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Some of the most memorable nights in hockey are driven by malice. If the NHL could capture in a bottle the atmosphere of John Tavares's first trip to Long Island after signing with Toronto, or Brady Tkachuk's Ottawa return as a Panther, it could and would sell it. And fans would buy it, because what these nights are really about is catharsis: the purging of resentments and the reaffirmation of loyalties. It's a nice thing to do from time to time. Builds community. Strengthens fandom. Probably good for mental health. The crowd that boos together, cheers together. Winnipeg wants and deserves a night of catharsis, to wish a not-so-fond farewell to Connor Hellebuyck, the greatest player the franchise has ever had, and who got so sick of both losing and living in Winnipeg that he forced his way to New Jersey. And wouldn't you know it, the Devils are on a Canada swing, and will take on the Jets on Tuesday. It ought to be personality-driven appointment viewing, in a league that doesn't have nearly enough of that. But the Devils have affirmed their commitment to non-entertainment. Connor Hellebuyck will not start in Winnipeg, per an all-timer of an official statement.

You—yes, you—could be in elected office today. The median Defector reader is a smart and good-looking progressive with impeccable taste. What other qualifications do you really need? Had you thrown your hat in ahead of the blue wave, today you could be your state's lieutenant governor. Hell, for that matter, maybe you are your state's lieutenant governor. Have you checked your mail? Consider the case of Sebastian Matta. Matta is a 19-year-old sophomore at Arizona State University. He has a 3.25 grade-point average, per the New York Times, and he lives at home with his parents. Starting in February, Matta will be the Superior Court Clerk of Maricopa County, which has a geographic area larger than New Jersey and a population larger than Oregon. Matta will lead a department that, according to Phoenix-area CBS affiliate KTVK, processes more than 16,000 documents per day and has an annual budget of $65 million. Matta will be the boss to some 670 veteran professional staff. "I hope that they realize that I’m just not any 19-year-old," said Matta, hoping to give confidence to the hundreds of people who will soon be working under him in an incredibly complex bureaucracy.

Outfielder Anthony Santander appears to be a brain-poisoned, red-pilled moron and an Islamophobe. Santander shared to his Instagram account on Wednesday a video warning about America's impending adoption of Sharia law, and another about Muslims being inherently violent. The videos stayed up until Thursday, by which time they had drawn the attention of his employer, the Toronto Blue Jays. Santander then scrubbed the videos, and the Blue Jays issued a somewhat limp statement, assuring fans that "individual comments do not represent our organization's values and beliefs." Santander seems to be getting his news from bad sources. Laura Loomer, the deranged right-wing carnival-barker, told her too-many Twitter followers Tuesday night that "America is over" and claimed, falsely, that the midterm blue wave swept into Congress people who "openly talk about their hatred of America, love of communism, and support for Sharia law." The videos shared by Santander originated with the Instagram accounts of The American Truth Project and Nuhu Simon Jatau. The former is a right-wing propaganda dispensary whose website is littered with headlines like "300 MILLION DEAD AMERICANS" and "SATANIC PRAYER." The latter is a very obviously psychotic Nigerian man (a Lakers fan, to boot) who posts swirly-eyed videos claiming, among other things, that Muslims are pagans who worship Satan. You don't have to be so fully submerged in Christian-right paranoia in order to encounter outright, targeted Islamophobia, and from newsmakers and publications that project a superficially convincing, far less YouTube-coded, veneer of authority. Maya Sulkin of the Free Press posted a video Wednesday (now deleted) claiming, falsely, that Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan's senator-elect, delivered his victory speech in Arabic. Sulkin's video linked El-Sayed together with Ilhan Omar, representative from Minnesota, and Aber Kawas, a newly elected state senator from New York, to make the explicit case that America is under attack from, uhh, democratically elected American Muslims. "I wonder if this sounds like America to you," ponders Sulkin, twitching and quivering with panic. It was not until late Friday afternoon that the Free Press got around to dumping a correction onto Twitter, acknowledging that El-Sayed's speech was delivered in English, with three Arabic phrases thrown in. "The Free Press regrets the error," claimed the Free Press, falsely.

Caleb Williams is carrying an unimaginable burden, and it's not just the matter of being the last living quarterback in the NFL, or easing into his place as the best Chicago Bears quarterback in three quarters of a century while running the most prolific Bears offense in 50 years. It's been only eight weeks since his season began, and already he is the preeminent face of Chicago sports. This looks like high praise, but while that praise would be deserved where Williams is concerned, consider the context. Williams is not working against a deep field—not in the NFC North, which is the toughest division in the league, but in the town in which he works. There, his opposition is Northwestern's football team, which is 6-2 but unranked and unlikely to break through the upper crust of the Big Ten. The Cubs were routed from the postseason in the shortest possible amount of time, and the White Sox are still striking out despite their season having ended four weeks ago. The Sky are notable only for having turned Angel Reese into a useful player by trading her to another team. And the Bulls and Blackhawks are demonstrably god-awful, well within the margin for error for having a spectacular margin for errors. You know, like the post-election Republican mood. How god-awful, you ask, since you've been averting your eyes? The Bulls are 1-7, and are losing their games by an average of 18 points per game, which ranks as the largest margin of stinkage in NBA history, albeit in this admittedly minuscule sample; they are allowing the second-highest number of points per game ever. They will doubtless revert to a gentler if still depressing mean, as all non-expansion teams tend to do, but with a starting lineup of Caleb Wilson, Norman Powell, Josh Giddey, Matas Buzelis, and Jalen Smith, it would be foolish to rule out the 11-71 outcome for their season.

Welcome to the Defector College Football Watch Guide, where Israel Daramola and Ray Ratto will tell you which of the weekend’s college football games are worth giving a crap about. Israel: Mike Norvell is finally, officially out of my life. I am ecstatic, but I am also left completely cold. The good thing about having a hatable figure looming large over your school is that they absorb all the problems that exist, in that program and everywhere else. My opinion about his coaching is a matter of public record, but I'll say this: Norvell and that dumb face of his made for a good lightning rod, all things considered. But now he's gone. Athletic director Michael Alford was gone in September. Thanks to an approximately $50 million buyout for Norvell and the general changing landscape of college football, the future of FSU football is more uncertain than it has ever been.

The Tesla car company "will be winding down production of the Cybertruck" in 2027, according to a tweet from Elon Musk. Like everything else Musk says, ever, this must be treated as having essentially no truth value whatsoever and at best a coincidental relationship to anything that later happens with or to Cybertruck production. It's noteworthy as an index of what Musk wants people to believe—it's noteworthy, then, that Musk wants people to believe that the era of Cybertruck production is coming to an end. And by "noteworthy," I mean: fucking hilarious! Few vehicles live on in history as metonyms for failure and embarrassment. Edsel, DeLorean, whatever poor beleaguered machine ferries the Sacramento Kings to a given road game instead of doing them the favor of exploding along the way. Add to these the Cybertruck, one of the most hyped vehicles of all time; Tesla's production capacity for the Cybertruck reportedly was something like 250,000 units per year, and, should the end of its production in fact come in 2027, it will wrap up its four-year run certainly having sold, in total, worldwide, under half of that number. Given the ballooning demand for electric vehicles, the relative lack of competition among all-electric trucks, Tesla's huge head-start in EV production, the unparalleled hype around the Cybertruck's release, and its flowering into a rolling emblem of Musk's personal toxicity, the Cybertruck deserves to endure in history as among the most embarrassing mass-produced products ever available for purchase by human beings. I'd rather carry a battery-powered Big Mouth Billy Bass around under my arm for a year than be seen, by any single person, climbing into or out of a Cybertruck once.

Bill Simmons got himself into some trouble a few weeks ago, when he admitted on his podcast that he had engaged in proxy betting. Simmons, who lives in California, where online sports gambling is still illegal, told his listeners that he had instructed his daughter's boyfriend, who lives in gambling-friendly Massachusetts, to log into his FanDuel account and place bets on his behalf. Because this practice is strictly prohibited by FanDuel's policies, his bets were voided. But a question remained: How much action was Simmons denied? Now, thanks to the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, we have an answer to that question. Sports betting reporter Geoff Zochodne pointed out that the commission's Investigation and Enforcement Bureau made a presentation to commissioners Thursday about Simmons's infraction. A memo announcing the presentation provided some details about how much Simmons was trying to bet: The incident involved an admission made by media personality Bill Simmons on his August 30, 2026, podcast pertaining to his placement of proxy wagers on his FanDuel account in Massachusetts through an acquaintance who was physically present in Massachusetts. FanDuel reported that the matter involved 22 wagers with a total handle of $21,800 placed over three (3) dates: August 5, 2026, August 7, 2026, and August 19, 2026.

Plenty of teams have lost their starting quarterbacks, to things like knee surgery (Giants), blood clots (Eagles), or an ancient Hittite curse (Chargers). But it's unlikely that anyone's had a rougher go of it under center this year than the Baltimore Ravens. Already sliding out of the ranks of the contenders, Baltimore was without Lamar Jackson for three punchless games due to an ankle sprain, and then, last weekend, he tore up his thumb on his very first snap in his return. His replacement Snoop Huntley is presentable as far as QB2s go, having been here on and off since 2020; Huntley was then promptly injured in the second quarter, and is out for the season with turf toe. Just about any NFL team is dead meat after the loss of two quarterbacks, but the Ravens are extra-pungent carrion. Joe Fagnano, an undrafted rookie out of Maine and UConn who walked on and played seven years in college, was the sacrificial lamb for Thursday night's game against the Jacksonville Jaguars. And while I have plenty of sympathy for Fagnano and the Ravens offense for only having a short week to prepare, this was indeed Thursday-ass football. https://twitter.com/DanDGriffis/status/2118536909962019135

Four different states put forward ballot measures on Tuesday that, if passed, would either strengthen or create new laws keeping trans children out of school sports. Though the night saw massive Democratic victories, even in typical Republican strongholds like Kansas, Texas, and South Carolina, the four initiatives on the ballot tell a different story. In two states, Arizona and Nebraska, the language will strengthen bans that were already on the books. In the other two states, Washington and Colorado, voters were asked to create new bans where none existed. As of Thursday, ballot measures in Arizona, Nebraska, and Washington were all projected to pass. Colorado's was too close to call, but the numbers leaned toward passage. Per TransAthlete.com, the passage of all four would bring the number of bans in the country, through either law or policy, up to 31. Here is how the four proposals break down:

Anyone familiar with the Free Press, and its institutional project of dehumanizing Arabs, would have known that Abdul El-Sayed's U.S. Senate election win was going to have a bad effect on some of its employees. Indeed, staff writer Olivia Reingold and reporter Maya Sulkin are currently competing to see who can crash out the hardest. Whereas Sulkin has taken the obvious route of recording herself quivering in fear at the sound of El-Sayed's name and his use of a few Arabic words, Reingold opted for something more perplexing: using artificial intelligence to produce an uncanny image of a woman's feet. "So far at Abdul El-Sayed’s election night event I’ve spotted, Valentino heels, a Chanel bag, a Moncler jacket, Rolex watches, and a YSL bag among other designer items," Reingold wrote on Tuesday night. She attached this photo to her message: