Think of the Flyers as an explorer who landed on a deserted island. On this island, deep within miles of thick jungle, is treasure. The explorer knows the treasure is there somewhere, and he aims to find it.
Leo Carlsson would have been a new machete: sharp, strong, capable of cutting through all those vines and branches and trunks to make the Flyers’ journey to those riches easier and faster. Now the explorer won’t have that tool. Now that the Anaheim Ducks have matched the five-year, $90-million offer sheet that Carlsson signed with the Flyers last week, the Flyers won’t have the steel blade that Carlsson represented as a 6-foot-3, 21-year-old, clear-cut first-line center just entering his prime.
So where does that leave them? It means that their trek to that treasure, to their first Stanley Cup since 1974-75, will likely be slower and less certain. They may get to it eventually, but it’s going to take more time and be more costly.
Had the Ducks declined to match the Flyers’ audacious offer — and make no mistake, this gambit by Danny Brière was bold and creative, as close to a Now youse can’t leave move as an NHL general manager can make — Anaheim would have received four first-round picks from the Flyers. That price would have been steep. But the Flyers would have added Carlsson, who averaged nearly a point a game last season, is an excellent player now, and has shown every sign that he will get even better.
They need a No. 1 center, not merely for the talent and scoring touch such a player would provide, but also so they can slot their other centers — Trevor Zegras, Christian Dvorak, and Sean Couturier — more appropriately. With Carlsson (or any center of similar caliber, for that matter), Zegras would have become the second-line guy. Dvorak would have become a terrific third-line guy. And Couturier would have remained in the role he played so well in last season’s playoffs, as an outstanding fourth-line checker, faceoff-taker, and leader.
What’s more, the Flyers have a roster and a farm system with plenty of promising young players, and if this move had come to fruition, they wouldn’t have had to sacrifice any of them to fill one of their biggest holes. That’s perhaps the most disappointing aspect of this result for them: That luxury of gaining an emerging superstar without having to give up valuable players and/or prospects already within the organization likely is no longer available to them.
With the Carlsson episode behind him, Flyers general manager Danny Brière must be practical about the team’s range of needs.
They’re interested in the Detroit Red Wings’ Dylan Larkin, for instance; though Larkin is 7½ years older than Carlsson, he still would fit the Flyers like a well-tailored suit. But assuming Larkin, who has a full no-movement clause, is even willing to join the Flyers, the trade package necessary to acquire him would probably have to include a player or two on their current roster. Would Larkin be worth the departure of, say, Owen Tippett and/or Denver Barkey?
Just because Brière made such a huge play for Carlsson doesn’t mean he has to answer that question, immediately or ever. The smartest thing he and the Flyers’ leadership team have done in the three years since he took over as GM has been to give themselves flexibility in improving the team. They didn’t have to shock the NHL by presenting that offer sheet to Carlsson — a proposal for a contract that has now made him the league’s highest-paid player. But they did. After years of running in place, after qualifying for the postseason for the first time since 2020, they declared that they were ready to spend again, but they made that declaration on their terms.
They have several choices for how they can proceed. They need not just a No. 1 center, but a top-pair defenseman, or at least one capable of quarterbacking a power play. They can act quickly to acquire one or both of those players, to find short-term and/or long-term answers to those lingering questions, or they can wait.
Remember: Even if they had won their duel with the Ducks for Carlsson, the Flyers wouldn’t have been considered a true contender this season for the Stanley Cup. Porter Martone, Matvei Michkov, Tyson Foerster, Jamie Drysdale, Alex Bump, Zegras: All of them have growth and development ahead of them. Yes, the Flyers’ hunt will take longer now that Leo Carlsson, that oh-so useful tool, will remain on the West Coast, but they can still find that chest of gold. They just have to take care not to get lost along the way.
One person after another shuffled toward her from the funeral line snaking down the center aisle, through the vestibule of St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church, out to Forest Avenue in Ambler, and I wondered as I approached her how long Meg Kane could keep this up. The sad, grateful smile. The long, tight hugs. The posture she maintained, straight as a soldier, when the shock and grief simmering within her should have sent her to her knees.
It was Friday, April 12, 2024. Eight days had passed since the house fire that killed her parents — the kind of unbelievable tragedy that interrupts a local newscast, helicopters hovering over the smoldering ruins. Unbelievable, too, because it had happened to Meg. Over the quarter-century that we have been close, she has risen through the public relations industry to a place of power and influence within Philadelphia without compromising the qualities that made her, above all else, a decent human being. It always seemed that her intelligence and drive, her character and achievements, melded to form a shield that would protect her from catastrophe. Something like this doesn’t happen to someone like Meg, I thought that day, as if such a thought were anything other than a mind trick, a weak attempt to reconcile how and why my friend’s mother and father were dead.
The line stretched to more than 200 people, perhaps more than 300. No one standing in it should have been surprised at its length. Meg had relationships and connections throughout the Delaware Valley, of course, but more than that, she and her family had embodied the blending of some beautiful and long-conflicted aspects of Philadelphia’s history and culture. They had learned to live with and revel in the tensions inherent in certain traditions here. Their roots were that deep. Their hearts were that open. Hers most of all.
That background is one reason Meg has been the ideal face of the campaign to bring the World Cup to Philadelphia and promote it once it was here, to play up and celebrate the happy marriage of soccer and the city. It also is the reason that — through every match, every publicity event, every meeting, every long and restless night before and during this tournament, all while the eyes of the globe had been on Philadelphia — she has been holding all that pride in the same palm as so much pain.
Meg Kane looks at a photo of her mother among old family photos in her Philadelphia apartment in May. The photos were recovered from the scene of an April 2024 house fire in Ambler that killed both of her parents.
Everything essential in life
There she is again. Another quickie interview on Fox29. Another guest spot on a PHLY Sports panel. Another four paragraphs of insightful quotes to us at The Inquirer. Another Amtrak ride up to New York or 14-hour flight to Doha, Qatar, to see what she could learn, then another debrief with her colleagues at Philadelphia Soccer 2026. Here’s what they did. Here’s why it did or didn’t work. Here’s what we can and should do.
Nothing new for Meg Kane. Nothing out of the ordinary. Revitalizing Tastykake’s brand and business when its headquarters relocated from Hunting Park to the Navy Yard … making ready the way for Pope Francis’ visit to town in 2015 … counseling the Philadelphia Orchestra and the archdiocese … all this at the tenderest of ages, all this before she turned 45 in January.
“When the odds are against us,” said her friend Christopher Pinto, the development lead of the Philly Pops, “this city calls Meg Kane to make the impossible possible.”
Meg Kane (center) speaks at a press conference about preparations for the FIFA World Cup in May at Lincoln Financial Field.
Who was better to evangelize about Philadelphia, to make the case that it was an ideal location for the biggest event in the world’s most popular sport? Who else had the requisite combination of local expertise and enthusiasm to share the multitudes that the city contained? Meg’s mother, Debbie, and biological father, Richard, had divorced not long after Meg was born. Debbie then married Steve Wood in September 1983 — a Little Flower alumna and a North Catholic graduate reconnecting 15 years after they’d met as teenagers on the Wildwood boardwalk.
Meg wasn’t yet 3 when Steve became her stepfather, but the word was appropriate only in its most literal sense. He was Dad, too, and she was his daughter, full stop, and everything that was essential in his life became essential in hers …
… and everything included their early-afternoon car trips together starting when Meg was 7, when Steve would pick her up after another half-day at St. Martin of Tours School and drive down I-95 to 13th and Walnut, to the bar that Steve and his brother, Bill, had opened in 1980, to Woody’s — to the best-known gay social establishment that Philadelphia has ever known. While Steve balanced the books, Meg — still in her Catholic school uniform, her plaid skirt and saddle shoes — sat at the bar, the daytime bartenders fixing her fresh cherry Cokes, making them the right way, muddling the fruit and filling her glass with fountain soda, the little girl chatting up the customers and playing Ms. Pac-Man on the arcade machine upstairs and remaining mostly oblivious, never thinking anything there was strange or sinful, her parents never suggesting anything was.
As a child, Meg Kane’s afternoons sometimes included stops at her dad and uncle’s bar, Woody’s.
The cognitive dissonance might have caused constant friction in one family or torn another apart. It didn’t exist within Meg’s. Steve had one rule about the visits that Meg, her younger sister, Liz, and their younger brother, Stephen, made to Woody’s: If you see someone there you know, keep it to yourself. “It was important we never outed anybody,” Meg said. “At that time, there were people for whom Woody’s was an oasis, an escape, the one place they could be themselves.”
The bartenders there picked up extra work at Liz’s and Stephen’s christening parties. Bill’s partner, Lee Mallon, showed up to the family’s annual Christmas party dressed as Santa. Debbie, who became a principal at Norwood-Fontbonne Academy in Chestnut Hill after years of teaching in the archdiocese, loved to tell the story about the earnest couple who made an appointment to tell her something troubling … except the delicate topic had nothing to do with the couple’s children. The husband had been downtown, and he and his wife had been praying about whether to share what he saw with Debbie, and, well … Your husband walked into Woody’s. And Debbie let out a belly laugh. Oh, I know … By the way, have you forgotten what my last name is?
At the height of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and ’90s, Steve and Bill kept employees on the payroll even though they couldn’t work anymore, held celebration-of-life luncheons at the bar, and covered the cost of memorial services and burials when no one else would. Those trips to hospitals and funeral parlors were rarely, if ever, spoken of within the Wood family. Steve’s mother had died when he was 4 and his father when he was 13. His siblings had raised him, and he considered business associates to be friends and friends to be family, and maybe a young woman who later would be charged with uniting a diverse but territorial city behind a common mission had to grow up immersed in such acceptance, such label-free loyalty.
There was Meg, riding with Steve every morning during her high school years from their new home in the Montgomery County suburbs to Academy of Notre Dame in Villanova — a school with a great speech-debate program for a teenager who knew she’d end up talking for a living — the two of them listening to WIP throughout those 45-minute commutes. “It’s how I learned to be a sports fan,” she said. “My passion was cultivated because of our relationship.” There was Liz, going her own way at Mount St. Joseph Academy. There was Stephen, heading off to St. Joseph’s Prep. But it wasn’t until Meg’s freshman year at La Salle, when a male student she didn’t know knocked on the door of her dorm room to thank her — Your family owns Woody’s, right? I don’t know what I would have done without it — that she perceived her family as resting at the center of every Venn diagram of Philadelphia, sharing something in common with every group and subgroup.
I met her during the first semester of her junior year at La Salle, when she took a journalism class I was teaching in the fall of 2001. It is an intimidating thing to be a 26-year-old adjunct professor, to have taught for just two years, and to suspect immediately that one of your students is smarter and wiser and more sophisticated than you are. Ten days into the term, on Tuesday, Sept. 11, she proved she was.
Class began at 9 a.m. I tried to get 20 minutes worth of lecture time in as black smoke billowed from the World Trade Center towers and my students, a few of whom hailed from New York and North Jersey, chewed their fingernails and fidgeted in their chairs. Finally, Meg shot me a look that said, I know you mean well, but … please, we gotta get out of here. When the class reconvened later that week, I asked for the students’ forgiveness for my stupid officiousness, for my failure to read the classroom, and we spent the rest of the period discussing and venting about the terrorist attacks and their aftermath. In September 2011, Meg sent me a letter — not an email, not a direct message, a letter, on paper, more permanent — recalling that week. You did what a teacher is supposed to do, she wrote. You earned our trust, and you never lost it. It remains a treasured gift, that letter and its contents, that benefit of the doubt, that measure of grace that I hadn’t earned and didn’t deserve.
By then, Steve and Bill had sold Woody’s and opened another bar, Knock, and Meg had lifted off and would continue climbing in her career: from La Salle — she was her class’s commencement speaker — to graduate school at Maryland; from earning a master’s degree to planning and publicizing some of the city’s biggest events; from getting a text message in November 2019 from Angela Val, who was the CEO of the city’s convention and visitors bureau at the time, to meeting her that night at the Ritz Carlton. We need you, Val told her. We’re going to bid on the World Cup.
It was the project of a lifetime. It gave her the runway and credibility to open her own PR firm, Signature 57, in 2021. It put her front and center as the captain of the city’s World Cup cheerleading squad — “the Pied Piper of Philly soccer,” someone called her. And she still could be the daughter and sister and friend she’d always been, ready at a moment’s notice to give whatever had to be given. Drive five hours one way to attend the funeral of a colleague’s parent? It’s a day. What’s a day? Get off a plane after a week of work in Ireland and head straight to a chamber of commerce dinner that night? Work an 80-to-100-hour week? Of course. How else would she be there for her family if she didn’t excel in her professional life, if she didn’t squeeze her responsibilities and extra efforts into the smallest possible windows of time?
Yes, she thought it, too: Something like this doesn’t happen to someone like me. But things did happen. Debbie retired and, without her work in education, struggled in the void, losing weight, chain-smoking so much that her favorite blanket became pocked with holes where fallen ashes — and even the still-lit tip of one of her Merit Menthols, as she was dozing off — had burned through the wool. Stephen moved back in with his parents after finishing at Penn State and stayed with them for nine years, teaching English at Norwood, helping Steve care for Debbie. Liz and her husband, Michael McCabe, both faculty members at La Salle College High School, lost a baby daughter, Eleanor, and one night, Steve sat with Meg at his dining room table, a Phillies game on TV in the background. He had grown up without a mother and father. He had watched dear friends waste away to a deadly virus. Yes, these things and more did happen, but “my dad,” Meg said, “had an incredibly positive view of the world,” and at the table, he described to her how he had tried to comfort Liz.
Don’t despair, he said. Don’t despair. It’s the only way to keep going.
The horror of a ticking clock
On Thursday, April 4, 2024. Meg was in a room at the Fairmont in Washington, D.C., already awake for close to two hours, writing and rewriting speeches and teleprompter scripts for the Horatio Alger Association Awards, a three-day event for the philanthropic juggernaut that had become a signature project for Signature 57: a CEO’s retirement, the introduction of 12 new members, two major dinners, an undertaking so massive that Meg and four coworkers bunkered for a week in the hotel to complete it.
Still in her pajamas, she was trudging to the bathroom to wash her face when her phone buzzed and lit up pink, the color that meant Liz was calling. She assumed something was wrong with Francis, Liz and Mike’s 4-month-old son.
Meg looked at her phone. It was 6:42 a.m.
Liz?
Meg, she shrieked, I’m watching the house burn down!
What?
I’m watching the news. I’m holding the baby, feeding the baby, and the house is on fire!
Meg told Liz to call the police. She put her phone down and walked to the bathroom, violently shaking, and did not wash her face. She called her boyfriend, Keith Audit, and told him, I need you to find out if my parents’ house in on fire, and Liz called back and said that the police had told her that someone would be in touch and she had tried calling Steve’s phone but it had gone right to voicemail and Liz kept saying, It’s definitely the house, and I don’t know what to do, and then Meg said out loud an irrational thing: We have to call Norwood. Stephen’s a teacher. Stephen’s not going to make it to school. Someone has to let Norwood know to get a sub. And Meg hung up with Liz and called Shannon Craige, Norwood’s curriculum director, who told her the students were on spring break and Norwood was closed.
Meg looked at her phone. It was 6:53 a.m.
She called Stephanie Bambach, the vice president of Signature 57, who was in a room above her. When she arrived at Meg’s room, Bambach was surprised that Meg’s demeanor was as measured as it was. She was not surprised that Meg’s voice was trembling.
I have to finish writing the remarks for Saturday night, Meg said. I’m only halfway done. I can’t leave.
It doesn’t matter, Meg.
Meg reopened her laptop and emailed every document and every draft of every unfinished document to Bambach. She grabbed a black striped sweater and a pair of black leggings, went into the bathroom, and got dressed.
“I remember looking at myself in the mirror,” she said later, “and saying, ‘You will never wear these clothes again.’”
Bambach arranged for a car service to pick up Meg at the hotel and drive her back to Philadelphia. The two of them rode an elevator down to the lobby. Meg held her room key. She tried to hand it to Bambach.
In case, Meg said, someone needs to use my room.
Bambach didn’t take the key. Keep it. Good thoughts. It’s going to be OK. You might come back.
I’m not coming back, Meg said. It’s not going to be OK.
In the back seat of a black sedan, Meg’s phone rang again.
I’m at the house, Liz said. I just spoke with a detective. Mommy and Daddy didn’t make it.
Meg took a deep breath. Where. Is. Stephen?
He’s OK, Liz said. He got out.
Meg looked at her phone. It was 7:43 a.m.
The black sedan pulled up to her apartment. Keith was waiting for her. She threw her bags in his car, and they drove to Temple University Hospital’s burn unit. Stephen was there, in a bed in a room in the back, his face and body covered in soot. That acrid, sickening odor. Physically, somehow, he was fine.
“We were the luckiest people on that floor,” Meg said later. “He was going to get out of that bed and go home. That day couldn’t have been worse, but my God, it could have been.”
She looked at her phone. It wasn’t yet 11 a.m.
Miles away
Two months. That’s how long she stepped away. From the World Cup campaign. From Signature 57. From everything except what was gone and what remained.
The fire’s official cause was undetermined. Its damage was incalculable. Steve and Debbie had no wills. Their birth certificates and Social Security cards were gone. Meg had to pick up the mail and pay the mortgage and pay other bills and access both their personal bank account and the finances for Knock and show up for every meeting with every lawyer and builder and contractor, everything moving incredibly fast and in slow motion at the same time, so many dear memories now coldly cataloged on an Excel spreadsheet.
She did not talk about the fire at all in public and only rarely in private. Her last name was not Wood; few strangers, if any, knew her connection to the tragedy. The relative anonymity was meager relief from the pressure she piled on herself. Who else could handle the fallout? Who else could inch everyone a little closer to normal again? It had to be her.
She didn’t have a newborn to raise, like Liz and Mike did. She hadn’t awakened in the dead of night to dodge flames and hold her breath to keep smoke from seeping into her lungs, like Stephen had. Hell, her poor brother couldn’t even cradle his baby nephew two months after their parents’ deaths: A potent combination — a crackle of July 4 fireworks and a quick post-traumatic contemplation of the fragility of human life — compelled him to hand Francis off to someone, anyone, before something terrible happened again. Nothing she was dealing with came close. Hell, she had been 150 miles away when the house went up. She hadn’t even been there.
Her friends worried that she was pushing herself to the brink of a breakdown and beyond. “She’s really not someone who leans on people,” Bambach said. “I wish she had leaned on us more in the aftermath. So much of her identity is who she is as a leader of Signature, of Philly Soccer, and accepting help from people was a position she was really uncomfortable with. As her friend, I had moments when I wished she would just ask for help.”
Two months. She couldn’t bring herself to take more time away from work. She ping-ponged between her guilt over what she had to do for her family and her guilt over her desire to return to her career. “I really struggled with that,” she said. “Everyone is replaceable at work. If I’m not there, does it run better without me? Are people doing better? Philadelphia World Cup 2026 — is it running better and smoother? Are they finding this to be easier without me? I thought about that even with Signature 57. I’m the founder and CEO, and I still grapple with that. You can go to dark places.”
Meg Kane was out of town the night a house fire killed her parents.
The things that remain
On the kitchen table of her Fairmount apartment, Meg Kane reached into a box to handle the delicate pieces of her parents’ past and her present. Three pages from a memoir by talk-show host Mika Brzezinski, their edges singed black, survived the fire; Meg found them when she first returned to the house’s site. A couple of old family photo albums, the pictures mounted under sticky plastic, the books stashed in a sealed Tupperware container, seem untouched, save for their smoky smell. “It’s really hard to …” she said. “It takes you back there.” So does a black magnetic card that she lifted out of the box. The key to her room at the Fairmont. She kept it.
There’s a vision she can’t shake: Steve waking Stephen up, making sure he got out of the house, then remaining at Debbie’s side, knowing he could not leave her, his children knowing he never would. He had to be so scared in those final moments. He had to be so brave.
“At the end, there’s just grief,” Meg said. “I’m not sure I’ve dealt with the grief. I don’t know I’ve felt it all the way. I don’t know that I’ve allowed it to be something I fully felt.”
So she stores it away, lets it out only during the brief and rare breaks in her schedule, when the events and interviews have paused and some stillness and quiet return to her life. In May, Stephen proposed to his girlfriend, and at the engagement party, Meg pulled him aside for a conversation. It lasted 15 minutes. “It was the talk that everybody was avoiding all night,” he said, a talk about how much he had grown over the last few years, “the kind of talk you would want from your mom or dad.”
It was the happiest moment in a spring and summer that have had many happy ones. She partied on Lemon Hill in Fairmount Park and marched with several hundred Croatian soccer fans from Center City to Old City and rode a subway train quaking from the chants and songs of Brazil’s futbol fanatics, and she saw Philadelphia reveal itself as a world-class sports showcase. They are just Band-Aids, to be sure, covering the paper cuts of knowing that her parents never got to meet their son’s fiancée or hear their grandson speak his first word. But for those of us fortunate enough to call her a friend, they are the answer to the question we were asking as we stood in that church two years ago. How would she get through each day? How would she keep this up?
She did it by holding on to something a father told his daughters. She did it in the only way any of us can. She remembered that she has loved and is loved, and she did not despair.
For the Palestra’s 100th anniversary, Penn State is returning to the storied arena to face a Keystone State rival, Pittsburgh.
The matchup will be Nov. 8, and it’s the second straight season in which the programs have played at a neutral site — they faced off at the Giant Center in Hershey on Dec. 21, 2025. Penn State holds an 76-73 advantage all-time over Pitt.
This is also the fifth consecutive season in which the Nittany Lions will play at the Palestra.
— Penn State Men’s Basketball (@PennStateMBB) July 9, 2026
“Games like this are what college basketball is all about,” Penn State coach Mike Rhoades wrote in a release. “Great history, passionate fan bases, and high-level competition. The Palestra is one of the most iconic venues in college basketball, and the opportunity to celebrate its 100th anniversary while renewing an in-state rivalry for the 150th time makes this a special event for everyone connected to our program.
Pitt coach Jeff Capel added: “Every basketball player and coach in this country understands the significance of playing at the Palestra. It’s one of the great venues in the history of the sport, and to play Penn State there in its 100th Anniversary year is a truly unique opportunity. Our players will be walking into a building with a century of history behind it, and after the atmosphere we saw in Hershey last year, I can’t wait to see the energy our fans bring to a place like the Palestra.”
The matchup is the second major addition to the Palestra’s 100th anniversary slate announced this week. On Tuesday, Penn announced that its annual Cathedral Classic will expand from four to five teams, ditching its round-robin format. The event, which is Nov. 27-28, will feature host Penn, La Salle, Bucknell, Buffalo, and Towson.
Penn announced in January that the Palestra’s anniversary celebration will begin in late August.
The World Cup may have moved on from Philadelphia, and the United States may have bowed out of the tournament, but the FIFA Fan Festival in Lemon Hill is bringing in events designed to keep the party going.
As 10 days and eight nations remain in the World Cup, the Fan Festival’s commitment to remain open for the full 39 days of the tournament begins Sunday with four concerts, including pop star Bebe Rexha (July 17) and world-renowned electronic DJ Deadmau5 on July 16.
Typically, a Deadmau5 ticket starts at $85, according to secondary market sites. His concert, and the others, are free; fans just need to register on FIFA’s Fan Festival website for a daily ticket. Access into the festival is on a first-come, first-served basis with a max capacity of 15,000 people.
“Deadmau5 has shaped electronic music with his level of production and technicality. Bringing his unique live performance style to FIFA Fan Festival Philadelphia is something special,” Michael DelBene, executive producer of FIFA Fan Festival in Philadelphia, said. “We truly believe there is something in this lineup for everyone and we hope to see visitors and Philadelphians alike come out and join us at Lemon Hill for their favorite act.”
Moar Free Shows 'n' Stuff
♦️ Thursday, July 16 ♦️ 7 PM ♦️ Lemon Hill, East Fairmount Park
— FIFA World Cup 26 Philadelphia™ (@FWC26Philly) July 9, 2026
In addition to Deadmau5 and Rexha, singer-songwriter Wisin performs on Sunday, followed by the return of the All-American Rejects, a pop-punk band that was one of the early acts at the Fan Festival on June 13.
With the World Cup set to end July 19, DelBene and Philadelphia Soccer 2026 noted that there could be further acts to come in addition to local artists, “cultural organizations, and community groups.”
FIFA Fan Festival at Lemon Hill Park as seen capacity crowds during the World Cup. They’re hoping that continues with a slate of free concerts next week.
FIFA Fan Festival free concert schedule
Sunday, July 12: Wisin, 2 p.m. (Festival gates open at noon and close at 4 p.m.)
Monday, July 13: All-American Rejects, 7 p.m. (Festival gates open at 5 p.m. and close at 9 p.m.)
Thursday, July 16: Deadmau5, 7 p.m. (Festival gates open at 5 p.m. and close at 9 p.m.)
Friday, July 17: Bebe Rexha, 7 p.m. (Festival gates open at 5 p.m. and close at 9 p.m.)
The Flyers’ pre-Fourth of July fireworks have officially become a dud.
On July 3, the team set off a bombshell when it tendered an offer sheet to Anaheim Ducks center Leo Carlsson. It came with a five-year contract worth an average annual value of $18 million. According to a league source, the deal was front-loaded with a heavy signing bonus — and signing bonuses every year of the deal. Carlsson would receive the league minimum in base salary every year, a deal Carlsson said was “too good to pass on.”
“It was an offer that 99% of people would sign too,” Carlsson told reporters on Thursday. “It’s a pretty simple answer. I really wanted to be here though. I really wanted them to match. I want to be an Anaheim Duck.”
That contract is now under control of the Anaheim Ducks, who matched the offer sheet on Thursday, a day before the 3 p.m. Friday deadline. The Ducks cannot trade Carlsson, who now has the highest AAV in the NHL, for one year.
“Did we expect the offer sheet to be this high? No. We did not see that one coming,” Verbeek told reporters on Thursday. “But we’re very confident, with the cap going up and the ability of Leo to make strides of improvement and become an elite player, we feel confident this contract will be a good one in the end.”
Did they leave enough cap space? The Ducks do have to re-sign restricted free agent Cutter Gauthier. But that is Anaheim’s problem now.
Carlsson was the type of top-line center the Flyers have been longing for since Claude Giroux was traded to the Florida Panthers in March 2022. Giroux, who was rumored to be interested in a return to the Flyers, inked a one-year deal to stay with the Ottawa Senators on Tuesday.
The offer sheet was always a long shot, but for a Flyers team that hopes its days at the bottom of the standings are done, it was one of scarce options. Since 2010, only nine players have signed an offer sheet, and six were matched. Top-six centers Sebastian Aho and Ryan O’Reilly, and now Carlsson, are among the group to be retained by their original team. The Flyers now have to pivot elsewhere to find a potential top-line center solution this offseason.
Could the Flyers take a swing at Columbus Blue Jackets center Adam Fantilli?
Aaron Portzline of The Athletic reported that Blue Jackets center Adam Fantilli, the No. 3 overall pick in 2023, could be the Flyers’ next target. Since Columbus is in the division, he would be difficult to pry away via trade, but could be amenable to an offer sheet. Fantilli was not eligible for arbitration.
Fantilli set career highs with 35 assists and 59 points in 2025-26. Across his 213 career games, Fantilli has 140 points (67 goals, 73 assists) but he hasn’t yet lived up to the high expectations of his record NCAA freshman season at Michigan, when he became just the third freshman to win the Hobey Baker Award as the nation’s top player, after Jack Eichel and Paul Kariya. That might make him easier to pry away, but the team runs the risk of giving up four first round picks for a middle-six player.
The Flyers are unlikely to make an attempt at the Chicago Blackhawks’ Connor Bedard, who is out for at least four months after undergoing shoulder surgery. The Blackhawks have nearly $30 million in cap space, per PuckPedia, and almost certainly would match any offer, assuming Bedard signed it.
Had the Ducks not matched the Carlsson offer sheet, the Flyers would have sent their next four first-round picks to Anaheim in return.
According to PuckPedia, the Flyers have a smidge over $29.5 million in cap space; however, that number includes center Jett Luchanko‘s contract ($941,667), and Flyers general manager Danny Brière told The Inquirer in early June that the expectation is he will be in Lehigh Valley of the American Hockey League. They still need to re-sign restricted free agents Trevor Zegras and Jamie Drysdale, who filed for arbitration on Sunday.
U.S. star Christian Pulisic fractured his right leg during the Americans’ World Cup loss to Belgium and will be sidelined for several weeks, a person familiar with the injury said Thursday.
The person spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the diagnosis, first reported by the Athletic, had not yet been announced by the U.S. Soccer Federation.
Pulisic has a bone bruise and a microfracture of his tibia and fibula, the person said. He is expected to be able to resume training before AC Milan’s Serie A opener at Torino on Aug. 23, the person added.
Christian Pulisic (second from right) on the bench after leaving the U.S.-Belgium game.
Pulisic hit a leg of Belgium captain Youri Tielemans while attempting a shot in the 52nd minute of Monday’s 4-1 round of 16 loss in Seattle. He remained in the game but was hobbling, and Sebastian Berhalter replaced him in the 59th minute.
The Hershey native failed to score in the World Cup, missed one of the Americans’ five matches because of a calf injury, and left two other games early. He has 33 goals in 90 international appearances.
Pulisic, who turns 28 in September, is entering his fourth season with Milan.
France star Kylian Mbappé on Monday condemned a Paraguayan senator over racist remarks she made following Paraguay’s loss to France in the round of 16 at the World Cup.
Mbappé called Celeste Amarilla, a senator from Paraguay’s Liberal Radical Party, a “despicable woman” who was “unworthy” of serving in Paraguay’s Congress.
“Through your recklessness and your brazen racism, the entire world has already forgotten the journey and the historic effort that your players accomplished during this World Cup,” Mbappé wrote on X.
Amarilla posted a series of racist comments on X after Mbappé converted the winning penalty in France’s victory over Paraguay on Saturday, mocking the French captain’s origins, upbringing, education and appearance. France advanced to the quarterfinals, where it will face Morocco on Thursday.
Late Monday, Amarilla issued an open letter in French and Spanish to Mbappé on social media, in which she said her problem was with the player, not the country of France. She wrote that she regretted mistreating Mbappé with “the same insults” she’s received as a mixed-race person and that she had deleted her post.
But she also demanded an apology from Mbappé, accusing him of gender-based violence in his comments about her, and threatening legal action if he didn’t retract them.
The Associated Press emailed France’s team media officers for comment on Amarilla’s letter.
The Paraguayan government released a statement Monday afternoon condemning Amarilla’s remarks as “contrary to the values and principles that inspire peaceful coexistence and respect for human dignity that our country promotes.” It added that the senator’s comments do not represent either the Paraguayan government or the Paraguayan people.
The French Football Federation on Monday denounced Amarilla’s comments as “utterly abhorrent” and “unacceptable,” adding that it would refer the matter to prosecutors.
France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, and sports minister Marina Ferrari voiced support for the national team’s captain.
“By targeting Kylian Mbappé, the senator is attacking everything our captain embodies and everything our country stands for: liberty, equality and fraternity,” Ferrari wrote on X.
“One more goal for Kylian Mbappé. This time against racism,” Macron wrote on X, adding the captain had his “full support.”
France’s assistant coach Guy Stéphan also condemned the remarks on Monday.
“In three words, it’s indignant, abject, scandalous,” he said.
Before Saturday’s match, former Paraguay goalkeeper José Luis Chilavert referred to France as “a squad from Africa.” Philippe Diallo, president of the FFF, said Chilavert “was once a great goalkeeper” who had now “fallen into disgrace.”
“I didn’t know that, my grandpa just told me,” Jaylen said in the clip. “I don’t think [A.J.] knows that, either.”
But if A.J. didn’t know before, he does now. He responded on Instagram by posting a clip from the movie Poetic Justice on his story with the caption “Big Cuz hit me!”
#Patriots WR A.J. Brown posts on Instagram after finding out he and #76ers Jaylen Brown are cousins:
— New England Sports Fellow (@_JosephManning) July 8, 2026
While Jaylen grew up in Marietta, Ga., A.J. grew up in Starkville, Miss., about 300 miles away. But despite their different upbringings, there are still a few things that clearly run in the family, starting with their elite athleticism.
They also went back-to-back in winning their championships, with Jaylen winning an NBA championship in the 2023-24 season with the Celtics and A.J. following with a Super Bowl win in the 2024-25 season.
Fans also pointed out that the colors surrounding the teams involved in each trade is similar with both Jaylen and A.J. originally wearing green and white before going to a team with a red, white, and blue colorway.
Jaylen Brown and AJ Brown:
– Disgruntled Star players – Won a title in the city that traded them – Centerpiece of a Boston-Philly trade pic.twitter.com/FkR6p8tax4
Jaylen shared the details of the Brown family tree during an event at Massachusetts Institute of Technology for his 7uice Foundation, which focuses on bridging the gap for opportunities for underserved youth.
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey proclaimed that July 7 will now be known as 7uice Foundation day in the state going forward.
During the same event, Jaylen met with a young Celtics fan who went viral for his reaction following his trade to Philly.
Known on social media as “Gio the Tiger,” the young fan went viral after video showed him crying over the trade with his Celtics jersey on and what read “Filla” written over the Boston team’s name. The text on the video said that the 6-year-old was experiencing his “first heartbreak” after learning the news of his favorite player’s trade.
After Jaylen commented on the original post reminding Gio they’d “always be friends,” the duo connected in person where he was also able to deliver a hand-written note to Jaylen and interview him as well.
This is what Boston will be missing. A true community leader.
When Jimmy Amplo’s high school baseball coach told him the news, the 17-year-old couldn’t believe it. At the start of the week, Amplo was playing travel ball with the Philly Bandits. This weekend, he will be batting in his hometown team’s stadium, Citizens Bank Park.
Amplo, a rising senior at The Shipley School from Norristown, was selected as one of eight high school players from across the nation to compete in the MLB All-Star High School Home Run Derby.
“I thought it was a joke almost,” Amplo said. “Later that day, when I found out that it was actually real and that they had a spot for me, I was so excited.”
The 14th annual High School Home Run Derby is Friday (2 p.m. MLB.com) and has featured future major leaguers. Past participants include Phillies prospect Aidan Miller and major league stars Jordan Walker, Riley Greene, and Bobby Witt Jr., who won the high school derby in 2018 and will play in his third All-Star Game on July 14.
The High School Home Run Derby returns to All-Star week this Friday at Citizens Bank Park! 💥
Amplo earned an invitation to the derby in June, after hitting a 106.9 mph max exit velocity at Prep Baseball’s Pennsylvania showcase last month. The left-handed hitter posted a 1.295 OPS and .750 slugging percentage while notching 35 hits and five homers this season. He also helped lead the Gators to their second consecutive Friends Schools League championship in May.
“Jimmy was a huge part of those wins,” said Shipley coach Bryan Bendowski. “He was our starting center fielder/right fielder, and he is somebody who was very instrumental in the success of those two seasons.”
Entering the derby, Amplo has been refining his swing by focusing on timing. Still, he knows he’ll be an underdog among the other seven competitors.
Amplo is the only player in the contest who is not committed to a college program, and many of the others are nationally ranked prospects.
The field includes Kinon Bastian (Winter Garden, Fla.), who is committed to Florida; Brady Cunningham (Mokena, Ill.), who is bound for Texas A&M; Tavis Honeycutt (Newberry, Fla.), also a Florida recruit; Graham Keen (Pittsburgh, Mt. Lebanon High School), a Vanderbilt pledge and ranked No. 10 nationally in the class of 2027 by Prep Baseball Report; Sullivan Reed (Meridian, Miss.), who is committed to Mississippi State; Lubin Rincon (Pearland, Texas), who is bound for Texas and is No. 7 in PBR’s class of 2027 rankings; and Grant Westphal (Leawood, Kan.), who’s ranked fourth and also is committed to Texas.
Amid the big names, Bendowski is working to bolster Amplo’s confidence.
Jimmy Amplo is a rising senior at the Shipley School.
“I’ve been sort of preaching the Rocky mentality to him,” Bendowski said. “The underdog can always come out on top, so give it your best effort and let it fly.”
Amplo added: “I’m definitely a bit nervous, but I’m really excited, too. I’ve been looking up to players like Bryce Harper. I definitely like that he’s a great left-handed hitter and generates a lot of power and bat speed.”
The lifelong Phillies fan said many of his teammates, family, and coaches will be in the stands to watch him on Friday.
“This is what I’ve worked for and why I’ve trained my swing,” Amplo said. “Just being able to play at a ballpark that you grew up going to feels pretty cool, and to actually be able to bat on that field is special.”
When Eastern Regional’s track and field coach Mike Tangeman is asked about star senior runner Natalie Dumas, he will not call attention to the more than 20 program records she’s broken. Instead, he will mention that she does not own any of the program’s freshman records.
Before becoming one of the most accomplished runners in New Jersey history, Dumas first got involved with the sport as a freshman to bond with her sister, Kadence, who was then a senior.
As a junior, at the NJSIAA Meet of Champions, Natalie became the first girl in state history to place first in three events — the 400 meters, 400-meter hurdles, and 800 meters. A few weeks later, she placed first in the same three events at the New Balance Nationals held at Penn’s Franklin Field. Her accomplishment at both meets made Dumas a prominent name in national track circles and won the attention of the University of Arkansas, where she will be running next year.
This past year was no different. At June’s Meet of Champions in Pennsauken, Dumas placed first again in three events to cap her outdoor scholastic season. She clocked in at 57.04 seconds in the 400-meter hurdles, 52.14 in the 400 meter, and 2 minutes, 03.46 seconds in the 800 meter.
“With track, you have to trust the process because you work up into becoming better time wise,” Dumas said. “Obviously, you’re really out of shape at the beginning, and then you get better and better.
“At the end of the day I’m not afraid to lose.”
A ‘minor celebrity’
Last month, Dumas flew to Eugene, Ore., to compete in the USATF U20s and the Nike Nationals. To combat potential jetlag and the difference in climate, she arrived on the West Coast a few days before she was slated to race at University of Oregon’s Hayward Field.
In the U20s, she won a spot on the U.S. World team after a first-place finish in the 400-meter hurdles, running a season-best 56.13. The next day, she returned to the same track to compete in the 400-meter dash at the Nike Nationals and placed first at 52.21 to claim her eighth national title.
“It was a lot of races,” Dumas said. “But honestly, I didn’t even mind racing that much.”
Dumas’ participation in the Nike Nationals was possible because of the event’s intentional geography and calendar proximity to the U20s. It was also a sign of the ever-evolving nature of high school sports. Dumas is one of 20 female high school track and field athletes signed to Nike Elite. The program, which includes a coveted name, image, and likeness deal with the world’s largest supplier of athletic attire, has increased Dumas’ national appeal. It has also improved her performance on the track.
Natalie Dumas started running track as a freshman at Eastern Regional.
The partnership offers support from Nike’s team of trainers. Since signing with the company, Dumas has revamped her strength training regimen in line with Nike’s guidance and learned more about injury management. Through the program, she also connected with other Nike athletes and Nike Elite’s personal training staff.
“It’s just great overall,” Dumas said. “I feel like high school athletes tend to be more on the lazy side than everyone else, because they kind of don’t have anyone like kicking their butt into gear.”
“Sometimes being called out is embarrassing. [The Nike trainers] will say something like, ‘Hey, you didn’t finish this last set, go do it.’ But they definitely stay on top of you. … They all help us push to be our greatest.”
NIL is not the only change in Dumas’ life. After coming onto the national scene last year, Dumas’ popularity in the track world skyrocketed. The 17-year old currently has nearly 14,000 followers on Instagram.
“Coming into this year, she was a minor celebrity,” Tangeman said. “Dealing with all the attention and everyone knowing her. Other athletes from other schools saying hi to her, wanting to take pictures at meets and just all that other stuff. It was definitely a lot different.”
Dumas had to get used to the constant noise around her — which she admits has been “hard to handle” at times.
“At the end of the day, you shouldn’t worry about making sure everyone’s responded to and everyone’s answered to,” Dumas said. “If they’re closest to you and if they know you, they’ll kind of understand. [They will] be like, ‘Well, I know Natalie. I know the type of person she is, and she wouldn’t do that to me.’ It’s kind of just hard to keep up with it.”
‘Shape me into a better runner’
As one of the top talents in the country, Dumas had her pick of the upper-echelon of college programs, which was a blessing and a curse.
“It’s kind of like when you go to a restaurant and there’s a huge menu,” said Tangeman, laughing.
Dumas spent most of this past year scheduling and taking recruitment visits. In order to woo her, she said several programs pulled out all the stops. One treated her to an outing at Topgolf. Another pitched their school to her on a boat. Ultimately, it was the last school she visited that won her over.
Natalie Dumas runs the 400 meters, 800 meters, and 400-meter hurdles.
“[Arkansas] just set my goals in front of me,” Dumas recalled. “They said, ‘These are your goals, this is what you want to do. If that’s what you want to do, we will make an attempt to reach them.’
Arkansas has won three NCAA women’s outdoor track and field team titles since 2015, and another five in indoor track over that span.
“There’s not too much to be said about Arkansas. You look at the program, you look at the athletes that they have produced, and you see what they have done. I put my trust in them. I’m not afraid to run the workouts that they’re running, lift the workouts that they’re lifting. I’m not afraid to go out there and try something new, and I’m definitely excited for them to kind of just shape me into a better runner.”
While Dumas is looking forward to running at one of the best collegiate programs in the country, she is also mourning the end of her high school career. She graduated last month, cutting her Nike Nationals appearance a day early to make the ceremony. In the weeks since, she has found it “weird” to have a summer away from the track where she first learned to run.
“She brought a lot of positive attention our way,” Tangeman said. “Going forward, the kids coming up throughout our school system will say, ‘Hey, you know this Natalie Dumas? She ran track and field at Eastern, maybe that’s something I want to do too.’”
