Worcester boss Alan Solomons has signed a new deal, committing himself to the Premiership club until the end of the 2021-22 season.

The 68-year-old South African's contract was due to expire at the end of the 2019-20 campaign, but he has been given a two-year extension.

It comes the day after co-owner Jed McCrory quit, leaving Colin Goldring and Jason Whittingham in charge.

"Jason Whittingham and I think Alan has done a great job," said Goldring.

"Alan's contract extension ensures continuity and stability.

"We both support his vision and plan to achieve a sustainable top-flight team with the Three Pears Warriors Academy at its core, supported by top-class talented and experienced players."

Solomons joined Warriors in October 2017, initially as assistant to then boss Gary Gold, before being appointed director of rugby when Gold left two months later.

"I am honoured to be afforded the privilege of being part of Warriors' continuing journey," said former Edinburgh coach Solomons, who was also formerly USA Eagles director of rugby and also coached Northampton Saints and the Barbarians.

Warriors finished 10th in the Premiership last season, winning a campaign-best nine out of their 22 games.

They also reached the European Challenge Cup quarter-finals and the last four of the inaugural Premiership Rugby Cup.

Eddie Jones and assistant John Mitchell are set to continue as England's coaching team until at least summer 2021 after the Rugby Football Union abandoned its previous succession plan.

The union announced in January 2018 that Jones would develop a successor to ensure a smooth transition.

However, new RFU chief Bill Sweeney says this policy has now shifted.

"It is not about him grooming a successor," Sweeney told BBC Sport on Thursday.

Jones and Mitchell could both now stay even if England underperform at this year's Rugby World Cup, with Sweeney adding there is no strict break clause in Jones' deal.

It was previously expected Jones would only stay in his role if England reached the semi-finals in Japan.

"We will sit down and we will evaluate how it has gone and look at the performance and then make a decision which is in the best interests of England Rugby," Sweeney added.

"I think it is a bit unfair to say there is a clause in the contract and it is black and white.

"We feel we have got a really strong coaching set-up now, going through Japan and coming back for the almost-immediate Six Nations and the aftermath of that."

Former All Blacks coach Mitchell has signed a two-year extension to his deal, with Sweeney hailing his impact since joining the set-up last autumn and his strong working relationship with Jones.

However, Sweeney says Mitchell is not currently being earmarked to succeed Jones as head coach.

"He is a proven coach with great credentials, so that was purely the decision, it was nothing to do with succession planning," he said.

"Eddie was instrumental in that approach, and wanted John Mitchell to sign up and be part of his coaching team through to June of 2021, so we approached John from that perspective.

"That came after a conversation with Eddie about his commitment, and he has given that."

Sweeney is the RFU's fourth chief executive in as many years, and inherits a union in the midst of a cost-cutting drive.

However the former British Olympics chief says the financial outlook at Twickenham is not as bleak as he expected.

"It really is not a financial crisis," he said. "Inherently here at the RFU you have got a really strong business model.

"I would say we have gone through a little bit of a blip, a bit of a bump, but we are confident we are going to come out of that pretty strong."

CONCORD, N.C. – Though he set the fastest time in qualifying and finished third in his return to the Bojangles’ Summer Shootout on Tuesday night at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Bubba Wallace was far from satisfied with his results.

Wallace spent the day soaking in as much knowledge as he could during his first Legend car appearance at the 10-race summer series since 2012, a pursuit that was aided by the support of his longtime grassroots owner Chris Rogers, who the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series star returned to drive for.

The 25-year-old piloted a No. 76 dressed up in similar colors to one of the cars he drove for Rogers before at the Summer Shootout, progressively gaining on the setup and his skillset as the night went on.

“For me, it was a matter of learning all night,” noted Wallace. “All those little quirks and tricks that you could use to manipulate the car, I’ve kind of forgotten about, so it’s about getting those back and getting to a place where we can go out and win some races, because that’s what we’re here for.

“We weren’t the best tonight; we were really tight in (turns) one and two and just could not get the drive off (the corner) that we needed,” Wallace added. “In turns three and four, I thought we were OK, but it was just too late to make anything happen. It was great to come back out here, though.”

Wallace redrew the eighth starting position after qualifying on the pole, cracking the top five in just two laps and snagging third for good on the fifth revolution, taking advantage of the race’s lone restart after a caution for the stalled car of Ashton Higgins in turn four.

From there, Wallace stayed consistent but couldn’t stay with eventual winner Joey Padgett and runner-up Carson Ferguson, fading to four seconds adrift by the time the twin checkers waved over the field.

“I didn’t know if (Ryan) Mackintosh was going to take the top on that one choose (restart), and he did, but if he hadn’t then I would have and at least tried to make it a race up there,” Wallace said. “We settled in for third, though, and all in all … the car’s in one piece, so that’s a good day.

“Of course, I would have liked to have won, but for showing up with no practice and to sit on the pole (with the fastest time in qualifying) … that’s a good day,” he added. “My redraw skills just need to be a little bit better. This was a good time, but I forgot how long and drawn out these things are. I’m a little older and getting a little tired, but it’s a lot of fun to be back out here, for sure.”

Though he now races wheel-to-wheel with the best in American stock-car racing on a weekly basis, Wallace said there were a few pre-race jitters before he hit the track for Tuesday night’s 25-lap feature.

“I was actually nervous,” Wallace admitted. “I don’t get nervous on Sundays, but I was nervous sitting on the grid. The butterflies were going, for sure, but it ended up working out.”

Much like several of his Cup Series contemporaries who have returned to their short-track heritage in recent years, Wallace was drawn back to the Summer Shootout by a passion for the sport and the “fun factor” of driving a Legend car on the quarter-mile frontstretch oval at CMS.

“This is what racing is all about,” Wallace said. “You’ve seen it a lot lately, with (Kyle) Larson going back to his roots and running sprint cars … and other Cup guys, as well, going to more short tracks. It’s cool to see. The sport has changed so much, and the car counts have decreased from where it was for a long time here at the Summer Shootout, but hopefully my being here helps to spark some interest and maybe get some kids back in Bandoleros and Legend cars again. I had a blast.

“These things are so much fun to drive. Dirt guys will always put sprint cars on top of their ‘fun list’, but I’ll always say Legend cars are number one,” he added.

Ever the competitor, Wallace isn’t resting on his podium result. He’s focused on trophy hunting and intends to add to his 12 career Summer Shootout victories before the end of the season in July.

“We’ll just keep plugging away,” Wallace pointed out. “I know Chris and I aren’t happy with how we ran, so we might be bringing a new car next week. We’ll see.”

CONCORD, N.C. — The CARS Tour is one of the top late model organizations in the Southeast, putting on well-attended shows across the Carolinas and Mid-Atlantic.

Some of the top drivers in the formula — Josh Berry, Deac McCaskill, Tommy Lemons Jr. and others — are regular participants and they draw the big hitters from other groups on a regular basis: drivers such as Phillip Morris, Bubba Pollard and Peyton Sellers.

What the CARS Tour reminds me of, quite honestly, is the American Speed Ass’n when it was in its heyday during the late 1970s.

That’s the feeling I got recently while attending the Old North State Nationals at Orange County (N.C.) Speedway. It didn’t hurt that I attended an ASA race at Orange County that was televised on The Nashville Network, so it was easy to compare the two.

Sure, the ASA back then (2000 or so) was bigger than the CARS Tour. It had TV, sponsorship from ACDelco and others, and featured drivers the likes of Gary St. Amant, Tim Steele and Kevin Cywinski. The competition was fierce, as the .375-mile oval is built for close competition.

There are other comparisons.

In the old ASA, which I grew up around, had its factions. If you were a Bob Senneker fan, you didn’t mix with the Mike Eddy crowd. Dick Trickle was popular, but his fans were loyal to him and no one else.

It’s that way in the CARS Tour, too. Berry fans and Brandon Pierce fans aren’t cooking out together during down times, and there are other rivalries that are rather either/or.

That said, there is a feeling of us against the world when you get right down to it, and that is what makes the series great.

The ferocity of the racing is also similar. Nobody is giving an inch on the track when the money is on the line. For example, in the late stages of the Old North State Nationals, Berry and Lee Pulliam went at it for the $30,000 winner’s check. That late-race battle saw both drivers work to get the other into the marbles at the top of the track and take advantage.

Berry went first and didn’t get Pulliam high enough. Pulliam came back and did get Berry enough into the rubber that it killed his momentum and dropped him back to fourth. Pulliam wound up with the big money.

Many times, I saw the same thing happen in ASA with Trickle, Eddy, Senneker or Mark Martin winning a late-race battle for big stakes and the checkered flag. Like those battles, neither Pulliam nor Berry punted the other, and the race played out between the lines and without an egregious bump-and-run that resulted in one or the other — or both — in the fence.

The CARS Tour competes with the NASCAR Whelen All-American Series for drivers and prestige and while there might be more NWAAS races, there is not a lot of daylight between the two in terms of competition.

The CARS Tour seems to be more of an all-star tour, where the best drivers and teams go. It has that family feel, too, like the one Rex and Becky Robbins engendered in building ASA from local tracks in Indiana into a Midwestern powerhouse that at one point rivaled NASCAR.

Many drivers used ASA as a springboard to the big time. They include Rusty Wallace, Martin, Ted Musgrave, Glenn Allen Jr. and Jimmie Johnson, who ran a season with Howie Lettow for Chevrolet before going on to the NASCAR Xfinity Series and eventually winning seven NASCAR Cup Series titles.

A lot of what ASA did, I see the CARS Tour trying to do, and with a fair amount of success. Ty Gibbs is a frequent competitor, as is Layne Riggs, and development drivers such as Christian Eckes, Anthony Alfredo and Sam Mayer did a season or so in the CARS Tour before stepping up the ladder to the NASCAR K&N Pro Series or ARCA Menards Series.

If the CARS Tour continues to grow — and it will, I think — it could be the second coming of the American Speed Ass’n. The drivers you read about today could be the champions of tomorrow and that would be a wonderful thing.

COSTA MESA, Calif. – MotoAmerica has announced a slightly different qualifying procedure for the EBC Brakes Superbike, Supersport and Liqui Moly Junior Cup classes for this coming weekend’s Championship of Utah at the Utah Motorsports Campus.

Due to the time constrictions of the two-day schedule, Superpole has been eliminated for the UMC round and grid positions for the EBC Brakes Superbike class will be based on each rider’s fastest time from all qualifying practice sessions combined. With Superpole not on the schedule for UMC, Dunlop qualifying tires will not be made available.

For the Supersport and Liqui Moly Junior Cup classes, grid positions for race one will be based on the fastest time recorded by each rider in the qualifying practice, per usual. Grid positions for race two, however, will be based on the riders’ fastest lap from race one. Those classified as DNS will start race two from the back of the grid. Those riders who didn’t start race one will be gridded based on their qualifying time after all the other riders have been gridded.

“After our first two-day event at VIR, we requested feedback from our teams and modified the schedule and qualifying based on that feedback,” said MotoAmerica’s Chuck Aksland. “VIR posed some exciting challenges for the teams, and we think this change will both make the condensed schedule more manageable and a better show for our fans.”

KNOXVILLE, Iowa – Aussies Ian and Kerry Madsen are heading home. Not to Australia. Their other home – Knoxville, Iowa.

When the Madsen brothers moved to America, they landed in the Marion County city of 7,000 people. Their reason?

“It’s kind of the center of the sprint car universe,” said Kerry Madsen, the elder of the two brothers.

The core of that universe is Knoxville Raceway – a half-mile track that’s turned heroes of the Sprint Car world into legends. And the World of Outlaws NOS Energy Drink Sprint Car Series is returning to the iconic track for the first time this season on Friday, June 14, and Saturday, June 15 for the Brownells Big Guns Bash.

Since starting their 410 sprint car careers at the raceway in the early 2000s, both Madsen brothers have found success there. Kerry Madsen won the 2005 track championship and has 21 career Feature wins at the raceway – including a World of Outlaws Feature win. He was leading the points at the raceway before skipping the latest race to compete with the World of Outlaws at Granite City Speedway.

“I’ve always loved Knoxville,” Kerry Madsen said. “Fun place to race. Great crowd. Obviously tuning up for later in the year (for the prestigious Knoxville Nationals). Looking forward to it.”

Ian Madsen won the track championship in 2014 and 2017. He has 12 feature victories at the track, but is still seeking his first World of Outlaws feature win there. A win this weekend would go a long way for Madsen and his KCP Racing team.

Madsen, the 2018 World of Outlaws Kevin Gobrecht Rookie of the Year, claimed his fourth series win at Thunderbowl Raceway in March, but he has been searching for a return to the top-five since the beginning of April. Lately, his results have been a mix of top-10 and top-15 finishes.

“The last few weeks have been pretty rough,” Ian Madsen said. “We’ve had a lot of bad luck. I feel like a lot of it has been out of our control. We just really need to get a good night in and turn our luck around. I think if we just get some luck on our side it’ll take care of itself.”

Along with getting to go home, Madsen said he’s happy to get back to a bigger track after spending the last month mostly on smaller tracks.

“That’s what’s good about the Outlaws, you get to mix it up on all sorts of different tracks,” Madsen said. “Knoxville is the best track in the country, I feel. I look forward to going there.”

Kerry Madsen shares Ian’s sentiment, stating he enjoys the bigger tracks and loves the dedication people in Knoxville have to Sprint Car racing.

Not running full-time with the World of Outlaws, unlike Ian, Kerry Madsen said his one goal every race is to just win.

“Pretty simple,” he said with a grin.

His season this year started off slow, barely cracking the top-10, but lately Kerry and his team have found their rhythm, clicking off top-five finishes more consistently – including two podium finishes in his last five races.

While both he and Ian will be eyeing the win at Knoxville, the brothers don’t let the competition get between them. While many drivers isolate themselves to just their team during a race weekend, every time the Madsen brothers are at the same track its guaranteed you’ll find them together throughout the night.

“We’re always pretty close together,” Ian Madsen said. “It can get pretty lonely out here sometimes. So, it’s good to have him out here to hang out with on the off nights and stuff like that. I enjoy being out here with him. It’s just cool we can both be out here at the same time.”

Before Ian began his racing career at Knoxville, he worked on Kerry’s team.

“We’ve always been fairly close that way,” Kerry Madsen said.

While they’re close, and will share anecdotes about their race car, they’re still competitive. Advice isn’t always shared. For more than one reason, too.

“I try not to give him too much advice,” Kerry Madsen said. “I feel like I try to tell him something and it back fires and he ends up going slower. I just let him figure it out.”

INDIANAPOLIS – The logo for the 104th Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge captures four essential elements – tradition, speed, excitement and innovation – of The Greatest Spectacle in Racing within the framework of the new logo system introduced last year.

Bold, dynamic colors and features form the core of the 2020 logo. At the heart of the design is a continuation of the type lock-up introduced with the unveiling in May 2018 of the logo for the 103rd Running of the race.

“The logo for the 104th Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge acknowledges the traditions and grand legacy of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway while propelling ‘The Greatest Spectacle in Racing’ forward, racing for what’s next,” Indianapolis Motor Speedway President J. Douglas Boles said. “This colorful design reminds everyone of the power and pageantry of the world’s greatest race. The logo is the ‘500;’ it is May.”

The wordmark is athletic, prestigious and confident, and includes a rich red shield that contrasts with gold, the color of the iconic Wing and Wheel logo of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. This lock-up creates a strong, consistent annual brand appearance for the event.

A new feature of this year’s logo is a checkered flag pattern that races upward and forward behind the shield, symbolizing the goal of every competitor in the race and the rich history of champions at IMS.

BOSTON -- It's Jan. 2, and the St. Louis Blues are the worst team in the NHL. They're porous defensively and underwhelming offensively. Their meticulously crafted roster has failed the chemistry test. They fired their coach, Mike Yeo, 43 days earlier, but haven't improved under interim coach Craig Berube. For lack of a more clinical term, they stink.

Brayden Schenn thought about that dour moment in the season as he lifted the Stanley Cup on Wednesday night, after the Blues ended a 52-year drought with their Game 7 win in Boston. He thought about what the Brayden Schenn who was in last place on Jan. 2 would say if he received a message from Brayden Schenn, Stanley Cup champion, telling him to just hang in there for a few more months.

"[He'd say] you're a liar. We're in last place," Schenn said. "But you keep on fighting. You keep on believing."

Schenn glanced around the ice at his teammates as they hugged loved ones and took photos with the Stanley Cup on the Bruins' home ice. "This doesn't feel real," he said. "It's absolutely incredible. It feels like a video game we're in."

Here's the thing about video games: When they don't go your way, there's a remedy. You hit the reset button.

Down to one life on the first level? Finish fourth in the first race? Give up three goals in the first 10 minutes of a game? Hit the reset button.

Lingering in last place on Jan. 2? Hit the reset button.

"We put everything on the line from Jan. 3 on, and we deserve this," winger Patrick Maroon said after Game 7. "All these people, all these media, they doubted us all year long. And we shoved it right up their ass."

From Jan. 3 through the end of the regular season, the Blues went 29-10-5. Berube unlocked something in this team through straightforward communication and a north-south forechecking game that eventually was like a wrecking ball swinging through the Stanley Cup playoffs.

The Blues' doldrums were a distant memory. Step by step, they walked away from them.

"The coaching change happened. The other guy was a good guy. But then he'd come to practice, and I don't think he had the players' attention," said Bob Plager, an original Blues player who now works in their community relations department. "Then they get the new coach, Berube. You gotta love him. He's old-school, I think. He played over 1,000 games, but he had to work every year. He was the kind of player we were. You went out there and you worked and you learned the game and you understood. You made the mistakes. You corrected them."

And then you forget about them.

If there's anything that defined the Blues in their successful quest for the Stanley Cup, it was their uncanny ability to move beyond adversity. Devastating losses were quickly followed by victories. For example, the consecutive losses in the series against Winnipeg and Dallas that were followed by consecutive victories to close out those matchups.

Calamitous moments were overcome through obliviscence. Such as that undetected hand pass that led to a San Jose Sharks win in Game 3 of the Western Conference final, then led to three straight St. Louis wins to advance to the Stanley Cup Final.

"After the game, I just came in [the dressing room] and talked," Berube recalled. "We talked about how you just gotta move on. The call, you can't change it now. It is what it is."

The Blues experienced deflating moments such as the devastating losses in Game 3, the first Stanley Cup Final home game in franchise history since 1970, and Game 6, when they had a chance to win the Cup in front of those starved fans. They followed each with a win, including in Game 7.

"Every guy on our team has a ton of character," forward Zach Sanford said after Game 3. "We're a really close group, and we all have each other's backs. A tough loss like that, I think [on] a lot of teams, a lot of guys would have started throwing each other around the bus, blaming other people and doing this and that. With this group it's all just boosting each other and having each other's back."

Each time adversity hit, the Blues hit the reset button. "Things don't really seem to faze us," captain Alex Pietrangelo said.

That's especially true for their goalie, rookie Jordan Binnington, who was 14-2 this season with a 1.78 goals-against average and a .936 save percentage after losses. This was a rookie goalie who, when asked whether playing front of a hostile crowd in Winnipeg made him nervous, shot back with, "Do I look nervous?"

He won all three games in Winnipeg. He won three more in Boston. He did this all season, from the moment he won the crease.

"It's just his calmness and his mannerisms more than anything," Berube said. "I think he goes back in there and he feels really confident about himself."

Between Berube and Binnington, the Blues resurrected their season.

"I think the guys realized with this coach and that goaltender, there are games going into the third period where they're tied or a goal behind," Plager said. "And they start to realize, hey, this goaltender is giving us a chance to win some games. So we started winning games. The players became believers."

And they believed they were playing for more than just one another.

This Cup is for Bob Plager.

He was on the first Blues team that existed in 1967-68 and played 616 games with the franchise. He paced the hallways during playoff games, too nervous to watch. He stood in their locker room, teary-eyed, after the Blues eliminated the Sharks to advance to the Cup Final. His face adorned the giant video screen before home games against Boston, telling fans and the team, "Hey buddy, let's make history."

To many outsiders, the Blues are the NHL's equivalent of wallpaper, always present but rarely commented on. They make the playoffs with frequency but never do much with the opportunity. Ask someone what "Blues culture" is; at worst, you'll get a blank stare, at best, they'll assume you're talking about B.B. King.

Plager, naturally, pushes back on that notion. Buried in the franchise's DNA, obscured by decades of mediocrity, are the building blocks of a champion. Those first Blues teams had Hall of Famers like Dickie Moore and Doug Harvey, who'd made names for themselves with the Montreal Canadiens. They set the example for Bob and Barclay Plager and Red Berenson, who set the example for Brian Sutter and Bernie Federko, who set the example for Brett Hull, who set the example for Chris Pronger. It continued with David Backes setting the example for Alex Pietrangelo. It continued further with Ryan O'Reilly setting the example for this team, from the moment he arrived via trade from Buffalo last July.

"You got a guy like O'Reilly that comes in here at the start of the year. Every shift, he played," Bob Plager said. "There's no cheating in his game. That rubbed off on some of the players. They saw the way you're supposed to play."

In Plager, O'Reilly saw an honorable ex-player and an important link to his new franchise's past. Last August, when the Blues unveiled their new third jerseys, Plager handed one to O'Reilly. Plager recalled whispering to him: "You know, I need my parade." He said O'Reilly responded, "Well, we're going to get you one."

And he did.

These Blues are connected to previous generations of players, and intentionally so. For example, a pair of Plager's hockey gloves from the 1960s were used as the "player of the game" trinket in the Blues' postgame celebrations this season.

"It's just a tribute to guys who built this thing to get us where we are," Pietrangelo said. "I think we all know what Bobby stands for in this organization and this city, so it's fun for us to get him to be part of our group in some way. Nobody loves this organization more than Bobby, especially with the effort and time he gives."

This Cup is for Bernie Federko, too.

He played all but one of his NHL seasons in St. Louis, scoring 1,130 points in 1,000 career games and making the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2002. He reached the playoffs 11 years. He reached the conference final once. He has lived vicariously through this year's team.

"You always want to feel a part of it," he said as he stood in the middle of the Blues' Cup celebration. "I'm proud to be a Blue. More than ever. I'm always proud. But this makes one step higher on the totem pole. Because now you feel that we, as an organization, that we, as a carrier of the Blue Note, get to achieve this goal. It's so surreal to be standing on this ice right now. It blows me away."

This one is for Brett Hull and Chris Pronger and Kelly Chase and every other Blues alum who remained around the organization and acted like a booster club for this team during the playoffs.

Pietrangelo said his teammates are playing for not only themselves but also the Blues who came before them. "Those guys have built the foundation of this organization, and they represent the Blue Note pretty well. We try and carry that on," he said.

The Blues are a family. One that extends all the way to the stands.

Lalia Anderson gingerly walked on the ice toward her friend Colton Parayko. The Blues defenseman spotted her, skated over and dropped to his knees, his arms spread wide. He let out a jubilant laugh as he embraced her and she gripped him tight.

Anderson has hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis, a disease with which only 15 other children in the world have been diagnosed. Her love of the Blues, she said, is one of the things that has helped her through treatments and recovery.

Blues players Alexander Steen and Parayko befriended her at the St. Louis Children's Hospital. Parayko took her trick-or-treating inside that facility. They became fast friends, and Laila would text him after games.

After a bone marrow transplant in January, Laila was confined to her house and the hospital. But during the Western Conference final, she was cleared to finally attend a Blues playoff game, and the video of her ecstatic reaction quickly went viral. She attended every Blues home playoff game after that, and the team flew her out to Game 7 in Boston, perhaps the best sign of her recovery.

"I thought it was 100 percent a joke. I didn't really think I was going to be here," she said on the ice in Boston. "When I got on the plane ... I wasn't ready for this night to start, because I'm not ready for it to end."

Parayko has been open about the perspective Laila has given him. The kind of perspective that allows him to process, say, a playoff loss and move past it.

"We get to show up to the rink and be with the guys, do things like that," he said before Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final. "But you go to the hospital, and you speak with her, and you watch her go through all that stuff. I can't imagine what she's going through. What kinds of things they're putting in her body to try and help her recover. She continues to have a strong attitude. A positive attitude. It's so special. We might lose a hockey game, and we're frustrated or go home really upset. But there are people out there trying to battle for their lives."

Parayko grabbed Laila's arm and led her to where the Stanley Cup was being hoisted. He grabbed the chalice and helped her hold it. Laila planted a kiss on its rings, wiping away a tear from her eyes with a mitten.

This is what she held on for. This is what she overcame to experience.

"I'm going to remember this until the day I die," she said.

There are over 50 years' worth of stories to tell from St. Louis, of fans who never thought they'd see this day.

Some are young, like Laila. Some are older, such as Charles Glenn, the team's anthem singer who has multiple sclerosis and decided this would be his final season. He then watched as the Blues kept winning and winning until he sang in what was, mathematically, the most home games in which he could have sung during the season.

Some are like Allan, an Uber driver in St. Louis. "I waited 50 years for this," he tells me. "I was a kid, and I was turning the dial on my television, with the antenna. And I came across this hockey game. I had never seen one before. It was the Blues against somebody, and here were two guys just beating each other in the face, and they're just letting them. This was back when they let them fight, mind you. And I could not ... stop ... watching it. I was hooked."

He was never worried they'd fall short of the Cup.

"They can't. Not this time," he said.

Some are like Scott Berry, the Blues fan who put a $400 wager on St. Louis to win the Cup at 250-1 odds, refused to hedge his bet and is now $100,000 richer after their Game 7 win. "This has been an incredible ride, to say the least. In my opinion, the $400 I spent was well worth this experience," he said, adding that even if the Blues hadn't won the Cup, "I've already won."

Some are like the fans who filled Enterprise Center and packed Busch Stadium on Wednesday night just to watch the game on television. Or the ones who crank "Gloria," the 1980s pop hit that became their victory song this season, at red lights in town. Or the ones who would come up to O'Reilly in Whole Foods to give him fist bumps of encouragement.

"It's so cool that people are a part of this. That's what this is all about," O'Reilly said. "It's not just the guys in here. It's a city that's together. We're all trying to win."

In a season defined by the reset button, O'Reilly personifies it.

He collected the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP one year, two months and three days after telling the hockey world that he lost his love of the game while playing with the Buffalo Sabres.

"We're stuck in this mindset of just being OK with losing," O'Reilly said on locker cleanout day in Buffalo. "I feel it, too. I think it's really crept into myself. Over the course of the year, I've lost myself a lot, where it's just kind of get through, just being OK with just not making a mistake. That's not winning hockey at all.

"That's how I kind of fell out of love with it, and I miss that. I want to get back to myself."

At that point, a trade was deemed a necessity for the Sabres, who shipped O'Reilly to the St. Louis. Blues GM Doug Armstrong had long coveted the center, tracking him back to his draft year. O'Reilly tried to put Buffalo behind him, telling Armstrong in their first conversation, "Let's go win a Cup."

Then the losing started.

"It was frustrating," O'Reilly said. "I was coming off a bad year, I come to a great team, and then they get off to a bad start. I was worried I was a big part of why they were losing -- that I had to something to do with it."

Instead, he was part of the solution.

"Looking at his play all year long, his worth ethic and his production for us all year and then throughout the playoffs, he was just a relentless hockey player for a long time. Never quits. Such a smart two-way player. He's a special player," Berube said.

And now he's a playoff MVP.

"It's tough to describe," O'Reilly said. "The Cup is the ultimate goal, and just trying to go out there and be the spark and try to make a difference, and looking at the names on this thing and to be a part of that group -- most of these guys on here I pretended I was as a kid and now to be on there with them, it's an incredible feeling."

One of those names is Larry Robinson, who won the Conn Smythe in 1978. He has now been a part of 10 Stanley Cup championships as a player and a coach. And he's absolutely blown away by the resiliency of the Blues.

"This is a special group," he said as the Blues paraded with the Stanley Cup. "We've been counted out at times all year in certain situations, and every time we were counted out, we came back. We had calls go against us in this series and other series. Most teams might have panicked and did something stupid. But they showed a lot of will and a lot of heart."

And a short memory. Which, in the end, is why the Blues won the Stanley Cup. Every loss was forgotten. Every injustice was dismissed. The burden of 52 years of futility didn't ultimately crush them. Jan. 2 was ancient history.

They hit the reset button, again and again, until they finally beat the game.