ROSEVILLE, Calif. – Bill McAnally Racing will have a huge presence this season as the team looks to defend its ARCA Menards Series West championship crown.

The defending titlists, who have won four of the last five ARCA West (formerly NASCAR K&N Pro Series West) crowns overall, will bring a four-car assault for 2020, led by winged sprint car star Gio Scelzi.

Scelzi, 18, will pilot the No. 16 NAPA Auto Parts/Curb Records Toyota campaigned last year by Wisconsin’s Derek Kraus, who won five times in 14 races en route to his maiden series championship.

The move to pavement on a more-regular basis represents a long-term strategic goal for Scelzi, who hopes to pave the same road to NASCAR that Christopher Bell, Kyle Larson and others did before him.

“(Toyota’s) Andy Graves is kind of the one that led me into this deal on the pavement side, and then one thing led to another and I got involved with (TRD’s) Jack Irving … and those are the two guys that really got me here and got everything to work with Bill,” Scelzi explained. “I’m really looking forward to the opportunity that’s in front of us.

“Running Derek’s car … it’s the same crew, the same guys; it’s a championship-winning car,” Scelzi added. “I just have to make it happen. I’m looking forward to it; it’s something new and a direction I’ve wanted to go in for a couple of years now, so I’m finally getting the first step in that direction like what you’ve seen from Christopher and Kyle over the last few years.”

Joining Scelzi as teammates at BMR in 2020 will be two fellow dirt-track young guns – 15-year-old Jesse Love and 18-year-old Holley Hollan – as well as 18-year-old late model driver Gracie Trotter.

Love will pilot the No. 19 NAPA Power Premium Plus Toyota, while Hollan takes the wheel of the No. 50 JBL/NAPA Belts and Hoses Toyota and Trotter will wheel the No. 99 ENEOS Motor Oil Toyota.

All four drivers are members of the Toyota Racing Development program.

Love spent much of his pavement time last season racing late models with the SRL Southwest Tour, while also racing midgets regularly with Keith Kunz/Curb-Agajanian Motorsports on the dirt side.

However, a chance to step up into a nationally-renowned touring series for 2020 was one that the Menlo Park, Calif., teenager not only couldn’t pass up, it’s a challenge he’s eager to tackle.

“I’m super grateful and can’t thank the good Lord enough for providing me with this opportunity and everybody around me that’s put me in a situation to do this,” said Love. “If it wasn’t for everybody around me, I’d be sitting on my couch at home. This is definitely the biggest stage of stock car racing that I’ve been on in my whole career, which is super eye-opening to me and super, super cool.

“To be able to do this with Toyota Racing Development and Bill McAnally Racing is just a dream come true and I wouldn’t want to have it any other way.”

Hollan will transition over to the blacktop on a more regular basis after two years of action with KKM in midget racing. Prior to that stint, she cut her teeth racing micro sprints in Oklahoma for multiple years.

While she’ll compete full time with BMR in the ARCA West ranks, Hollan will also return to KKM for a part-time schedule of midget events this season when her availability allows.

“Running the ARCA West Series with Bill McAnally Racing is something I’m obviously looking forward to, though it’s certainly a new adventure for me,” Hollan said. “But I’m excited to be going up the ladder in the Toyota development program.  It seems like I’m stepping into a whole new world. I think everything I learn from the asphalt stuff will help me on dirt. You go much faster (on pavement), so I think it will slow everything down some for me when I come back to run the midgets.

A lot of the stuff I’ve learned from dirt correlates to and helps me in the asphalt experience, as well,” she added. “I’m fortunate to be a part of the Toyota team and have them support me in doing this. They’re not only giving me this opportunity, but also keeping my best interests in mind and letting me come back to run the midget with Keith Kunz Motorsports.”

Trotter jumps up to ARCA West after several years of regional Legends car and late model competition in the Southeast, including selected starts with the CARS Super Late Model Tour and Pro All Stars Series.

She’s earned three top-10 runs in just five CARS appearances over the last three years, and is also a continuing member of the NASCAR Drive for Diversity program.

Team owner Bill McAnally, who has worked for many years to develop drivers through his organization on the West Coast, is looking forward to the challenge of having four rookie drivers on his squad for the new year – something he’s never faced in his West Series tenure.

“It’s a lot of new for us going into 2020 and definitely an exciting challenge,” McAnally told SPEED SPORT about his new driver lineup. “When we were working to move Derek (Kraus) up to the Truck Series, we’d hoped to have Hailie (Deegan) back with us as our senior driver, but when she went a different direction we embraced the opportunity to have all four of these very talented, very quick drivers join us for the upcoming season in the ARCA Menards Series West.

“Our goal is to win races and win a championship at season’s end, and even though it’s an all-new driver lineup for us this year, we have a goal to help all of these kids get their first ARCA West wins with us … which would also give us our milestone 100th win as a team, also. It’s shaping up to be an exciting year.”

MOORESVILLE, N.C. – Go Fas Racing has announced that Pala Casino will be the primary sponsor of the No. 32 Ford Mustang and Corey LaJoie during two races this season in the NASCAR Cup Series.

Pala Casino Spa & Resort in Pala, Calif., is a Las Vegas-style casino with more than 2,000 slot machines, 84 table games, eight poker tables and a 15,000-square-foot smoke-free casino area; a 507-room hotel; five swimming pools with two hot tubs and 14 luxury cabanas; a 10,000-square-foot, full-service spa and salon that features 17 treatment rooms, two cabanas and a state-of-the-art fitness center.

Pala also offers 10 restaurants and 40,000 square feet of meeting and convention space. Pala Casino Spa & Resort is an AAA Four-Diamond Award winner for 15 consecutive years.

Pala Casino will make their NASCAR debut at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif., this spring and their colors will return to the No. 32 Ford at the season finale at Phoenix Raceway.

“We are inspired by Corey LaJoie’s commitment to his fans and charity work,” said Coley McAvoy, spokesperson for Pala. “Over the past 18 years, the Pala Band of Mission Indians and Pala Casino have shown the same passion and enthusiasm for its guests and contributing to the benefit of the local community.  We’re proud to partner with a team that’s all about their fans as much as we are.”

“This is a really big year for our team with all of these new partnerships and announcements and we’re really excited to welcome Pala to our GFR team,” said LaJoie. “I can’t wait to get out to the West Coast and play some games at the casino and enjoy everything that their resort has to offer. I hope we’ll be seeing a lot of fans staying at the resort while we’re out on the West Coast because we’ll have a lot of cool stuff for them to be a part of.”

VOORHEES, N.J. -- Philadelphia Flyers general manager Chuck Fletcher expects center Nolan Patrick to return from a migraine disorder and play this season.

Patrick, the No. 2 overall pick of the 2017 draft, has been sidelined all season because of his condition. He has 26 goals and 61 points in two seasons with the Flyers. Fletcher said Patrick, 21, has been skating for longer and harder sessions and would likely need a conditioning stint in the AHL before he returned to the Flyers.

"I can just tell you from the on- and off-ice workouts he's doing, he is progressing," Fletcher said Tuesday. "There certainly isn't any clear path as to which way this will go."

The Flyers remain unsure when Oskar Lindblom will play again and he undergoes treatment for Ewing's sarcoma, a cancerous tumor that grows in the bones or in the tissue around bones. Lindblom, 23, had 11 goals and 18 points in 30 games this season. Lindblom has 30 goals in 134 career games over two-plus seasons with the Flyers.

"For him to return to play hockey means he's in a great spot in his battle," Fletcher said. "We're just keeping our hopes up. I'm sure he's got a lot of things on his mind right now, but if he's playing hockey this year, that would be a great conclusion."

Lindblom has visited his Flyers teammates during practice and sat courtside at a recent 76ers game. Lindblom has yet to speak publicly since his early December diagnosis.

"With this situation like this, when it's your personal health and a non-hockey thing, you always want to be a little bit careful what you say, but you know the treatments are going well and I know he's got a great attitude," Fletcher said. "But it's probably pretty early in the process to have that type of update. At some point, certainly, depending on what Oskar's thoughts are, hopefully we can make that available."

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Buffalo Sabres center Tage Thompson will miss the remainder of the season after having surgery to repair an injury to his right shoulder.

The Sabres announced Thompson had the operation on Tuesday and will require five to six months of recovery time. Thompson was initially projected to miss three to five weeks before team doctors determined he required surgery.

The third-year player was hurt in the final minutes of a 4-1 loss at Chicago on Nov. 17. It was Thompson's first NHL game of the season and came shortly after he was promoted from AHL Rochester.

Thompson had seven goals and 12 points in 65 games with Buffalo last season before being demoted to the minors. The 2016 first-round draft pick was acquired by the Sabres in a multiplayer trade that sent center Ryan O'Reilly to St. Louis in July 2018.

O'Reilly went on to lead the Blues to the Stanley Cup last summer. Meanwhile, the Sabres, who haven't made the postseason since 2011, are again on the outside of the Eastern Conference playoff picture. As play began on Tuesday, Buffalo, with 47 points, was seven points away from the last wild-card slot.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The Battle of Alberta is now a war of words, courtesy of Edmonton Oilers forward Zack Kassian and Calgary Flames forward Matthew Tkachuk.

Kassian defended his attack on Tkachuk during the Oilers' loss at the Flames on Saturday night, which earned him a misconduct penalty and a two-game suspension from the NHL Department of Player Safety. And he promised more retribution to come after Tkachuk dropped him with two massive, but legal by the NHL's standards, bodychecks during the game.

"I'd do it all over again," Kassian said Tuesday. "You play with fire, eventually you're going to get burned. He messed with the wrong guy. I don't think he realizes we play in the same division."

The fight was in response to hits that Kassian felt were predatory in nature. "If he doesn't want to get hit, then stay off the tracks," Tkachuk said after the game.

Tkachuk didn't follow "the code" of hockey violence, opting not to fight after the second of those hits when Kassian dropped the gloves and started punching.

"I'm not fighting him. Tough little trade-off there," said Tkachuk, who's tied for the team lead with 38 points. "If he wants to react like that, we'll take the power play and we'll take the game-winner and we'll take first place."

Kassian felt Tkachuk should have fought him.

"Even if they're clean, they're still predatory hits, which is fine. I like big-boy hockey. But if you're going to play big-boy hockey, you have to answer the bell sometimes. And he clearly hasn't done that his whole career," Kassian said. "He's gonna play the way he wants to play. If he answers the bell right there, I don't think anything else happens, and maybe he gains a percentage of respect in this league."

He'll miss the Oilers' games against the Nashville Predators on Tuesday night and the Arizona Coyotes on Saturday night before the team hits its bye week around the All-Star break. He'll return on Jan. 29, when the Oilers get reacquainted with Calgary in Edmonton.

Kassian said -- after taking those hits from Tkachuk, and seeing the NHL's reaction to them -- he now knows were the line is.

"After speaking on the phone, [NHL Player Safety's George] Parros explained why the hit was not dirty. That cleared up a lot. That gave me some clarity about what you can and can't do now," he said "So I'll put that in the memory bank."

LA QUINTA, Calif. – This is not the final answer to fix slow play, but it’s a start, and for those who have watched the issue ebb and flow its way through the decades it’s a reason to be optimistic.

It would be the acme of foolishness to consider the changes to the PGA Tour’s pace-of-play policy the final solution, and the circuit had no interest in taking a victory lap Tuesday when it unveiled the details of the rules.

“This has been talked about for a very long time,” admitted Tyler Dennis, the Tour’s chief of operations.

How long?

“I feel like I’ve heard my dad say pace of play has been talked about since he was a rookie,” said Bill Haas, whose father, Jay, played his first season on Tour in 1977.

For players and policy makers, pace of play has become an annual flashpoint every time a player or a round takes a particularly egregious amount of time. It happened last year at the playoff opener when Bryson DeChambeau snapped the internet over his knee when he took more than two minutes to hit a putt.

The Tour had been plodding along in what was described as an ongoing review of the pace-of-play policy at the time, but the blowback from DeChambeau’s social media snafu accelerated the process, and the result was this week’s big reveal.

In a conference call Tuesday, Dennis explained that the changes, which will begin in April, are fundamental in nature. It breaks from the traditional focus of keeping groups in position when they’d fallen behind to a more proactive approach that focuses on “individual habits of slow players.”

The Tour doesn’t want to name names, and it won’t, but it is going to create a list of the circuit’s slowest and it is going to use that list to change attitudes. Consider this golf’s version of double-secret probation for the habitually slow.

The Tour nomenclature for this is an “observation list” that will be based on the average amount of time  – according to ShotLink data – a player takes to hit a shot. Players who average longer than 45 seconds to hit a shot will be placed on the list and will be subject to additional monitoring during rounds.

The purpose of the observation list is to identify habitual offenders and help them understand how they might change their bad habits. Although it remains to be seen how many players will land on this list, according to ShotLink the slowest 10 percent of players on Tour take 45 seconds to hit a shot (the fastest 10 percent take 29 seconds) which means statistically there will be about 25 players on the list at any given time.

There are plenty of elements to the new policy but individual accountability is, essentially, where the Tour has decided to make their stand. In theory it seems the circuit has picked the right fight, but in practice it remains to be seen if the new regulations are any more effective than the old guidelines.

“What we are all concerned with are the three or four players each day who seem to take advantage of the time allotted. They seem to not care about their playing partners, whether that’s the case or not I don’t know,” Bill Haas said, “I don’t know if [the new policy] changes that. I feel like those same people are going to take their time that they think is needed.”

People tend not to embrace criticism. That’s not a golf thing, that’s a life thing; and more often than not the Tour’s slowest players don’t believe they are the slowest players with DeChambeau’s response to criticism last year in New Jersey being the best example of this.

The new policy certainly has more teeth, and Dennis said the primary focus over the next few months will be educating the players, but will it be enough to force the slowest among them to take a hard look in the mirror?

“We’ve talked to a lot of players and we have obviously spent a lot of time thinking about it with the [player advisory council] and policy board, but we haven’t actually spoken to any players who are on the observation list at this time,” Dennis conceded.

Habitual offenders who spend a season on the observation list will be subject to what the Tour calls a “major penalty,” which ranges from a fine of $25,000 to a suspension. But as the current policy has proven since it was created in 1994 fines don’t work, not with millionaires who see the opportunity to easily cover any potential fine with a single solid finish.

Since the earliest days of slow-play handwringing the call has been for more punishments that involve penalty strokes and the new policy – which allows for a penalty stroke for two bad times in a single tournament compared to the old method of two bad times in a single round – is a step in that direction. But the previous loopholes of warnings and extra time, like the 60 seconds players are allowed to hit shots if they are being monitored on the observation list, will continue to make stroke penalties rare.

The Tour is just not there yet, but it is getting closer. In fact, after decades of ignoring the issue the new policy could be considered a seminal shift, particularly for commissioner Jay Monahan.

“I’m optimistic because of the leadership we have on Tour. Even though Jay has come out and said he doesn’t believe slow play is an issue, but he’s listening to other people and the players and respecting their opinions and wanting to do something about it,” Billy Horschel said. “He can put his feelings aside and take the majority of players and address an issue.”

The new policy isn’t the final solution for slow play, but it is progress.

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. – Inbee Park is turning up the intensity in a bid to get back to the Olympics, to give herself a chance to win another gold medal.

The fact that she is teeing it up at this week’s Diamond Resorts Tournament of Champions shows just how motivated she is to make it to Tokyo in August.

Park is playing the LPGA season opener for the first time since 2016, which, not coincidentally, was the last Olympic year, when even her own countrymen were writing off her chances in an injury-riddled season. In fact, a legion of South Korean golf fans that year thought she should surrender her spot in the Olympics to a healthier player with a better chance of winning.

Though Park was winless last year, it would be a mistake to write her off again this time around. She was also winless in 2016, before she took the gold in Rio de Janeiro.

But Park knows there’s a lot of work to do just to make the Korean team.

“I’ve always started the season a little bit late, probably the end of February or early March” Park said Tuesday at Four Seasons Golf & Sports Club. “But I’m starting early because it’s an important year.” 

When the rankings finally shake out in June, there might not be a tougher Olympic team to make in golf than the Republic of Korea.

“The U.S. men’s team is pretty tough as well, but, in women’s golf, I think it has to be, definitely, the toughest team to make,” Park said.

The top 60 players in the Olympic Golf Rankings, which is based on the Rolex Women’s World Rankings, will qualify to go to Tokyo. The field will be limited to two players per country, though as many as four from a country can qualify if they are all within the top 15 in the Olympic rankings.

That means South Korea is a virtual lock to once again send four players, but Park wouldn’t be among them if the Olympics were staged this week. In the current Olympic rankings, Jin Young Ko (No. 1), Sung Hyun Park (No. 2), Sei Young Kim (No. 5) and Jeong Lee6 (No. 7) would make the team. Hyo Joo Kim (No. 13) and Park (No. 15) would be alternates.

There are 11 South Koreans among the top 25 in this week’s world rankings.

Last year, Park didn’t make her first start until the HSBC Women’s World Championship in late February. She’ll make four starts before that this year. She’s also committed to next week’s Gainbridge LPGA at Boca Rio, the ISPS Handa Vic Open and the ISPS Handa Women’s Australian Open.

Park’s LPGA Hall of Fame status, her 19 LPGA titles and seven major championship don’t give her a foot in the qualifying door. With the Olympic Golf Rankings qualifying ending on June 29, she is looking to pile up as many world ranking points as she can.

“I wanted to give myself a lot of opportunity,” Park said.

Park is only 31, but she doesn’t feel so young watching Ko, Park, Lee6 and young Koreans taking control of the women’s game

“I feel like I'm still pretty young, but once I'm on the LPGA tour, I feel like I'm not young anymore,” Park said. “This tour is definitely getting younger. ... I definitely feel like there is a lot of room to catch up. These girls are moving really fast. They're hitting it much, much farther. They're young. They're fit. Yeah, that definitely gives me motivation.”

LA QUINTA, Calif. – On the same day the PGA Tour and European Tour announced tougher pace-of-play policies, one veteran of both circuits pointed out that slow play has become a self-inflicted cycle.

“It seems to be a little bit of a trend that players, when they come out on Tour they seem to be a little bit slower than the previous generation,” Paul Casey said at The American Express. “But that’s our fault because you watch your peers, you watch your heroes and your stars on TV, the guys you want to emulate and you go, well, he’s taking a long time to read the putt and that’s what I need to do.”

Casey has served in leadership positions on both the European and PGA tours and was involved in the crafting of the PGA Tour's new policy that was unveiled Tuesday. The new policy shifts the focus from timing groups and keeping everyone in place to a system that swings the spotlight to habitually slow players.

The Tour will create an observation list of the circuit’s slowest 10 percent in an effort to keep everyone moving at the same pace, and not necessarily rounds that are dramatically shorter.

For Casey, who is beginning his second year on the Tour’s Player Advisory Council, he sees the new policy as a chance to change a cycle that has led to increasingly slow rounds. 

“I don’t consider myself a slow player, but we’ve all got to take responsibility that we have affected the next generation that are coming through,” Casey said.

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. – Would Patrick Reed have gotten knocked down by a pitcher or two if he played Major League Baseball back in John Smoltz’s era?

Smoltz is back this week to defend his title in the celebrity portion of the Diamond Resorts Tournament of Champions. He was asked Tuesday about the rule-breaking controversies that hit his two favorite sports this winter, with the Houston Astros getting sanctioned for stealing signs during their 2017 world championship season and with Reed creating a furor getting penalized for sweeping sand away from his ball with some practice swings at the Hero World Challenge.

Smoltz cast no judgment on Reed but did compare the sports' distinctly different cultures and how rule-breaking was handled back when he was pitching for the Atlanta Braves.

Smoltz said he might have plunked a guy whose tactics were questionable with a fastball in the butt back when he was playing.

“Baseball has a little bit more of a way to govern itself inside the game, 20 years ago,” Smoltz said. “That doesn't happen as much anymore.”

Smoltz said technology is complicating rules issues in both Major League Baseball and golf, but while technology proved decisive in the Astros’ ruling, he believes it was less so in Reed’s issue.

“I think when you see something live, it's a lot different than slow framing everything,” Smoltz said. “So, from the Patrick Reed situation, the slow motion makes it look really egregious. The live is up more for interpretation.”

Smoltz detailed how different the two sports are, where stealing signs is an acceptable part of baseball’s culture, when it’s done within the normal rules of engagement.

“It’s how you’re going about stealing the signs,” Smoltz said. “When you start dedicating technology to gain an advantage, which is what obviously happened here, you're then separating yourself from what really is within the rules of engagement.”

Smoltz believes the harshness of the penalty against the Astros will act as a deterrent to other teams.

“I can tell you this, in sports or in life, if the risk is worth the reward, then people are going to still do the things they think to gain an edge,” Smoltz said. “I don't think the risk is worth the reward anymore, so maybe this deters anybody from trying to be part of something that isn't legit from competing.

“What makes golf unique is that it's up to the integrity of each person to determine whether they want to apply the rules as they're meant, and that's why golf has always been known as the gentleman's game. But it's frowned upon, and we all know enough people, and play with enough people at our clubs, that just can't help themselves by getting an advantage and an edge, because they want to compete, and they want to be successful. That bothers me, but it's not immune from anywhere.”

Smoltz said the integrity of a World Series is as important to protect as the integrity of a golf tournament.

“The [Astros] win the championship,” Smoltz said. “So, it stains it.

“They were a great team, and they probably could have won the world championship without it. So, all it does is add an element that nobody wants, if you're part of that. You're going to deal with that for the rest of your life. I think that's why baseball had to take such a stance to not allow its championships to ever be viewed like this ever again.

“From a broadcaster, from a former baseball player, I can assure you I don't think this is the only team, or two, that has done this. But with technology the way it is, they're going to have to, ironically, find a way for technology to help this never happen again, by giving a way to give signs to a catcher and pitcher, which is vital to our sport, so that nobody else can decode them.””