Vancouver Canucks forward Drew O'Connor agreed to a two-year, $5 million contract extension on Tuesday.

O'Connor, 26, has recorded two goals in four games with the Canucks since being acquired from the Pittsburgh Penguins on Feb. 1.

"Drew has really made a good first impression since joining our team from Pittsburgh at the beginning of the month," Canucks general manager Patrik Allvin said. "We like his size, speed and ability to get in on the forecheck and hound pucks. Our staff also feel confident that they can help Drew take his game to another level and we are excited to see what the future holds for him with the Vancouver Canucks."

Vancouver traded defenseman Vincent Desharnais and forward Danton Heinen to the Penguins in exchange for O'Connor, defenseman Marcus Pettersson, forward prospect Melvin Fernstrom and a protected 2025 first-round draft pick.

O'Connor has 18 points (eight goals, 10 assists) in 57 games with the Penguins and Canucks this season. He has 68 career points (32 goals, 36 assists) in 214 games since making his NHL debut with Pittsburgh in January 2021.

When the Washington Capitals won the Stanley Cup in 2018, their celebration was one for the ages.

It was a party that raged everywhere: the National Mall, a Washington Nationals game, "The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon" and perhaps most famously a fountain in Georgetown where captain Alex Ovechkin frolicked half-naked.

It was June 9 when Ovechkin and teammates T.J. Oshie and Tom Wilson followed up keg stands at a waterfront bar with a swim in the Washington Harbour fountain.

Ovechkin doffed his shirt before diving into the fountain, joining his teammates as they made "snow angels" and danced in the water with fans who joined the party.

This season marks the Capitals' 50th anniversary as an NHL franchise. On Friday, they'll commemorate that infamous aquatic Stanley Cup celebration with the unveiling of a special permanent plaque at the fountain.

The Capitals announced today plans to unveil a special permanent plaque in commemoration of the 2018 Stanley Cup championship celebration at @TheWashHarbour fountain in Georgetown.

The unveiling will take place at the Washington Harbour Ice Rink on Friday, Feb. 21 at 5 PM.

Washington Capitals (@Capitals) February 17, 2025

The plaque will read: "Home of the 2017-18 Washington Capitals Fountain Celebration" and "In Vegas They Became Champions ... Here They Became Legends."

It will be placed on the fountain tower in the middle of what's currently an ice rink for the winter.

Nicklas Backstrom and Oshie -- members of the 2018 and current Capitals who are on long-term injured reserve -- will take part in the ceremony.

Ovechkin said at a fan event in 2019 that swimming in the fountain was the craziest part of their Cup celebration.

"We had a couple beers. Osh and Tom came to me like, 'Hey let's go swim in the fountains.' I said, 'OK, let's do it, we're champions,'" he said, via Russian Machine Never Breaks. "There were policemen and we said, 'Hey, is it OK we're going to do it?' And they were like, 'You can do whatever you want, guys.' So I think it was a pretty fun moment for all of us and for you guys as well."

Club Brugge coach Nicky Hayen has said he would be talking to his dead mother before Tuesday's second leg of their Champions League playoff against Atalanta, keeping up a pre-match ritual he feels helps him.

"Before the match I always talk to my mother, who passed away four years ago, much too early," he told a press conference on Monday as Brugge prepare to defend their 2-1 lead from last week's first leg in Belgium.

"Last year before the [Belgian league] playoffs I told her we wanted to do something crazy, and in the end winning the title was the result.

"Am I deeply religious? No, but I do feel that it is something for me. I must believe there is something," Hayen added.

The 44-year-old was thrust into the Brugge job in March last year on an interim basis and then turned around the club's fortunes by guiding them to the Belgian championship.

He signed a permanent deal as coach in June and has steered Brugge into this season's Champions League playoff, plus second place in the Belgian standings.

He said he expected a tough night in Bergamo on Tuesday.

"Atalanta will definitely play more attacking. At home they also want to be more dominant. They also have the team for that, so we expect a difficult evening," he said.

"We have to play our own game and especially show the tactical discipline of last week.

"My plan for the match hasn't changed because it was 2-1 last week. We did very well, because Atalanta is a very strong team. I believe in my squad. We play with a lot of guts in this Champions League, but that mustn't turn into naivety."

Inter Miami's Major League Soccer season opener against New York City FC will now be played on Saturday night at 7:30 p.m. ET at Chase Stadium in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after originally being scheduled to kick off at 2:30 p.m. ET.

The decision to delay the game by five hours comes due to the postponement of the Concacaf Champions Cup match between Inter Miami and Sporting Kansas City.

The two teams were set to face each other on Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET in Kansas City, but the regional governing body moved the match to Wednesday due to severe weather conditions around the city.

Multiple winter storm warnings were issued, stating that Kansas City could see 5-7 inches of snow with temperatures as low as 5 degrees.

The first leg of the first round CCC match will now be played on Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET with predicted temperatures of 3-5 degrees.

"The decision to reschedule the match has been made to prioritize player and fan safety, and in close coordination with the two participating clubs and the local authorities," Concacaf said in a statement.

New Inter Miami manager Javier Mascherano revealed in the prematch news conference that both teams agreed to change the date of the match date given the difficulty of playing in harsh conditions.

"It's not just a matter of the game, if the snow falls like they say is going to fall, we believe that the city is going to completely collapse, so people won't be able to go to the field, the accesses may be closed. Many times you only think about the game itself and not everything that surrounds it," Mascherano said Monday.

Sporting Kansas City's MLS season opener against Austin FC at Q2 Stadium is set to be played at 9:30 p.m. ET and is not expected to be delayed or postponed due to the Concacaf Champions Cup match.

Barcelona's financial situation continues to improve after LaLiga confirmed their annual spending cap is now over 463 million ($483.7m), an increase of nearly 40m from the beginning of the season.

At this same time last year, Barça's limit had been slashed to 204m.

The boost to the club's economic situation comes after the sale of 475 VIP seats at Spotify Camp Nou, which is still being redeveloped, for a maximum of 30 years to two different investors from the Middle East. Sources told ESPN the two deals in total are worth around 100m.

Barça's cap remains the second highest in LaLiga, a long way behind Real Madrid, whose limit is 755m, as it was at the start of the season.

Atlético Madrid (314m), Real Sociedad (160m) and Villarreal (135m) complete the top five, while Sevilla's financial problems have led to their cap being cut from an already low 2.5m to a measly 684,000, the lowest in the league.

The limit is roughly determined by the difference between a team's revenue minus non-sporting outgoings and debt repayments.

The final figure accounts for the maximum amount clubs should spend on wages, bonuses and amortisation payments on transfers across a season, not how much they are necessarily spending.

Clubs that are in excess of their spending limit, as Sevilla are, are subject to severe financial restrictions in the transfer market which only allow them to spend a fraction of anything they save or raise.

Barça, meanwhile, as LaLiga confirmed in January, are now within their limit and are able to spend 100% of anything they save or raise, known as the 1:1 rule.

However, there is still an element of uncertainty over the registrations of Dani Olmo and Pau Víctor.

LaLiga and the Spanish Football Federation [RFEF] say Barça missed a Dec. 31 deadline to prove they were compliant with their spending cap, claiming the VIP seat deal was only completed afterwards.

As a result, Olmo and Victor were unregistered, with RFEF regulations not allowing players to be registered for a second time in the same season, even if the club can afford to financially.

Barça won an injunction against LaLiga and the RFEF's ruling from Spain's sports ministry, the Consejo Superior de Deportes (CSD), who agreed to investigate their appeal, which could take up to three months.

LaLiga subsequently counter-appealed the CSD's decision, but Olmo and Víctor remain available for selection as it stands.

A great deal of the past few days in LaLiga has been taken up with the subject of Real Madrid's Jude Bellingham and how to interpret, and punish, his profanity that resulted in a red card in Saturday's 1-1 draw at Osasuna.

But not a lot of consideration has been given to how loud and long Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola must have sworn about the brilliant Englishman over the past couple of years. Turning the air sky blue, you might say.

City and Madrid meet up again on Wednesday in an all-or-nothing Champions League knockout match, with Madrid taking a 3-2 first-leg lead back with them to the Bernabéu. Guardiola is no doubt still cursing that Bellingham, who scored Madrid's late winner at the Etihad last week, will be dressed in white rather than City colors, as was his explicit intention.

In January 2023, I was in a meeting in London with somebody who is unimpeachably close to City's legendary, record-breaking coach. I was informed with 100% authority that City had only two major transfer targets that summer: one being RB Leipzig defender Josko Gvardiol; the other was Borussia Dortmund midfielder Bellingham.

The Croatia defender joined and, across the three times City have played Madrid since, he has shone with a goal and an assist. But Bellingham turned down the reigning English and European champions, opted against the chance to work for one of the all-time great football coaches in Guardiola (a chance he'll now never have again) and chose a notoriously demanding, political club where both the language and culture were wholly new to this ferociously talented and ambitious prodigy.

The nearest Bellingham has come to confirming City made him a tantalizing offer came when he said: "Guided by my family I spoke to a lot of clubs in my last season at Dortmund ... but when Madrid called I didn't have to think twice."

Although there is still scope for City and their slightly beleaguered guru to strike back and even the balance on Wednesday, it's been a pretty good choice for Bellingham when you compare his fortunes to those of Guardiola & Co. Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti, and his English No. 5, are simultaneously reigning Spanish and European champions for only the third time since 1958, while City have not only seen their Champions League status decline this season but their English dominance too.

The moment when Bellingham chose Madrid over City became a significant tilt in the balance of power. But not just on the pitch either.

I'm guided by the same unimpeachable source on Manchester City that their work in trying to convince the very best footballers, particularly if they are already in their peak, to come and live in the city of Manchester with its punishing climate and how far it is from the other European capitals, is extremely tough going. They're exceptional in what they offer, how they offer it, and in terms of promising superb treatment. But the No. 1 "extra" element, beyond salary, was Guardiola himself.

The attraction of working under him and successfully mastering the brand of football with which he's become associated in the Premier League has proven tremendously alluring over and over again. But not to Bellingham.

There was a clue to his rationale after he scored his first Champions League goal for Los Blancos, in added time, in a 1-0 victory over Union Berlin at the beginning of last season. That night I asked him about the significance of the moment and he told me that he had been lucky enough to have a television in his bedroom from the age of about 12 or 13 and that he'd "watched Madrid come back to win in unbelievable circumstances over and over again." It had been for moments like that that the youngster had turned his back on England's champions and opted for legend, history, tradition and the lure of a different kind of glory instead.

Nor is it, by any means, the first time Madrid have stripped the city of Manchester of a talent that they massively desired. The best other example, given that Cristiano Ronaldo had already starred at Old Trafford before he made his then-world record move to the Bernabéu, came in the shape of Gareth Bale.

Unlike Bellingham, still a youthful prodigy when he signed for Ancelotti's team, the Wales winger was an established star and desired by the majority of the world's top clubs when he was leaving Tottenham Hotspur. Manchester United still had Ryan Giggs on their coaching staff at the time and he made a personal phone call to his international teammate, promising that United would pay Spurs the same transfer fee and would even hand Bale higher wages than Madrid were offering -- but the answer was still no.

Bale and Bellingham actively chose Madrid -- something which Ronaldo did during his final year when, despite United and Madrid having agreed a fee, Sir Alex Ferguson demanded that the Portugal captain stay for one more season.

That was when the then-Barcelona vice-president Ferran Soriano, now long-established as a behemoth executive at City, went directly to Ronaldo and his agent to offer them a better salary if they would dump Madrid and come to Barcelona at the end of the season instead. Just like Bale and Bellingham, Ronaldo turned him down, as his irrevocable choice was to play for Real Madrid.

Nobody can really pretend it's specifically because Madrid have won so many LaLiga or Copa del Rey titles that, if salary concerns are equal, so many of the world's elite stars will choose Real Madrid over just about anywhere else. It's because of the glamour and irresistible glory attached to winning over and again on floodlight Tuesday and Wednesday nights until Europe kneels and another glorious Champions League final beckons.

Anyone young enough to be playing professional football has never seen Madrid lose a European final. In fact there are a multitude of fans and journalists who have never seen that either -- the last time was 42 years ago. Now Bellingham has the chance to further underline, to himself and to anybody else who's interested, that he chose well in selecting his current employer rather than Manchester City for the next stage of his career.

There are only two sides he's played against more regularly than Manchester City, Bayern Munich and Union Berlin, and it was not until last week that he truly knew what the taste of victory was against Manchester's Sky Blues. He played and scored against them aged 17 as he tried six times to get the better of them but failed, along with his Borussia Dortmund colleagues. Last season, while his converted penalty in the shootout helped put Los Blancos into the Champions League semifinals, it was technically yet another draw (after 90 and then 120 minutes) to go with his previous three defeats and two draws.

This Wednesday he comes up against Guardiola's side with his last-minute goal the difference in the tie, with the row over that controversial red card rumbling on and with the entire Bernabéu just aching to sing "Hey Jude" once again. Time for Bellingham to deliver again. I swear it is.