The Ottawa Senators have signed center Colin White to a six-year, $28.5 million contract, the team announced.

On the rebuilding Senators, the 22-year-old White stepped into the top center position and had a solid season with 14 goals and 27 assists. He also quarterbacked the team's second power-play unit.

White will be counted on to play a significant role next season as the team continues its rebuild.

"We've identified Colin as one of our core young players who will help drive our team's success in both the short and long term," Senators general manager Pierre Dorion said in a statement. "Colin plays the 200-foot game that is so coveted in today's NHL. He can skate, play on both special teams, and is a character player and leader who loves hockey and this city. While he is coming off a season where he finished among rookie leaders in many categories, we also know he is just scratching the surface of his potential in this league. We're very happy that Colin will be a Senator for the next six years."

White signed a three-year, entry-level contract in April 2017 with a cap hit of $925,000 to forgo his final two years at Boston College. He was a restricted free agent this offseason.

He was one of seven Senators players to issue an apology in November after they were recorded criticizing the team's poor play and an assistant coach while riding in an Uber. The conversation was then published online.

The New York Islanders agreed to a one-year contract with veteran center Derick Brassard on Wednesday, the team announced.

Terms were not disclosed.

Brassard was traded twice last season, going from the Pittsburgh Penguins to the Florida Panthers early in February and then to the Colorado Avalanche at the trade deadline.

Brassard has been traded four times since July 2016 and three times in a little over a year. He is coming off a five-year, $25 million contract that he signed with the Rangers.

He had 14 goals and nine assists last season, his worst output in a decade.

The 31-year-old's best season came in 2014-15 with the New York Rangers, when he had 60 points.

Brassard has scored 451 points (176 goals, 275 assists) in 786 games in 12 seasons.

The Montreal Impact fired head coach Remi Gard and appointed former Houston Dynamo boss Wilmer Cabrera to take his place, the club announced on Wednesday.

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"Because I have so much respect for Remi as a person and as a professional, it was a very difficult decision to make and it was well thought, but our latest series of failures in the past couple of months and the way the team acts on the field led to that change," said Impact president Kevin Gilmore in a club statement.

"We hope to bring back confidence to this group of players for the last stretch of the season, to get a playoff spot and to perform in the Canadian Championship final. I would like to sincerely thank Remi Garde for his commitment and his professionalism with our club since he joined in November 2017. I wish him only but the best in the future."

Gard, 53, joined the Impact at the start of the 2018 campaign after a brief stint at Aston Villa. He failed to guide the club to the playoffs in his inaugural season and leaves Montreal with the team clinging to the final postseason place in the Eastern Conference, having won just one of their last eight league matches.

Cabrera, 51, was dismissed by the Dynamo last week after two-and-a-half years with the club.

Montreal assistants Wilfried Nancy and Remy Vercoutre have been retained by the club and will serve on Cabrera's staff.

Juan Mata has hit back at the "cowardly" individuals who racially abused Manchester United teammate Paul Pogba on social media after his missed penalty in a 1-1 draw against Wolves on Monday night.

Pogba was sent a series of racist messages on Twitter after his penalty was saved by Rui Patricio to deny United victory at Molineux.

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Harry Maguire and Marcus Rashford were among the players who spoke out in support of Pogba in the aftermath and Mata has added his voice by slamming those responsible.

"It's not something we should be speaking about, because it should have been eradicated a long time ago," Mata said in an exclusive interview with ESPN FC.

"That's one of the things about social media. It's fantastic to connect people if you use it for the right things.

"But it also gives a chance for so many people to let go of their frustrations towards other people and with no problems because there are so many fake accounts. There's no identity. Then you can say whatever you want and you are not punished.

"It's a problem. Unfortunately some people do that and it needs to stop. It's cowardly to do it that way because no one can see you. It's not nice."

The incident marred a mostly positive night for Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's side, who have four points from two games after being handed a difficult start to the campaign with games against Chelsea and Wolves.

The atmosphere is more buoyant than a year ago when United -- then managed by Jose Mourinho -- started with two defeats from their opening three games, including a miserable 3-0 home defeat to Tottenham.

It is the start of Mata's sixth full season at Old Trafford after he agreed to a new contract in the summer.

"I'm very happy to be here and very happy we have started the season," said Mata.

"The [summer preseason] tour [to Australia, China, Singapore and Wales] was a nice few weeks for all of us to be together. We are only starting, but we're happy.

"I would be happier if we had six points. That's what we felt after the Wolves game but the first game was very good against a good side [Chelsea].

"We've got four points, but we're looking forward to getting three more on Saturday [against Crystal Palace].

"Every time that you start a new season there is excitement. We have a manager that everyone knows, he's been around the club for many years and has done great things here.

"We are all very excited about what we can do. Hopefully we can have a great season and keep our fans happy and excited until the end of the season."

"Take back control" has been a pretty loaded phrase in this part of the world ever since its co-option by Dominic Cummings and the Vote Leave campaign that successfully won Britain's EU referendum in 2016.

It is also a highly relevant one to Australia's Ashes campaign, which began so brilliantly at Edgbaston but was stifled somewhat at Lord's, not only by Jofra Archer and the concussion inflicted on Steven Smith, but also the inroads England made on the touring team's clear plan to cut down the flow of runs, build pressure and reap wickets from a home batting lineup always eager to impose themselves.

The Australian blueprint to maintain control over the scoring rates of the hosts, block off the boundaries and prosper through patience has been adhered to so rigorously as to rule out Mitchell Starc from selection so far. The coach Justin Langer's words two days out from the Headingley Test, about not getting caught up into a bouncer war begun by Archer, seemed to strongly indicate that this pattern of selection would continue. "What we're not going to do is get caught up in an emotional battle of who's going to bowl the quickest bouncers," Langer had said. "We're here to win the Test match, not to see how many helmets we can hit."

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But this plan, of course, has two sides to it. England were not only better able to find scoring avenues off the likes of Peter Siddle and Nathan Lyon at Lord's (both were taken for more than 3.5 runs per over), they also succeeded in keeping things exceedingly tight when Archer and Jack Leach had the ball. Where Australia's batting at Edgbaston had taken on an air of freedom, at Lord's it was always a slog, even without accounting for the short-pitched stuff from Archer that claimed most of the headlines.

"You look back at that period before the second new ball, Jack Leach bowled 10 overs for 12 runs at the other end to Jofra," England's captain Joe Root said. "It's important that you dovetail well as a bowling group and that you continue to keep applying pressure from one end if you're attacking at the other. I thought we got the balance of that exceptionally well and right last week."

Lyon's inability to put the clamp on England's scoring made for quite a contrast. In fact, in all the 20 Ashes matches he has played, Lyon has never been more expensive than the 3.76 an over he conceded at Lord's when bowling more than 25 overs in a Test. Root, certainly, was happy to see Ben Stokes, Jos Buttler and Jonny Bairstow find their ways into the series.

"The most pleasing thing from my part was seeing Ben, Jos and Jonny sending good time at the crease," Root said. "I feel like they really got themselves into the series in that Test match, and it's a big engine room for us that middle order, they're some high quality players who can go up and down the gears and really change the momentum of a game. To see them starting to hit some form at what seems like a really poignant time in the series is a really impressive thing for us and a huge confidence boost for the whole batting group."

Australia's captain Tim Paine, too, acknowledged the shift. "I think Ben Stokes played a pretty good innings as well, I think you've got to give him credit there," he said. "But Lord's can be a fast scoring ground and so can this one and it just happened to be that the rain pushed the game forward really quickly and almost turned day five into a one-day game, and we know that England are the best in the world at that game, so we thought that really suited them.

"We thought we could have handled things a little bit better, but at the same time we had them 6 for 130 in the first innings and 4 for 60 in the second so we still thought we had some opportunities there to break the game open. But as the game played out, we know when they're in that sort of mood particularly Stokes, Buttler and Bairstow, they're hard for anyone to stop. If we get in that situation again we'll do some things slightly differently."

So what must Australia do to improve on their control of proceedings at Headingley? Precise lines and lengths are a given, but so too is awareness that the ground an allow for quick scoring if bowlers are too attack-minded. Darren Lehmann's wildly successful stint as Yorkshire's overseas professional in the late 1990s and early 2000s was epitomised by how he often turned favourable bowling conditions on their head by going after the opposition, taking advantage of the quick, short square boundaries not a million miles removed from his Adelaide Oval home.

Additionally, the slope across the ground at Lord's has now been replaced by a gradient from the Kirkstall Lane End down to the Rugby Stand End. Plenty of rapid-fire spells have been delivered down that hill, from Bob Willis in 1981 to Jason Gillespie in 1997. A serviceable, accurate and uncomplaining seam and swing merchant pushing up the hill can also enjoy success: Peter Siddle claimed 5 for 21 here on the first day in 2009 when the Australians set the game up by rolling England for just 102.

"We've had a couple of days here now for the bowlers to come in and have a bit of a bowl," Paine said. "Granted it's not on the centre wicket, but out on the wicket block. You get guys playing in different conditions with different run ups and different surfaces all the time, that's part and parcel of being a professional cricketer and whatever lineup we pick, we expect that guys will be able to handle it or adapt to it really quickly."

Most capable and flexible for the Australians is Pat Cummins, who can be expected to turn out for the second of back-to-back Tests as the "ironman" of a bowling attack that is otherwise rested and rotated carefully. There will be times during this Test where Cummins may be asked to do either job, attacking down the hill or pushing tightly up it, and it will be critical that the Austrlaians are able to prevent England's middle order from getting as comfortable as they did at Lord's.

"He's pretty good. No complaints from him so far," Paine said. "I think in the last 12-18 months his body's really matured and he can handle a really big workload and not only do you see a high level of skill from Pat all the time but he's highly competitive as well. So he's a great weapon for us, and someone we certainly need to look after, but at this stage he's handling the workload really well, he's a super professional in the way he prepares himself, the way he looks after his body. So at the moment he's going really well."

As a county, by the way, Yorkshire voted to leave in 2016, though the city of Leeds was a remain hold-out, both by narrow margins. Taking back control has proven more complicated than the slogan suggested: Australia will hope their task at Headingley is a little more straightforward.