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• As expected, the CFL’s leading passers are the last candidates standing for the league’s top individual honour. Toronto quarterback Ricky Ray and Edmonton QB Mike Reilly were revealed today to be the Most Outstanding Player finalists for their respective divisions. Ottawa receiver Brad Sinopoli and Winnipeg running back Andrew Harris are the Most Outstanding Canadian finalists, while Toronto’s Marc Trestman and Calgary’s Dave Dickenson are vying for coach of the year. The winners will be announced at the CFL Awards show in Ottawa Nov. 23.

• At 3-0 apiece, Glenn Howard’s and Charley Thomas’ rinks are favourably positioned to make the semifinals at the Olympic curling pre-trials in Summerside, P.E.I. Howard and Thomas are tops of their respective pools through today’s early draws, while Kerri Einarson, Sherry Middaugh and Julie Tippin are all 3-1 on the women’s side. Round-robin play wraps up tomorrow, with knockout matches scheduled for Saturday and Sunday.

• Team Canada won its first game at the Karjala Cup international hockey tournament yesterday, 3-2 over Switzerland. Gilbert Brule, Eric O’Dell and Matt Ellison scored for the Canadians, while Ben Scrivens made 19 saves in goal. The pre-Olympic competition features six teams made up of players from an array of leagues outside the NHL. Canada faces Sweden at 11:30 a.m. ET tomorrow and Finland at 10:30 a.m. ET Sunday.

• The newest members of the Canada Sports Hall of Fame will be inducted at a gala tonight in Toronto. The Class of 2018 is: Olympic champion speed skater Cindy Klassen, Olympic champion wrestler Carol Hyunh, Olympic medal-winning triathlete Simon Whitfield, hockey legend Lanny McDonald, golf icon Mike Weir, lacrosse pioneer Gaylord Powless, neurosurgeon and concussion scientist Dr. Charles Tator, Canadian Paralympic founder Robert W. Jackson, and the Edmonton Grads women’s basketball team, a four-time Olympic champion.

• R.J. Barrett, the next great Canadian basketball player who led the national under-19 team to the title at the FIBA World Cup in July, will announce his NCAA college selection on Friday. The announcement will be televised live by TSN during SportsCentre. The three finalists are Oregon, Duke and Kentucky.

• Remember the UCLA basketball players who were arrested and benched for allegedly shoplifting sunglasses in China earlier this week? LiAngelo Ball, Jalen Hill and Cody Riley’s likely punishment will be 20 days of house arrest at their luxury hotel in Hangzhou, followed by banishment from the country forever, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported today. The rest of their team is now in Shanghai for a Saturday game against Georgia Tech.

• A plurality of concussions sustained and reported by NFL players over the past two seasons occurred on pass plays — 44 per cent in all, according to the results of a video review made public today. Cornerbacks suffered 22 per cent of the 459 concussions that were studied, the most of any position, while receivers accounted for 15 per cent. The most damaging type of impact, meanwhile, was the helmet-to-body blow, which caused 45 per cent of concussions in the sample, ahead of helmet-to-hemet hits (36 per cent).

Nutritional information

Since his death on Tuesday, Roy Halladay is being hailed as a certain Hall of Famer. The five-year waiting period for his name to appear on the ballot ends next winter.

Jay Jaffe, who has made a study of Hall of Fame credentials a part of his baseball writing, provides a complete analysis of Halladay’s credentials for Sports Illustrated. Halladay’s overall numbers were hindered by the slow start to his career and to the premature end because of chronic back problems.

This little analysis aims to provide some context for the environment in which Halladay worked, which ought to be a factor when voters decide whether Halladay is worthy of enshrinement. They also put one of the qualities he’s been lauded for, his commitment to his craft and his work ethic, into sharp relief.

Halladay pitched almost entirely in a millennium in which the roles of pitchers, both starters and relievers, was hastening a change that had begun in the 1980s. Given current trends, the old automatic Hall of Fame metric of 300 wins is no longer valid. Two hundred wins is now a major milestone. (Not to mention that wins themselves have become a passé statistic.)

When voters consider Halladay, he will be compared against the breadth of the players enshrined in the Hall. Pitching, as we’ve witnessed over the last 30 years, has undergone a lot of changes. Four-man rotations became five. Relief pitchers became important, then a few became stars. The strike zone shrank. Data-capture allowed fans to see how hard pitchers threw, how much break their pitches had, where their release point was and whether umpires were being generous or stingy.

Halladay is unquestionably among the elite pitchers of his generation. But he pitched significantly fewer innings (2,749) than even players of the generation before him: Randy Johnson, Greg Maddux, Roger Clemens and Tom Glavine. He threw about 150 fewer than Pedro Martinez, who, like Halladay, didn’t pitch into his 40s like the others.

Here are a couple of graphs to show how much pitching has changed. First, this shows the percentage of complete games to games started from 1901 to 2017.

The chart has been annotated to show a few of the peak markers along the way, from 87.6 per cent complete games in 1904 to 1.2 per cent this season.

In Halladay’s first season, 6.2 per cent of games started were completed. In his final season, the number had fallen to 2.6 per cent. Halladay completed 67 of his 390 career starts, good for 17.2 per cent.

Of the players who had nine or more complete games in a season in this millennium, Halladay is the only pitcher who has done it more than once (he has four such seasons). Only five pitchers have done it even once: David Wells (2000), Bartolo Colon and Mark Mulder (2003), CC Sabathia (2008) and James Shields (2011).

Next is a chart showing the percentage of innings pitched by starters, with a few annotations.

If we assume nine available innings for each of his starts (ignoring extra-inning games and road games in which there might only be eight pitching innings available), Halladay threw 76.7 per cent of those available innings in an era when starters’ innings went from 67.8 per cent down to 6.57 per cent.

Jaffe notes in his SI piece that Halladay’s counting stats, like wins and strikeouts, might not stand up to the best in the Hall of Fame. But increasingly, voters are having to take into account the changing nature of the game. Placed in the proper context, it would be a surprise if Halladay wasn’t a first-ballot Hall of Famer.

Photo of the day

Guys, the puck is right there.

At nationalpost.com

• Before the Maple Leafs took to the ice against Minnesota last night without ailing centre Auston Matthews, Michael Traikos got to thinking: Why don’t NHL teams rest their best players more often? It might be time for hockey to draw some inspiration from the NBA, where stars are given games off during busy stretches with some regularity — or even just from itself, since goalies already get the same courtesy.

• Roy Halladay’s exploits on the mound — the playoff no-hitter, the Cy Young awards, the 67 career complete games — are well documented. But the late pitcher was also exceedingly generous, as attentive and caring off the field as he was steely on game days. Canadian Press reporter Gregory Strong tells the story of Sean Clayton, a cancer survivor who has never forgotten the time Halladay spent with him at spring training in 2008.

TV this weekend

All times Eastern

Thursday

Until 5:30 p.m. Tennis: ATP NextGen Finals TSN3
2:30 p.m. Soccer: FIFA World Cup playoff
— Croatia vs. Greece SN World
— Northern Ireland vs. Switzerland SN World
3:30 p.m. Winter sports: World Cup bobsled, two-man from Lake Placid CBC.ca streaming
— Heat 2, 5 p.m.
7 p.m. CHL: Russia vs. OHL SN 360, Sportsnet
7 p.m. NHL: Edmonton at New Jersey SN West
7:30 p.m. NHL: Minnesota at Montreal TSN2, RDS
7:30 p.m. NBA: New Orleans at Toronto SN One
8:30 p.m. NFL: Seattle at Arizona TSN3-5
9 p.m. NHL: Detroit at Calgary SN Flames
10 p.m. Soccer: Women’s friendly, Canada vs. U.S. TSN1
10 p.m. NHL: Vancouver at Anaheim SN Pacific
10:30 p.m. NHL: Tampa Bay at Los Angeles SN 360, Sportsnet
10:30 p.m. NBA: Oklahoma City at Denver SN One

Friday

12:20 a.m. Figure skating: Grand Prix of Japan CBC.ca streaming
— Pairs short program, 12:20 a.m.
— Women’s short program, 2:10 a.m.
— Men’s short program, 5:05 a.m.
8:30 a.m. Winter sports: World Cup bobsled and skeleton from Lake Placid CBC.ca streaming
— Men’s skeleton heats, 8:30 and 10:15 a.m.
— Four-man bobsled heats 1 and 2:30 p.m.
10:15 a.m. Winter sports: World Cup speed skating, women’s and men’s 500 metres and team pursuit CBC.ca streaming
11:25 a.m. Hockey: Karjala Cup, Canada vs. Sweden TSN1
1 p.m. Tennis: ATP NextGen Finals, semifinals TSN3
2 p.m. Hockey: Hall of Fame Inductee news conference TSN1,4
2 p.m. NHL: Ottawa vs. Colorado at Stockholm TSN5, RDS
2:30 p.m. Soccer: FIFA World Cup Playoff, Sweden vs. Italy SN World
2:55 p.m. Soccer: International friendly, France vs. Wales TSN1,4
7 p.m. NHL
— Boston at Toronto TSN4
— Pittsburgh at Washington Sportsnet, TVAS
7:30 p.m. NBA: Charlotte at Boston NBATV
10 p.m. NBA: Brooklyn at Portland NBATV
10:30 p.m. NHL: Winnipeg at Vegas TSN3
10:45 p.m. Figure skating: Grand Prix of Japan, ice dance short program CBC.ca streaming

Saturday

12:35 a.m. Figure Skating: Grand Prix of Japan CBC.ca streaming
— Pairs free program, 12:35 a.m.
— Women’s free program, 2:50 a.m.
— Men’s free program, 5:30 a.m.
1 a.m. Winter sports: World Cup short-track speed skating, women’s and men’s 500, 1,500 and 3,000-metre relay CBC.ca streaming
4 a.m. Winter sports: World Cup alpine skiing, Levi CBC.ca streaming
— Women’s slalom, race 1, 4 a.m.; race 2, 7 a.m.
7 a.m. Curling: Road to the Roar Olympic Pre-Trials, tiebreaker, if necessary, TSN1,3-5
8 a.m. Winter sports: World Cup speed skating, women’s and men’s 500, 1,500 and mass start CBC.ca streaming
Noon NCAA Football
— Arkansas at LSU TSN2
— N.C. State at Boston College ABC
— Oklahoma State at Iowa State ABC
— Florida at South Carolina CBS
— Michigan State at Ohio State FOX
12:30 p.m. Curling: Road to the Roar Olympic Pre-Trials, playoffs TSN1,3-5
1 p.m. NHL
— Colorado vs. Ottawa at Stockholm Sportsnet, RDS
— Edmonton at NY Rangers SN West
1 p.m. Tennis: ATP NextGen Finals, final TSN5
1 p.m. Winter sports: World Cup snowboarding, big air from Milan CBC.ca streaming
2:30 p.m. Soccer: FIFA World Cup Playoff, Denmark vs. Ireland SN World
3:30 p.m. NCAA Football
— Iowa at Wisconsin ABC
— Georgia at Auburn CBS
3:30 p.m. Auto racing: NASCAR Xfinity Series Ticket Galaxy 200 TSN4
4 p.m. NCAA Football: USC at Colorado FOX
6 p.m. Curling: Road to the Roar Olympic Pre-Trials, playoffs TSN1,3-5
7 p.m. NHL
— Toronto at Boston CBC, City
— Buffalo at Montreal Sportsnet, TVAS
8 p.m. NCAA Football
— Notre Dame at Miami ABC
— TCU at Oklahoma FOX
8:30 p.m. NBA
— Philadelphia at Golden State TSN2
— Cleveland at Dallas SN One
— LA Lakers at Milwaukee NBATV
9:45 p.m. Figure Skating: Grand Prix of Japan, ice dance free program CBC.ca streaming
10 p.m. NHL
— Vancouver at San Jose CBC
— Winnipeg at Arizona Sportsnet

Sunday

1 a.m. Winter sports: World Cup short-track speed skating, women’s and men’s 1,000 metres and relays CBC.ca streaming
8 a.m. Curling: Road to the Roar Olympic Pre-Trials, playoffs, TSN1,4,5
8 a.m. Winter sports: World Cup speed skating, women’s and men’s 1,000 metres and team sprint, women’s 3,000 and men’s 5,000 CBC.ca streaming
9:25 a.m. Gymnastics: Trampoline world championships CBC.ca streaming
— Women’s individual final, 9:25 a.m.
— Men’s individual final, 9:55 a.m.
10:55 a.m. Auto racing: Formula One Brazilian Grand Prix TSN2
11:45 a.m. Soccer: FIFA World Cup Playoff, Switzerland vs. Northern Ireland SN World
1 p.m. CFL: East semifinal, Saskatchewan at Ottawa TSN1,4,5
1 p.m. NFL
— Pittsburgh at Indianapolis CTV Two, CBS (regional)
— New Orleans at Buffalo CTV (Ontario, Atlantic), FOX (regional)
— Minnesota at Washington CTV (B.C., Alberta, Sask., Winnipeg), FOX (regional)
— NY Jets at Tampa Bay CTV (Montreal), CBS (regional)
— Green Bay at Chicago FOX (regional)
— Cincinnati at Tennessee FOX (regional)
— Cleveland at Detroit CBS (regional)
1 p.m. Curling: Road to the Roar Olympic Pre-Trials, playoffs, TSN3
2:30 p.m. Auto racing: Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Can-Am 500 TSN2
2:30 p.m. Soccer: FIFA World Cup Playoff, Greece vs. Croatia SN World
3:30 p.m. NBA: Toronto at Boston Sportsnet, SN One
4 p.m. NFL: Houston at LA Rams CTV Two (Vancouver Island, Alberta, Ontario), CBS (regional)
4:25 p.m. NFL
— Dallas at Atlanta CTV (B.C., Alberta, Sask., Winnipeg, Ontario), CTV Two (Atlantic), CBS
— NY Giants at San Francisco CTV (Ottawa, Montreal), CBS (regional)
4:30 p.m. CFL: West semifinal, Edmonton at Winnipeg TSN1,3-5
6 p.m. NBA: Houston at Indiana SN One
6:30 p.m. Curling: Road to the Roar Olympic Pre-Trials, playoffs, TSN2
7 p.m. NHL: Edmonton at Washington Sportsnet, TVAS
7 p.m. NBA: Dallas at Oklahoma City NBATV
8:15 p.m. NFL: New England at Denver CTV Two, TSN1,3-5, NBC

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