseman Nick Jensen and a third-round pick to Ottawa for Chychrun, a top-pairing, puck-moving defenseman.

Through 41 games, Chychrun leads all Washington defensemen with 31 points.

The Dubois trade was one of the offseason's most shocking moves. The Capitals acquired the disappointing center -- and the remaining seven years of his contract with an $8.5 million annual cap hit -- for goalie Darcy Kuemper in a one-for-one trade.

Acquired from Winnipeg to potentially ascend to the Kings' No. 1 center spot after Anze Kopitar retired, Dubois was a massive disappointment in his first season in Los Angeles, finishing with 16 goals and 24 points in 82 games and skating to a minus-9. He continued to underwhelm in the Kings' postseason loss to Edmonton, notching one goal and 20 penalty minutes in five games.

The Capitals were Dubois' fourth NHL team in nine seasons -- unusual for a third overall pick -- having previously fallen out of favor in Columbus and Winnipeg. All of those teams were banking on his potential, enchanted by the brief flashes of its fulfillment.

That included the Capitals, who watched him step up in the 2018 playoffs with two goals, two assists and dominant play. "Every time he was on the ice it was like, 'Oh my god, this guy again.' He was such a handful and I don't even think he was even 22 years old at the time," Patrick said.

The Capitals tracked Dubois' path from Columbus to Winnipeg. They tried trading for him in summer 2023 before the Jets sent him to Los Angeles. They got their man last offseason, with his stock the lowest it has been.

"He was playing behind two good centers in L.A. It seemed like he wasn't getting the opportunities he needed to get," Patrick said. "There was still a good player there, but he was too buried in the lineup."

Tim Barnes, who has run the analytics department in Washington since 2014, had his group confirm that Dubois' issue was mostly usage. The Capitals did their due diligence to make sure there weren't other issues off the ice.

"You do the work on who he is as a person and in the room. From what we learned, he was a great teammate, hard worker, wants to get better, loves the game," Patrick said. "It's just the situation wasn't great for him in L.A."

But none of this would have mattered if their coach didn't want him. There were plenty of reasons to be wary, from the long-term contract to his underwhelming play with the Kings.

"I think a lot of coaches would be like, 'I don't want that problem.' But Carbs was open-minded about it. He did his work, he understood who the person was," Patrick said. "Maybe some stuff that some coaches saw as negatives, Carbs didn't mind them. He felt he could deal with it."

Dubois has resurrected his career in D.C. with 36 points in 46 games, including 8 goals.

Goaltender Logan Thompson also falls into the "aggressive acquisition of players of a certain age" gambit. Thompson, 27, played parts of four seasons with the Golden Knights. Injuries to starter Adin Hill led to Thompson playing a career-high 46 games last season, posting a 25-14-5 record with nearly identical stats to Hill's.

Vegas GM Kelly McCrimmon said Thompson requested a trade, and the Capitals swooped in with two third-round picks -- including one acquired from Toronto in a deadline trade for defenseman Joel Edmundson.

The Capitals were comfortable with Thompson, who played with their ECHL affiliate in 2019-20 and had a good relationship with Washington goalie coach Scott Murray. Whatever went on with Thompson in Vegas, the Capitals weren't concerned.

"I mean, that's the biggest thing a lot of times in trades and free agency, just trying to get a sense for what the person's like and what they're like in the group and in the room," Patrick said. "And so we felt like we had a pretty good feel for that."

The Capitals have also been adept in finding players who are "maybe underappreciated in their roles with other teams" said Patrick, who points to center Nic Dowd and defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk as examples. Defenseman Matt Roy was used a lot by the Kings, but has played an important role for Washington after he was signed as a free agent last summer.

All of these moves speak to a cap flexibility that the Capitals didn't always anticipate. One of the primary differences between the Capitals' resurgence and the Penguins' fade is the composition of their respective cores. Pittsburgh has $30.9 million in cap space dedicated to Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang and Erik Karlsson -- 35% of its cap space dedicated to four players.

The Capitals used to have a similar plight with Ovechkin ($9.5 million), defenseman John Carlson ($8 million), Backstrom ($9.2 million) and Oshie ($5.75 million). But Backstrom and Oshie are on long-term injured reserve this season. Backstrom returned from hip surgery to play just eight games last season before "stepping away from the game" last November. Oshie is expected to miss the entire season due to a chronic back injury.

Patrick said that if Backstrom could have returned, the Capitals would have welcomed him back and "gone in a different direction" with their offseason acquisitions.

"Maybe you still make that deal for Dubois and you just free up money somewhere else," he said. "It's all a little bit 'Choose Your Own Adventure': If something comes in front of you, then you figure out the next moves you'd have to make."

Instead, the clarity Backstrom gave the Capitals last summer regarding his health "helped us understand where we could go in our decision-making process," Patrick said.

TYING ALL OF THIS together is Carbery, 43, one of the most critical NHL coaching hires of the past several seasons.

After the Capitals defeated the Penguins on Jan. 18, Carbery was asked about his team being atop the NHL standings.

"I don't really know how to answer that," he said through a smile and a chuckle. "We feel good. I mean, we're happy. The guys should be really proud where we are after 46 games. We'll just continue to build and continue to grind."

His tone was that of a coach who knows there's a long road ahead, but Carbery's Capitals have already come so far.

In 2023, Carbery was an assistant coach with the Maple Leafs, and generated a lot of buzz in the coaching market. The Capitals had parted ways with head coach Peter Laviolette after missing the playoffs. MacLellan coveted the young coach. Carbery, in turn, fancied the idea of coaching the Capitals after having coached their ECHL team in South Carolina for five seasons and the Hershey Bears for three seasons.

It took a bit for the Capitals to find an identity under Carbery last season. "We were very defensive. We weren't scoring many goals as a team," Carlson said. "When your team is not as offensive as in years past, we all have to change. We all have to find different ways. And I think it just took us longer."

Last season, the Capitals were 28th in goals per game (2.63) and 16th in goals against (3.07). This season, they're second in goals per game (3.57) and third in goals against (2.43).

Patrick has praised Carbery's communication skills and his boldness -- like in signing off on the Dubois deal, for example.

"I worked with him a lot in Hershey. I guess I didn't have that appreciation for his willingness to go against the conventional coach thinking," Patrick said.

"He's a bright, intelligent guy who's competitive. I think a really, really good communicator. I think Spencer's as honest as they come. He will tell you what he expects of you. He will tell you what he wants," Mahoney said. "He's got the X and O's and all that, but I think being able connect to all 23 players is not easy to do."

Carbery is also young enough to be an effective coach for the NHL veterans as well as the next wave of prospects for the Capitals -- who are another reason this retool has worked.

MAHONEY HAS RUN the Capitals' draft for 27 years, first as director of amateur scouting and then as assistant general manager. The foundation of the Ovechkin Era has been built through the draft, starting with the Great 8 going first overall in 2004.

Since 2008, Ovechkin's first trip to the postseason, the Capitals have missed the playoffs only twice. They've maintained that success without bleeding their prospect pipeline dry. Since 2008, there were only three drafts in which the Capitals didn't make a first-round pick.

The Ovechkin Era was fostered by picks such as forwards Backstrom, Evgeny Kuznetsov, Marcus Johansson, Alex Semin and Wilson; defensemen Carlson, Mike Green, Dmitry Orlov and Karl Alzner; and goalies Braden Holtby and Philipp Grubauer. In Game 5 of the 2018 Stanley Cup Final, the Capitals had 12 players drafted from Mahoney's boards in their lineup. That's not considering the talents that Washington drafted who blossomed elsewhere, such as forward Filip Forsberg and goalie Semyon Varlamov.

Time is the ultimate judge of a team's draft success. But Mahoney believes the past few drafts could be as fruitful as some of the best of the Ovechkin Era.

"I think we're kind of in another phase right now that's like the one we were in back then," he said.

Look no further than the 2025 IIHF World Junior Championships, where two Capitals prospects led Team USA to another gold: Defenseman Cole Hutson, selected 43rd overall last summer and winger Ryan Leonard, taken eighth overall in 2023.

Hutson led all scorers in the tournament with 11 points in seven games, including a goal and an assist in the gold medal game, becoming the first defenseman to do so in tournament history.

U.S.-based scouts Jeremy Browning, Rich Alger and A.J. Toews identified the defenseman as a player the Capitals should target one year before the draft.

"We had him higher than where we took him," Mahoney said. "He's not the biggest player, but he plays big. He could really skate, has exceptional confidence with the puck. I think that really came through in the world junior tournament. In all honesty, he played even better than I thought he would."

As far as when Hutson might join the Capitals, Mahoney said that's up to the Boston University star. If he shows the right trajectory, he could force Washington's hand in getting him to the NHL sooner than later.

"He's on the right path. Next year, we'll see where he's at. My advice to them is always make it hard on the coaches or make it hard on the development team," Mahoney said.

In the 2023 NHL draft, the Capitals held the eighth overall pick. They watched the expected top picks come off the board -- Connor Bedard to Chicago, Leo Carlsson to Anaheim, Adam Fantilli to Columbus and so on -- but as the first round continued, there wasn't a chance that Russian star Matvei Michkov would still been available at No. 8.

The Philadelphia Flyers drafted Michkov at No. 7, then the Capitals selected Leonard of the U.S. National Team Development Program at No. 8.

Would Washington have gone Michkov over Leonard at No. 8? Mahoney wouldn't say, but admitted that he had to pace himself walking to the podium before enthusiastically making Leonard the pick.

"I wanted to run up there, but I thought that would be a little bit immature in my part," he said.

Leonard was tied for second in points at World Juniors (10), up from his six points in seven games during Team USA's 2024 gold medal win. He captained the team to gold, something that wasn't lost on the Capitals.

"I'm quite sure someday here in the future that not only Ryan will be contributing in a major way to the Capitals, but I could see him taking on a leadership role also," Mahoney said.

Leonard had 60 points in 41 games at Boston College last season, starring on a line with Will Smith, now with the San Jose Sharks, and Gabe Perreault, a top New York Rangers' prospect. The winger's 31 goals set a freshman record at the school. He decided not to join the Capitals last season, opting to return with Perreault to BC this season, but Mahoney said the team wants to see him in Washington "sooner than later."

If Leonard makes the leap from Boston College to the Capitals, it would make him a rarity in the team's prospect pipeline. Only a handful of players -- forward Tom Wilson being one of them -- have joined the NHL without getting considerable seasoning in the AHL with the Hershey Bears. On the current roster, center Aliaksei Protas spent parts of three seasons with the Bears, while center Connor McMichael played 90 games in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Having a team in Hershey gives Washington a geographic advantage, in part due to the short travel time for call-ups but also enabling Capitals executives to be more hands-on with prospects. Since Ovechkin joined the Capitals, the Bears have won the AHL Calder Cup five times, including back-to-back championships in the past two seasons under head coach Todd Nelson. That continued success is vital to player development, according to Patrick.

"Having good teams in Hershey is important because it puts players into bigger game environments, playing important games against good teams," he said. "I think all those situations are huge for their development and I think it really helps them when they get into the NHL. Players need to find ways to be mentally ready to play those games. And I think going through that process in Hershey really helps."

Among the players who are percolating in the Capitals' pipeline: Defenseman Vincent Iorio (55th overall in 2021), forward Ivan Miroshnichenko (20th overall in 2022) and center Hendrix Lapierre (22nd in 2020). Among those on the way: Wingers Andrew Cristall of the WHL's Spokane Chiefs (40th overall in 2023) and Terik Parascak of the Prince George Cougars (17th overall, 2024), as well as Hutson.

"We're really patient with our prospects, never been ones to rush players into the NHL and it's worked out really well for us. We've got really good coaches down there [in Hershey]," said Mahoney, who also credits former NHL players such as Brooks Orpik and Jim Slater in the team's player development program.

"We do everything we can on our end to help them. We just need them to do everything on their end. And we feel really good about what we have coming in our pipeline," he said.

A promise made was a promise kept for the Capitals. Alex Ovechkin is thriving on a Stanley Cup contender, as the gap between his goal total and Gretzky's seemingly unbreakable record continues to narrow. And he's surrounded by players, with more on the way, who indicate there might be life after Ovi in Washington.

Xabi Alonso has said he is "very calm" despite being linked to taking charge at Real Madrid, with speculation over the future of Carlo Ancelotti.

Alonso, who spent five years as a Real Madrid player and also began his coaching career at the club's academy, is in the Spanish capital to lead Bayer Leverkusen in Tuesday's Champions League game with Atlético Madrid.

The Spanish radio station Onda Cero reported on Monday that Ancelotti, who has a contract at the Bernabéu until 2026, had decided to leave this summer.

Sources close to Ancelotti have denied that the Italian is considering an early departure, although ESPN has reported that Alonso is the favourite to take over when the time comes.

"I'm very calm, I'm focused on what I have to do," Alonso told Movistar on Monday, ahead of Leverkusen's game at the Metropolitano Stadium.

"I have enough things to worry about. Right now that's what's in my head. This is the time now to work with Leverkusen, with the team, with all the challenges we have, and I'm very happy."

Former midfielder Alonso joined Madrid from Liverpool in 2009 and won the Champions League, the LaLiga title and two Copas del Rey before departing for Bayern Munich in 2014.

After retiring as a player, he spent a season coaching Madrid's under-14s before taking charge of Real Sociedad's reserve team and then Bayer Leverkusen, winning an unbeaten Bundesliga title in 2023-24.

ESPN has reported that Madrid have been tracking Alonso's progress, and view him as the leading candidate to succeed Ancelotti.

Ancelotti has won two Champions Leagues and two league titles since returning to Madrid in 2021.

The team are top of LaLiga and have won two trophies this season, but have also faced criticism from fans and the media, and were beaten 5-2 by Barcelona in the Spanish Supercopa final earlier this month.

Alonso's Leverkusen are second in the Bundesliga, four points behind Bayern Munich, and fourth in the Champions League table ahead of Tuesday's game at Atlético.

"Thinking in the long term in football just means worrying about things," Alonso told Movistar on Monday, when asked if he'd like to coach Madrid one day.

"I have to focus on the short term, which is Atleti, then we go to Leipzig [in the Bundesliga], I have enough."

Manchester City have completed the signing of defender Vitor Reis from Palmeiras, the club confirmed on Tuesday.

The deal is worth 35 million ($36.2m) for the 19-year-old Brazil youth international. He's signed a four-and-a-half year contract until 2029.

Reis is the second summer signing to arrive at the Etihad Stadium following confirmation of the deal to sign Abdukodir Khusanov from RC Lens on Monday.

"I'm excited to join Manchester City, one of the biggest clubs in the world," Reis said.

"Everyone has seen the amazing achievements in recent seasons, and I want to make my mark as we seek more trophies.

"Working with Pep Guardiola is something every young player wants to do, and I know he can help me to develop into the best player I can be.

"City also have a lot of experience of working with Brazilian footballers and joining the likes of Ederson and Savinho in the squad will be a big help to me."

Reis is set to be followed to the Etihad by Eintracht Frankfurt forward Omar Marmoush.

City have agreed a 75m ($77.6m) fee for the Egypt international which could rise to 80m ($82.6m) with performance-related add-ons. Marmoush arrived in Manchester on Monday to undergo a medical ahead of a formal announcement.

Meanwhile, City captain Kyle Walker is nearing a move to Milan.

The England defender is set to agree a loan move to the Serie A ahead of a possible permanent transfer in the summer.

City remain on the look out for a central midfielder in the final weeks of the transfer window. Douglas Luiz, who moved to Juventus from Aston Villa, last summer, is one of a number of options being looked at.