Ducks Notes: Vatanen Making A Powerful Impact

BOULDER — Gerry DiNardo doesn’t know Deion Sanders from Adam Bledsoe. But he knows this: If ex-CU Buffs coach Bill McCartney had his mitts on the transfer portal four decades ago, he would’ve used that bad boy the way Rembrandt used a brush. “Bill was a master of trying to bring teams together,” DiNardo, the offensive coordinator of the Buffs’ national championship team in 1990 and an analyst with the Big Ten Network, told The Post recently.

From Babe Didrikson Zaharias to Jennifer Kupcho, cold-weather Colorado’s produced some elite women’s golfers. Now, the next household names might already be in the pipeline via four local high schoolers with professional potential. Erie junior Hadley Ashton may be at the top, but her skill is paralleled by a trio of reigning state champions.

The ghost of Kris Bryant haunts the Rockies. There have been only fleeting visions of the star player the franchise thought it signed back in 2022. Reoccurring injuries bedevil the four-time All-Star. Sub-par performance has become the norm. There are those within the organization who call him an enigma. Rockies fans, generally a benevolent bunch, even booed Bryant during the home opener at Coors Field. Now, with the Rockies floundering at the bottom of the NL West, he’s attempting to return from an early season injury that landed him on the injured list for the sixth time in his two-plus seasons in Colorado.

Colorado’s high-flying hockey team has run into a problem it’s going to need to solve, and that’s the defensive acumen of the Dallas Stars. The Avalanche dominated Game 3 of this second-round playoff series territorially, but not on the scoreboard. Tyler Seguin and Logan Stankoven both had a pair of goals, while Jake Oettinger made 29 saves Saturday night at Ball Arena to help Dallas prevail 4-1 and reclaim home-ice advantage in the series. The Stars now lead the series 2-1.

COMMERCE CITY — Cristian Espinoza had a goal and an assist, Vitor Costa de Brito added two assists and William Yarbrough had five saves to help the San Jose Earthquakes rally from a two-goal deficit to beat the Colorado Rapids 3-2 Saturday night. San Jose (3-8-1) beat Los Angeles FC 3-1 last time out to snap a five-game winless skid in which the Earthquakes conceded 14 of their MLS-high 28 goals this season. Costa de Brito, on the left side, played a cross to a charging Espinoza, who slipped behind a defender an rolled a shot inside the back post to give the Earthquakes their first lead of the game at 3-2 in the 66th minute. Colorado (5-4-3) lost for just its second time in its last seven matches. Rafael Navarro waited patiently as the play developed and then slipped between a pair of defenders and redirected a corner kick played by Djordje Mihailovic into the net from the top of the 6-yard box to give Colorado a 1-0 lead in the 33rd minute Omir Fernández, a 25-year-old who spent his first five MLS seasons with the New York Red Bulls before signing with the Rapids in December, made it 2-0 when he scored his first goal of the season in the 42nd.

The reigning World Series champions got nothin’ on these Rockies. Colorado won its first series on Saturday on its 13th try, snapping a franchise-worst drought to begin the season in that regard. In the 8-3 victory over Texas, the Rockies became the last MLB team to win a series this year, too, a day after winning consecutive games for the first time in 2024. They did it behind a solid outing from Ryan Feltner, who allowed two runs over five-plus innings, plus a seventh-inning rally in which the Rockies batted around while scoring six runs with two outs to cement a season-high three-game winning streak. “We’ve felt close to (breaking out),” catcher Jacob Stallings said.