Your midday sports snack.

Toast points

• Team Canada continued its tentative push toward the men’s Olympic hockey tournament with a 4-2 win over South Korea in the opening game at the Channel One Cup. Canada sent a 25-player roster to the international tuneup event in Moscow, 19 of whom play in the KHL. It isn’t certain if those 19 will actually be available to play in Pyeongchang; KHL president Dmitry Chernyshenko said today that he’s waiting to see how many Russian athletes the IOC bans from the games before deciding on his league’s participation.

• Longtime NHL defenceman Zarley Zalapski has died at age 49 due to complications from a viral infection, his family said in a statement yesterday. Zalapski scored 384 points in 637 career NHL games with five teams, including the Flames and Canadiens, and played for Canada as a 19-year-old at the 1988 Olympics in Calgary.

• One of the stranger trends of the NHL season persisted last night in Buffalo’s 3-2 win over Ottawa. Benoit Pouliot’s goal at 4:13 of the second period lifted the Sabres to 6-0-1 in games in which he scores — compared to their 2-17-5 mark when he doesn’t, per the Elias Sports Bureau. Buffalo’s 22 points are the second-fewest in the league, while the Senators are stuck at 25 now that they’ve lost 12 of their last 13 games.

• Lightning goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy is proving that general manager Steve Yzerman was smart to trade Ben Bishop in the off-season. Vasilevskiy earned his 20th win of the season last night with a 3-0 shutout of St. Louis, a battle of the top two teams in the NHL. The league reports that Vasilevskiy is the sixth goalie in history to earn 20 wins in his first 25 appearances of a season. His 2.15 goals against average and .933 save percentage are tops in the league among No. 1 goalies.

• “Jose Bautista’s agent Jay Alou has been trying to spark some interest in his client, feeling the slugger has found the issue with his swing last season.” — Nick Cafardo, the Boston Globe’s national baseball writer, on Twitter. Bautista is a free agent looking for work after the worst season of his career, in which he hit .203 with a dismal .308 on-base percentage.

• Blue Jays pitcher Marcus Stroman was named the winner of USA Baseball’s International Performance of the Year for his effort in the final of the World Baseball Classic in March. Stroman held Puerto Rico to one hit and one walk over six innings in the 8-0 victory.

• Aaron Rodgers said on Instagram last night that he’s been “medically cleared to return” from the broken collarbone that kept him out of Green Bay’s last seven games. The Packers (7-6) lost four of Brett Hundley’s first five games as the starting quarterback, but have since won two straight to keep their slim playoff hopes alive. It isn’t yet clear if Rodgers will reclaim the starting job in time for Sunday’s game at Carolina.

• Babe Ruth imitator Shohei Ohtani has a sprained ligament in his pitching elbow that, if damaged further, could require Tommy John surgery to fix, Yahoo Sports reported last night. For now, the first-degree sprain of Ohtani’s right ulnar collateral ligament is considered mild. The Angels were aware of the ailment when they gave the Japanese hitting and pitching star a $2.3-million signing bonus on Saturday.

• Bob Costas was named today as the winner of the Baseball Hall of Fame’s Ford C. Frick Award. He was the voice of baseball on NBC throughout the 1980s and 1990s and returned to the sport in 2009 calling games and hosting documentaries for the MLB Network.

Nutritional analysis

The subject of sports heroes is a fraught concept we’re all more than familiar with. Athletes are human, subject to the same personal frailties that bedevil us all. But let’s take a moment to recognize what a paragon of persistence and work ethic DeMar DeRozan has been in his career.

Each off-season, fans would hear about an aspect of his game he was working on, and each fall, the season would arrive and he would be better at it. Do you remember the kid who would dribble the ball off his foot in crunch time? Last season, he reached the top five in league scoring, averaging 27.3 points per game, a true elite scorer in the NBA. And still without a three-point shot.

We heard again this off-season that DeRozan was working on his three, to evolve with the changes in the game. He’s still not taking that many threes, only 2.4 per game, and he’s not making them with any more regularity than he has in the past. But DeRozan’s game has evolved in a way that cements his status as the kind of athlete who ought to be lauded for his ability to mature and grow when it could have been easy to justify his US$27.7-million salary by playing one-on-one ball for a third of every Raptors’ possession, shooting those long two-pointers and remaining an elite scorer.

Instead, DeRozan has taken a step back in his scoring this season and taken a step forward in his passing, which is a marvel. DeRozan has averaged 2.9 assists per game in his career, but this season is averaging 5.2 per game. Restated as per-100 possessions, DeRozan is at 7.4 this season after a career mark of 4.4. Below is a chart of his league ranking in points per game and assists per game (not including his rookie season).

The one thing DeRozan has never been able to solve is his defence. His defensive rating has always been the neon sign illuminating the particular flaw in his game. Yet, the difference between his offensive rating (points scored by the team per 100 possessions while he’s on the floor) and defensive rating is at the widest margin of his career, regardless of whether you use the NBA.com calculation or the Basketball-Reference.com version.

Photo of the day

The Oilers aren’t especially close to the playoff picture in the Western Conference, but at least they’re scoring a lot of late. Seven of their players netted a goal last night in a 7-2 win over the Blue Jackets, the third time in the last five games that Edmonton has scored six goals or more.

The Oilers beat Montreal 6-2 last Saturday and Calgary 7-5 the Saturday before that, after posting 6-2, 8-2 and 6-3 wins in different games throughout November. Those outbursts have almost been enough to right their negative goal-differential mark, which is tied for second-worst in the conference at -8.

Bonus content: Here’s Columbus coach John Tortorella holding court with the press post-game.

At nationalpost.com

• Don’t expect Victor Mete, Canada’s likely No. 1 defenceman at the upcoming world junior championships, to balk at the stress of the occasion. The 19-year-old already has 27 NHL games to his name — in one of the more frenzied hockey markets in the world. Skating alongside Shea Weber and seeing his Canadiens teammates answer pointed questions during an early losing streak has Mete primed to lead a deep Canadian blueline corps in Buffalo, writes Michael Traikos.

• Two months from now, the best team in MLS history will reconvene to mount a push for the one prize they didn’t win in 2017: the CONCACAF Champions League trophy. Toronto FC plans to bask in their victory over Seattle in the MLS Cup for a while, reports Kurtis Larson, but the players say the historic treble they achieved this year — Canadian, regular-season and playoff championships — hasn’t left them satisfied.

TV tonight

All times Eastern

2:45 p.m. Soccer: Premier League
— Southampton vs. Leicester TSN3
— Swansea vs. Manchester City SN One
3 p.m. Soccer: Premier League
— Manchester United vs. Bournemouth Sportsnet
— West Ham vs. Arsenal TSN4
— Tottenham vs. Brighton TSN5
— Liverpool vs. West Brom SN World
7 p.m. NHL: NY Rangers at Ottawa Sportsnet, TVAS
9 p.m. NBA: Toronto at Phoenix TSN1,3-5
10 p.m. NHL: Nashville at Vancouver Sportsnet

Early Thursday

6:30 a.m. Snowboard: World Cup parallel giant slalom CBC.ca streaming

Hot Buttered Post is served Monday through Thursday.