Fred and Jeff Wilpon love baseball the way a 14-year-old loves video games, the way some folks are obsessed with cars and LeBron James cherishes basketball.

Their ownership of the Mets is not a case of really wealthy people buying a sports yacht so they can show off for friends in a private-box party on summer nights. Rather, their passion for the game and all of its intricacies is real, and relentless. On any given afternoon, you can find Fred and/or Jeff hanging out behind a batting cage, leaning against the frame and chatting up coaches and players. And late at night after a game, a Wilpon might stick around to talk with the manager about what worked and what didn't. In my time covering baseball, I'm not sure I've met anyone who cherishes the game more than Fred Wilpon.

That deep affection has proven to be problematic, because there have been a lot of moments when what the Mets' franchise and their fans have really needed was not Wilpon input on the hiring of a strength coach, or a hands-on discussion about minor-league development, but greater financial investment. With Steve Cohen's impending purchase of the team, announced Wednesday, there will be more money. Probably a lot more money. Because Cohen's got money in a way the Wilpons do not, and for the first time in the past 45 years, we could see the full potential of New York's National League franchise.

SOUTHLAKE, Texas – The Sportscar Vintage Racing Ass’n has named Big Machine Vodka as the official vodka of SVRA.

In just a few short years Big Machine has established its brand among the most recognizable sponsors of motorsports through affiliations with the reigning champions of America’s two biggest racing series with Kyle Bush in NASCAR and Josef Newgarden in IndyCar.

Big Machine Vodka is the title sponsor of NASCAR’s Big Machine Vodka 400 at the Brickyard powered by Florida Georgia Line, and will again be front and center in that role in 2020.

“Racing organizations, competitors and fans alike applaud Big Machine Vodka’s investment in the sport we all love,” said SVRA CEO Tony Parella. “Fusing this marketing savvy together with Scott Borchetta’s massive passion for wheel-to-wheel competition is pure joy for me to see. Scott’s on-track racing performance as a driver, like his premium vodka brand, has grown exponentially in a short time. He won seven Group 6 sprint races as well as the U.S. Vintage National Championship at COTA earlier this year. He also serves as Grand Marshal for NASCAR’s Big Machine Vodka 400 at the Brickyard powered by Florida Georgia Line.”

Big Machine Vodka is on its way to disrupting the market with its Platinum-Filtered Premium Vodka through its 25-times distilled and 3-times platinum-filtered process. Their proprietary Platinum Filtration System is the only one of its kind in the world. Research shows that filtering vodka through rare and precious platinum creates an unparalleled smoothness and can even add a hint of sweetness. Additionally, a lot of vodkas on the market are distilled anywhere from just one-to-six-times, but by increasing the distillation process to 25-times, Big Machine Vodka looks to reduce the amount of impurities in vodka with the goal of mitigating the likelihood of a hangover.

“Everything about Big Machine is lifestyle. Whether our music, our premium spirits, or our racing, it’s all connected to the things I’m most passionate about,” said Big Machine CEO Scott Borchetta. “I take special joy in this relationship with SVRA because it’s a first-rate organization and not only is my company a sponsor, but I am also a hands-on active competitor as a driver in their events, including their Vintage Race of Champions (VROC) where I am honored to share my car with legends such as NASCAR Cup Champion Bobby Labonte.”

SYDNEY — World No. 1-ranked amateur Takumi Kanaya birdied his final two holes Thursday for a 6-under 65 and a tie for the first-round lead with fellow Asian amateur Chun An-you of Taiwan.

Playing the back nine at The Australian Golf Course to open his round, the Japanese player had five birdies. He bogeyed the par-4 third hole before making birdie on the eighth and ninth holes.

The leaders had a two-stroke lead over 2015 champion Matt Jones and fellow Australians Dimi Papadatos and Daniel Nisbet.

A winner last month in his homeland, 21-year-old Kanaya's round came four years after he signed for an 85 at The Australian while on his Open debut at the same venue.

“I have a little confidence, but I have three more days, so I will do my best tomorrow," Kanaya said.

Jones complained of burning eyes from the smoke blowing in from surrounding bushfires in New South Wales state.

‘’It’s awful,’” Jones said. “The smoke's not good at all. It's tough to see your golf ball when you're out there playing, where it finishes. Your eyes do burn up. I hope my kids are inside in the hotel room."

Real Madrid's Eden Hazard will miss El Clasico after medical tests revealed he has a fracture in his right ankle, sources have told ESPN.

The Belgium international, ranked the No. 3 winger in ESPN FC 100, sustained the injury in Madrid's 2-2 draw with Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League last month.

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Initial testing suggested Hazard had suffered only bruising in the challenge from compatriot Thomas Meunier, and he was expected to be out for just 10 days.

In a statement on Thursday, Madrid confirmed the player has now been diagnosed with "an incomplete external microfissure" of his right ankle.

Club sources have told ESPN that Hazard had felt no improvement at the end of last week, and underwent further testing to reveal the source of the continued discomfort.

The news comes ahead of a key run of La Liga games for Madrid that includes a visit to Mestalla to play Valencia on Dec. 15 and the game with Barcelona at Camp Nou on Dec. 18.

Sources have told ESPN that Hazard's injury is "bad luck" because he had "at last found his best form" after a difficult adaptation process since his summer move from Chelsea.

A recovery time has not been given, but Hazard is expected to be out for action for at least an additional two weeks.

Marcelo is also a doubt for the Barcelona game, with Madrid confirming the Brazilian defender has suffered a calf injury. It means that Madrid could be without both first-choice left-sided players for the game at Camp Nou.

In the case of Marcelo, the club have an able deputy in the form of Ferland Mendy. The absence of Hazard may see coach Zinedine Zidane continue with the 4-4-2 formation that proved effective in their 2-1 win at Alaves last weekend.

Inter Milan and Roma have condemned Thursday's front page of Italian newspaper Il Corriere dello Sport.

The newspaper's front page previewed Inter's Friday night clash against Roma with a photo of both Romelu Lukaku and Chris Smalling above the headline "Black Friday."

On Thursday, Inter tweeted: "Football is passion, culture and brotherhood. We are and always will be opposed to any form of discrimination."

Football is passion, culture and brotherhood.

We are and always will be opposed to any form of discrimination.
#BUU #BrothersUniversallyUnited #NoToDiscrimination #FCIM

— Inter (@Inter_en) December 5, 2019

Sources have told ESPN the post was in relation to Corriere's front page, but the club opted not to directly reference it in the tweet as not to "give it visibility."

Roma's English account tweeted a picture of the front page as part of their condemnation, and Fiorentina's English Twitter account responded by writing, "No to racism, kick it out" -- as well as a separate post criticising the cover.

AC Milan also condemned the cover with a tweet that read, "It is totally unacceptable to see such casual ignorance on racism. We will not stay silent on this issue."

The newspaper released a defence of their front page in a statement titled, "The Eulogy of Difference."

In it, they wrote: "Denying the difference is the typical racist, macroscopic, stumbling block of the anti-racists. The mental slum of Sunday's moralists when even Thursday is Sunday. 'Black Friday,' for who wants to understand it, was just a eulogy of difference, the pride of difference, the magnificent richness of difference.

"If you don't understand it, it's because you can't or you pretend not to."

Lukaku's agent, Federico Pastorello, criticised the front page in an interview with Sky Sports, saying, "Being Italian, I'm really ashamed to read a title like that, but I really don't want to talk about a single episode.

"At the end of the day, the racist problem is a big problem. Unfortunately we are living in 1920. It's really a culture problem."

All 20 Serie A clubs signed an open letter last week, acknowledging that racism is a serious problem in Italy and requested help in order to deal with it.

Lukaku has been the subject of racist abuse in Serie A this season, with Cagliari supporters having aimed monkey chants at him when the sides met in September.

The Belgium international joined Inter for €80 million from Manchester United while his former Old Trafford teammate Smalling moved to Roma on loan.

NUR-SULTAN, Kazakhstan -- It is 4:50 a.m. on Wednesday morning. The wind-chill factor takes the temperature down to a punishing -22 degrees Celsius (-7 Fahrenheit), but as Manchester United's young squad emerges from the Arrivals Hall at Nursultan Nazarbayev International Airport, a throng of 60 locals with United scarves and banners greets them with a noisy welcome.

United are making their first visit to Kazakhstan to play a routine Europa League group game against FC Astana, 3,700 miles from Old Trafford, in a city that is closer to Beijing than Manchester. From a football perspective, Nur-Sultan is as far from home as United could possibly be within the UEFA orbit, but it is a fixture that sums up where the team and club are right now. Miles from where they want, and expect, to be, playing in a secondary competition while Europe's elite -- of which they were once a leading member -- contest the Champions League.

Nur-Sultan ultimately may be United's aphelion, the point from where they begin to navigate their way back to the top of the sport. A young team stacked with Academy graduates -- six teenagers make their United debuts in the Astana Arena -- suffered a 2-1 defeat against the Kazakh champions. That result wasn't a shock -- Manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer left almost all of his first-team players in Manchester due to United having qualified for the knockout stages -- but it was an embarrassing reminder of how far the club has fallen.

Since Sir Alex Ferguson's retirement in May 2013, when United clinched the Premier League title with an 11-point winning margin, the club have drifted further away from the position of power they once held. Manchester City have become the dominant force in Manchester and England, winning three titles in six years, while traditional rivals Liverpool have become Champions League winners and appear destined to end a 30-year league title drought this season.

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Managers have come and gone -- Solskjaer is the fourth hire since Ferguson -- a staggering £840 million ($1 billion) has been spent, and largely wasted, on players. Mistakes have been made in the boardroom and only now are we hearing talk of a "cultural reboot" within Old Trafford.

But how could it go so wrong, so quickly? Manchester United were supposed to be too big, too wealthy and too successful to fail.

"The lads wanted a star... we got Fellaini"

"HE'S EITHER A CLOWN OR A F------ GENIUS," David Moyes suggested to a member of his coaching team after an early meeting with Ed Woodward, United's newly appointed executive vice-chairman, in July 2013.

Heralded as the "Chosen One" after signing a six-year contract as Ferguson's successor, Moyes was led to believe that big moves were underway to sign Gareth Bale, Cesc Fabregas and Cristiano Ronaldo. Woodward even told him that the club were just waiting to press the button on whichever deal he wanted to do. Moyes had already pulled the plug on a move (set up by Ferguson) for Barcelona's Thiago Alcantara because he was unconvinced. Having worked within a tight budget at Everton for 11 years, Moyes earned the nickname "Dithering Dave" because of his habit of painstakingly assessing every potential signing, but Woodward was now giving him the chance to play fantasy football for real.

But nothing happened. Moyes wanted Everton pair Leighton Baines and Marouane Fellaini, but what he really wanted was to make a statement and to do that, he had to deliver big name players to excite the fans. In late July, Woodward flew back from the team's summer tour of Australia with the club briefing that he had gone home on "urgent transfer business." Fellaini, meanwhile, had an escape clause in his Everton contract (due to expire in mid-August) enabling him to leave for £23.5m. Baines, on the other hand, made it clear he would not force a move to United.

As the days ticked by, nobody arrived to boost the squad. Panic set in. But with three minutes to go before the August 31 transfer deadline, Fellaini arrived from Everton for £27.5m -- £4m more than his escape clause would have allowed him to leave for two weeks earlier.

It was a disastrous summer window and privately, Moyes and Woodward began to point the finger at each other.

"Before games, [David Moyes] would say, 'we need to make 500 passes today.' What is all that about? 500 passes? We never had that kind of thing under Sir Alex [Ferguson]. Before we played Bayern Munich in the Champions League quarterfinal at the Allianz Arena, he told us to try to win corners by kicking the ball off Bayern players' shins. It was laughable really." - a former United midfielder

"The lads wanted a star name to lift the dressing-room, and we got Fellaini," one member of Moyes's first squad told ESPN FC. "Felli was a good lad and he did a job, but the rest of us were just looking at each other, wondering what the hell had happened. David misjudged the squad. He needed two new centre-halves at the outset because injuries had caught up with Rio [Ferdinand] and Vida [Nemanja Vidic]. But he was too worried about making such a big call straightaway. He didn't take risks and he didn't want risk-takers."

United would go on to their worst start to a season in the Premier League era, followed by another panic buy. In the January transfer window, they signed Juan Mata, flying him to the training ground in a helicopter. The club was desperate to promote the idea of Woodward pulling off a coup by prising the player from Chelsea for £37.1m, but the players were unimpressed.

"Great lad, Juan, but we didn't need him," a first-team player told ESPN FC. "We had Shinji Kagawa at the time and he was a really popular, well-respected player within the dressing-room. Moyes didn't know how to use him. He didn't trust him. But Shinji was quicker and more direct than Juan, who actually had the effect of slowing the team down."

With Fellaini and Mata, a pattern had been set. United were paying over the odds for players unsuited to the team.

"None of the signings impressed us"

UNITED SACKED MOYES IN APRIL 2014 but the scattered approach in the market continued under his successor, Louis van Gaal. This time, Woodward got deals done, breaking the British transfer record to sign Angel di Maria for £59.7m and completing the loan signing of Radamel Falcao from Monaco. Once again, the players were underwhelmed by the signings, which also included Daley Blind, Luke Shaw, Morgan Schneiderlin and Matteo Darmian, while homegrown players like Jonny Evans and Danny Welbeck were sold off cheaply.

"In fairness to Ed, he delivered for Louis," a former United coach told ESPN FC. "Louis wanted Di Maria, [Bastian] Schweinsteiger and Memphis Depay and he got the deals done."

"None of the players that were signed impressed those of us who were already there," a player from the time told ESPN FC. "Di Maria was the only one who we thought was a real United player. He was a great lad and he really looked the part after 2-3 games, but he had loads of big rows with Louis -- always in Spanish, full volume stuff -- and he wanted out after that. A misconception has grown about Di Maria. He was popular within the squad and a top quality player, but he and Louis just didn't get on.

"Falcao was a lovely guy, so humble, but he wasn't over his bad knee injury, so it never worked for him. The rest of the signings just weren't good enough, though. Louis wanted to clear out the Ferguson influence and build again, but he went too far and made the squad worse."

Van Gaal's stubbornness also led to the expensive mistake of signing Depay from PSV Eindhoven for £25m in 2015.

"Louis was a big fan of Depay," the former coach told ESPN FC. "He found out that Liverpool had met him and were ready to do a deal, so Louis told Ed that we had to move fast. PSG were also in for him. But Albert Stuivenberg, one of the coaches, had worked with Memphis as a youngster in Holland and he knew his character. He told Louis it was a bad idea and that he wasn't right for United.

"Louis had made up his mind, though, and Ed did the deal. Albert was right. Memphis wasn't right for United."

Depay scored seven goals in 53 appearances before being shipped out to Olympique Lyonnais, with one story emphasising why he failed at Old Trafford. "He made a mistake which led to a goal in a game at Stoke," a United teammate recalls. "Louis was furious, so he punished him by making him play in the reserves the next day. Memphis then turned up for the game in a Rolls Royce. Some of the lads told him it didn't look good doing that. Next day, he turned up for training in the same car."

Van Gaal attempted to sign Sadio Mane from Southampton in August 2015 only for the forward to reject a move to Old Trafford because, according to sources, he made it clear that he did not want to play for the Dutchman. Instead, United signed Anthony Martial from Monaco; the Frenchman remains at the club.

Mourinho arrives but the imbalance continued

THE VAN GAAL ERA LEFT UNITED WITH AN IMBALANCED SQUAD prompting his successor, Jose Mourinho, to spend big in an attempt to inject pace, goals and experience. Paul Pogba, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Eric Bailly arrived in Mourinho's first summer. Romelu Lukaku, Victor Lindelof and Nemanja Matic checked in a year later, before Alexis Sanchez arrived in January 2018 from Arsenal.

Manchester City had been favourites to sign Sanchez, but United were prepared to pay him in the region of £400,000-a-week and went on to become one of the worst signings in the club's history. Former United players spoke to their contacts at Arsenal and the same message came back: "Don't touch him, he doesn't have the character to play for United."

"Why didn't somebody at the club get one of the lads to speak to Danny Welbeck about him?" one United player said to ESPN FC.

By this stage, Mourinho was making uncomplimentary noises about player recruitment. Woodward floated the idea of creating the position of director of football, but Mourinho was reluctant and the idea was shelved. But with the manager publicly complaining about the club's transfer strategy during the 2018 summer tour of the U.S., when it became clear that United's scouts and player recruitment team were opposed to Mourinho's desire to sign Bayern Munich's Jerome Boateng as his new centre-half, the clock began to tick on Mourinho's reign in charge. Boateng's injury record was the big concern within the United scouting department. There was also a suspicion of Bayern's motives for selling, with United having seen Schweinsteiger and Owen Hargreaves arrive from the Allianz Arena only to struggle with their fitness.

"Ed [Woodward's] problem is that he doesn't know what he doesn't know. He means well and wants United to be Premier League and European champions again, but he thinks he has the solution to everything. He doesn't, United don't, and he needs to hire the right people in key positions. He's also too nice. One problem that both he and the Glazers share is that they lack a hard edge. That is not the case at City or Chelsea, or with Levy at Spurs." - one source told ESPN FC

Mourinho also felt United moved too slowly in the market -- the one exception was when Woodward beat Chelsea to signing Lukaku -- and his approach jarred with the club's determination to be strategic in order to avoid the mistakes of Moyes and Van Gaal. Woodward had overhauled the club's scouting system, giving United eyes and ears across the globe, with as many as 60 scouts reporting into the main hub at the Carrington training ground, but it wasn't working for Mourinho.

He would be sacked last December, with Solskjaer appointed on a full-time basis in April after initially holding the post of interim-manager. Woodward heralded the Norwegian as helping United with a "cultural reboot," turning the focus onto developing homegrown talent and recruiting emerging players. In September, he told the fanzine "United We Stand" that the club signed Aaron Wan-Bissaka from Crystal Palace following an exhaustive process that began with "804 right-backs in our system based on scouting reports."

From the last minute signing of Fellaini in 2013 to the data-driven capture of Wan-Bissaka, United finally appeared to be settling on a coherent plan.

Uninspiring football

THE BUCK STOPS WITH THE MANAGER. You can blame the players and owners, but the manager ultimately pays the price for failure. United's problem, post-Ferguson, is that they have hired the wrong guy at the wrong time at every turn. Time will tell if the same applies to Solskjaer.

"It was chaos under David Moyes," one former United player told ESPN FC. Another recalled how the "training was s--- in Australia" during the early weeks of the Scot's reign.

"He told us that he would make us fitter. We had just won the Premier League by 11 points, but we were a group of players who would always strive to be better, so we bought into it," said a former player. "But training... was boring and unchallenging. Under Sir Alex, we would warm-up in boxes, with one-touch passing, and it was intense and competitive. Under David, it became two-touch and our technique diminished.

"One big factor in David not succeeding at United was that he took too long to realise what he had inherited. The team had stopped pressing under Sir Alex. We began to defend deeper due to the age and experience of the team, but David came in and thought we could play fast-paced football. We couldn't and we made a terrible start that we, and he, never recovered from."

Moyes battled to win over the squad, but his attempts to make them more professional, like banning the tradition of the players eating chips on the night before a game, angered many who felt he was making changes for change's sake.

Tactically, the players also struggled to warm to Moyes. "Before games, he would say, 'we need to make 500 passes today,' a former United midfielder told ESPN FC. "What is all that about? 500 passes? We never had that kind of thing under Sir Alex. Before we played Bayern Munich in the Champions League quarterfinal at the Allianz Arena, he told us to try to win corners by kicking the ball off Bayern players' shins. It was laughable really."

In his autobiography, "#2Sides," Rio Ferdinand claimed that Moyes failed to connect with the United players. "Moyes's innovations mostly led to negativity and confusion," Ferdinand said. "The biggest confusion was over how he wanted us to move the ball forward. Some players felt they kicked the ball long more than at any time in their career. The whole approach was alien.

"Sometimes our main tactic was the long, high, diagonal cross. It was embarrassing. In one home game against Fulham we had 81 crosses! I was thinking, why are we doing this? Andy Carroll doesn't play for us!" By the time United sacked Moyes, less than 12 months into a six-year contract, United had fallen from being champions to a team that was unable to qualify for European competition.

Where Moyes was out of his depth, Van Gaal marched into Old Trafford in the summer of 2014 as a Champions League winner with experience of managing some of the biggest clubs in the world in Ajax, Barcelona and Bayern Munich. He had also just guided the Netherlands to the World Cup semifinal in Brazil. "He felt like a 'boss' from day one," a United player told ESPN FC. "He just had presence and authority."

The staff behind the scenes were also immediately impressed. Van Gaal was warm and inclusive to the point that the feel-good factor returned. His personality and charisma chimed with Woodward's desire to make United punch their weight, the two men working together and the club spending heavily during a major rebuild. But while Van Gaal got United back into the Champions League in his first season, the football became predictable. He demanded that his players stick to his philosophy of a possession-based game. At a time when their Premier League and European rivals were developing quicker, high-energy styles of play, Van Gaal's United were getting slower.

"I liked Louis," one player sold by Van Gaal told ESPN FC. "He was a brilliant coach. Tactically, the best I have ever had. But his football was restrictive and he didn't allow for flair in the final third of the pitch. If a player shot and missed, he had to explain himself after the game. Louis hated players shooting with their first touch -- he basically ordered them to take a touch before shooting. Crazy, really."

Van Gaal sent every player video clips via email of what they had done wrong. When they ignored him, the emails soon came with "read receipts". During team meetings, the manager would criticise players in front of their teammates for the most basic technical mistakes.

"It was hard work under Louis," one senior player recalls. "It got to the point where Wayne [Rooney] and Michael [Carrick] went to see him to tell him that it was too much and he needed to change. He did for a while, but by the time he was sacked, the players really couldn't take any more. The lads were looking forward to international breaks just to get away for a few days."

Van Gaal was fired within 48 hours of United winning the FA Cup in 2016 -- their first trophy in the post-Ferguson era -- with Mourinho hired in his place after the club had also considered Tottenham's Mauricio Pochettino and Van Gaal's assistant, and Man United legend, Ryan Giggs.

With Pep Guardiola having taken charge at Manchester City, Mourinho was United's response: a big-name manager described as a "trophy machine" by one senior figure at Old Trafford. But by this point, United were a shadow of the team that Ferguson had led to the title three years earlier. The experienced men had gone, leaving fringe players like Phil Jones, Chris Smalling, Ashley Young and Antonio Valencia, alongside ageing stars Rooney and Carrick. Add the failures of Depay, Schweinsteiger, Darmian and Schneiderlin and it was easy to suggest that Mourinho had taken on a bigger challenge than he had imagined.

That Mourinho delivered two trophies (Europa League and League Cup), reached the FA Cup final and qualified for the Champions League is perhaps testament to his achievement. But he spent just short of £400m in two-and-a-half years as manager and left in December 2018 with the club no better off than when he arrived.

United's football was also uninspiring, almost to the levels of the Van Gaal era, and Mourinho reacted badly to criticism from former players, most notably from iconic figures such as Paul Scholes and Gary Neville. He had also become unpopular around the club and within the dressing room during his final months in charge.

According to one source, things had gotten so bad under Mourinho that when Solskjaer became caretaker manager, folks at Old Trafford referred to him as the "anti-venom."

"Ed's problem is he's too nice"

AT THE BAGGAGE CAROUSEL IN NUR-SULTAN, Manchester United supporter cheered the players, but they booed Ed Woodward. The 48-year-old has become accustomed to criticism since succeeding David Gill in 2013, and even as far away as Kazakhstan the story remained the same. Woodward describes himself as a "lightning rod" and with that comes the abuse he receives, both in person and on social media. He may put on a brave face, but sources have said that the negativity can consume him. "He's a normal guy and just wants to be liked," a source said.

Woodward mingled with supporters in an Irish bar in Nur-Sultan, for example, only for one fan to approach him and poke his finger in the executive's ear before the incident was posted on social media. United sources told ESPN FC that Woodward does not like socialising with the protection of the club's security team. Incidents such as this one, however, perhaps emphasise his naivety.

Fans are frustrated over how Woodward and the Glazers, the U.S. owners, have run the club, seeming to care more about commercial success than success on the pitch. When the Glazers, who also own the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, bought the club in 2005 with a leveraged takeover, they plunged United into debts of around £350m. The Americans have since made United the most powerful commercial brand in world football, but unlike Roman Abramovich at Chelsea or Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al Nahyan at City, the Glazers have not invested any of their own money, instead taking dividends on a regular basis. Since Sheikh Mansour bought City in Sept 2008, he has pumped more than £1 billion into the club to transform their fortunes. At Old Trafford, interest payments on the debt and money drawn in dividends has seen over £1 billion drain out of United's coffers.

A former investment banker by trade, Woodward advised the Glazers during their takeover of United while working for JP Morgan. He speaks to co-chairman Joel Glazer on a daily basis, and despite the club's football failures, a United source told ESPN FC that he is "rock solid" in his position. But just as successive managers have been unable to escape Ferguson's shadow, Woodward continues to be measured against Gill, who presided over incredible success and stability alongside Ferguson.

"The players used to refer to David as 'Mr Gill,'" a former United player said. "But Ed Woodward has never had that level of respect. He's a nice guy, people like him, but David Gill just had a status around the club and United have missed that."

Within the game, Woodward has struck up strong relationships with leading figures in the business, including Man City's Ferran Soriano, Tottenham's Daniel Levy and others at Juventus, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid. But one figure at a leading Premier League club told ESPN FC that Woodward suffers from "jockstrap syndrome" in that he's too easily dazzled by the association with big-name players and agents.

"Ed's problem is that he doesn't know what he doesn't know," one source told ESPN FC. "He means well and wants United to be Premier League and European champions again, but he thinks he has the solution to everything. He doesn't, United don't, and he needs to hire the right people in key positions. He's also too nice. One problem that both he and the Glazers share is that they lack a hard edge. That is not the case at City or Chelsea, or with Levy at Spurs."

One area of scrutiny is United's lack of a director of football, a position that involves mapping out the club's long-term approach on the pitch and recruiting players and coaches to fit that vision. When Mourinho was sacked, this role was cited as an urgent appointment. Almost 12 months on, sources tell ESPN FC that it is no longer a priority.

Woodward has admitted that he, at times, has been the man who has blocked transfers. "Sometimes I have to be the one who delivers the 'no,' which isn't easy," he told "United We Stand." "Our natural tendency is to back the manager in every possible circumstance, but we have to listen to the experts too."

"Ole is going to have to be selfish"

SOLSKJAER WAS IN A RELAXED MOOD as he sat in the coffee lounge of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, United's base, in Nur-Sultan. The United manager was making light of the bitterly cold temperatures outside, claiming that "it's colder when I go to my cabin in Norway." Less than 12 months earlier, Solskjaer was managing Molde in his homeland. There have probably been times in recent months when the 46-year-old could have used the solitude of his retreat.

"Fair play to Ole, he is making big changes," one of Solskjaer's former United teammates told ESPN FC. "But I don't know how much his voice is really heard at the club and whether he is able to do what he really wants to do."

Solskjaer's initial appointment as caretaker manager went so well, winning his first eight games and guiding the team to a remarkable 3-1 Champions League win against PSG in France, that he was given a three-year contract in April. Woodward declared that Solskjaer was the man to lead United's "cultural reboot" by delivering attractive, winning football with a team predominantly made up of homegrown players. Behind the scenes, the scouting department was up and running, with the Wan Bissaka signing an example of how United were using strategy and data to recruit players. For his part, Solskjaer offloaded high-earning, but under-performing, players such as Lukaku, Sanchez and Darmian.

When United took the field against Astana, the average age of their 10 outfield players was 20.1. The squad cull had been brutal and the lack of reinforcements -- only three signings arrived this summer -- means Solskjaer must use untried youngsters when he wants to give his senior players a break. It is why United have languished in mid-table this season, yet those at Old Trafford say the club won't go on a spending spree in January.

Gary Neville, a former United captain, has urged Solskjaer to protect himself by pushing for funds to sign players. "Ole is not going to be there to see the fruits of the labour he has put in, the foundations that he is laying, unless he gets players in around them [youngsters]," Neville said. "The young players won't develop the maturity they need without experienced players alongside them.

"Ole must demand it [money to spend]. He is going to have to be selfish, have a ruthless streak and protect himself in January."

The money is there to spend, but missing out on the Champions League will undermine the club's efforts to sign the world's best players. And the prospect of finishing in the Premier League's top four, which grants automatic qualification to Europe's top competition, appears as far away as Kazakhstan.

Sources have told ESPN FC that the United hierarchy are prepared to endure a period of "pain" to come out the other side in a better place. There is also a view that patience will deliver its rewards. City and Liverpool are the big two at this moment in time, but nobody at Old Trafford expects Guardiola to remain at City for the long-term, while there is also a belief -- maybe a hope -- that Liverpool will have to plan for life without Jurgen Klopp at some point in the next two to three years. But waiting for your rivals to fail is no plan for success. Six years of mistakes and false steps have been hugely damaging for Manchester United, but as they emerged from the Astana Arena the mood was one of optimism. Maybe this is as bad as it gets.

United have to come in from the cold at some point.

"He needs to be left alone"

India's captain Virat Kohli has joined white-ball vice-captain Rohit Sharma in backing wicketkeeper-batsman Rishabh Pant, who has come under intense scrutiny over the last few months, both in front of and behind the stumps.

On the eve of the T20I series opener against West Indies in Hyderabad, Kohli urged fans not to chant MS Dhoni's name in the stands and ramp up the pressure on Pant. Dhoni, Pant's predecessor behind the stumps in the white-ball teams, hasn't played for India since the ODI World Cup in July, but he hasn't announced his retirement yet and could still have an outside chance of playing next year's T20 World Cup in Australia.

ALSO READ - 15 out of 30: Who will make the cut for India's T20 World Cup squad?

In the ODI series decider against Australia earlier this year at the Feroz Shah Kotla, Pant's home ground, spectators had chanted "Dhoni! Dhoni! Dhoni!" after a failed review from Pant.

Reportedly, the crowd in Rajkot also chanted Dhoni's name after Pant fluffed a chance to stump Bangladesh's Liton Das, having gathered the ball marginally in front of the stumps. As a result, the delivery was deemed a no-ball.

"We certainly believe in Rishabh's ability," Kohli said. "When you say it's the player's responsibility to work hard, perform and do all those things, I agree. But I think it's the collective responsibility of everyone around as well to give that player some space to do so as well. If he misses a chance or something, people can't shout 'MS!' in the stadium. It's not respectful, if I have to put it that way.

"No player would like that to happen. If you're playing in your own country, you should get support rather than always thinking what mistake is this guy going to make. No one wants to be in that position."

After the Rajkot T20I against Bangladesh, Rohit, who led the team in Kohli's absence, threw his weight behind Pant, saying he must be "allowed to do what he wants to do on the field". Kohli echoed Rohit's comments and believed that Pant could translate his success as an attacking force in the IPL to international cricket if he's given the space to do so.

"As Rohit rightly pointed out as well, he needs to be left alone. We know he's a match-winner and once he comes good you will see a different version of him - which you've seen in the IPL already because he's free, he's relaxed there," Kohli said. "He feels that there's a lot more respect when it comes to his ability and what he can achieve for the team. I think he needs to feel that a bit more around him.

"He can't be isolated to an extent that he gets nervous on the field. If you want him to do well and win matches for the team, all of us collectively need to make him feel like he belongs, and we're here to do things for him rather than against him."

When asked if India might consider bumping Pant to the top of the order, in the absence of the injured Shikhar Dhawan, Kohli reckoned that the top four pick themselves, with KL Rahul slated to open with Rohit.

"Not really, in the Indian team if you look at the top three or four batsmen right now, [they have set positions]," he said. "I mentioned this about [Wriddhiman] Saha as well when I was asked in Kolkata 'how do you see him playing shorter formats and so on'. And I said, in IPL you have eight teams. And you have a lot more players who can play in lot more positions. You have to figure out who are the best guys to do the job at a particular position."

Bryce Harper charged a soft line drive on Sept. 5, fielded it cleanly and fired a strong throw home. The baserunner, Michael Lorenzen, who had started the play on second base, held at third. The trailing baserunner, Jose Peraza, who had started on first base, rounded second and went halfway to third, then backtracked. The catcher, J.T. Realmuto, fielded Harper's throw and snapped a throw to second, where shortstop Jean Segura caught it and dropped a tag on Peraza. Peraza got back to the base before the tag, but his slide took him off the bag. He initially was called safe, but upon video review, the call was overturned, and Peraza was out.

It all took slightly more than nine seconds, at the end of which one thing had changed -- two outs had become three, ending the rally. It can be, like every baseball play, recorded as a simple text description:

Single to RF (Line Drive to Short CF-RF); Lorenzen to 3B; Peraza out at 2B

But those nine seconds, like in many baseball plays, comprise a very complicated story, and converting that complicated story into units of credit is one of the permanent challenges of baseball statistics.

Whose WAR (wins above replacement) goes up on the play? Is it Harper's, because his strong throw home set everything up? Or Realmuto's, because his throw to second led to the assist? Or Segura's, because his acrobatic tag finished the out? Or is it even more nuanced than that?

We're going to break down this play, which is ordinary enough to pass unmentioned but extraordinary enough to watch 30 or 40 times without wringing it all the way dry. And we're going to eventually try to answer the central question: Who gets credit for what happened and how much?

You can watch it here.

What happened

Two important things occurred before the pitch was ever thrown. Eight minutes, 40 seconds earlier, Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Nick Pivetta was removed with a runner on first base and one out in the inning. Cole Irvin, a lefty, replaced him.

And 1 minute, 28 seconds before the pitch was thrown -- when the Cincinnati Reds' batter who hit the line drive, Alex Blandino, was digging into the batter's box -- Harper took one big step back from where he had been playing for the previous batter, Peraza. Harper set up 281 feet from home plate. This qualifies as shallow positioning. The league plays the average right-handed batter 292 feet away. The league played Blandino, on average, 285 feet away, with some teams setting up as far as 290 feet away. Even two innings earlier, Harper had been standing one foot deeper for Blandino -- 282 feet -- but here he was a foot shallower.

He is 281 feet back on the first pitch of the at-bat, and he doesn't budge as the count progresses to 1-2.

Just before the pitch is thrown, the pitcher, Irvin, takes a long look at Lorenzen, the lead runner, on second base. Lorenzen is fast: His sprint speed is in the 85th percentile of all major league runners, according to Statcast. The runner on first, Peraza, isn't being held on at first. He is pretty fast too: His sprint speed is 70th percentile. Irvin delivers, and the play begins.

1.0 seconds after Irvin begins his pitching motion:

The pitcher has fired with a quick delivery -- not quite a slide step, but with a low leg kick you might see a pitcher use to keep runners from getting a big jump. Irvin is very good at holding runners on: In a bit more than 40 innings this year, nobody will even attempt a stolen base on Irvin. Realmuto has an elite arm behind the plate. Between Irvin's delivery and Realmuto's reputation, neither runner gets more than a cautious secondary lead. Irvin's pitch is a fastball, low and out of the strike zone.

2.0 seconds:

Blandino has chased the low pitch and made contact. He doesn't hit it hard -- just 79 mph, a flare more than a line drive -- but it falls into what Statcast researchers call the fly ball donut hole: If it were hit harder, better, it would be carry to the right fielder for an out; but at this exit velocity, it travels just far enough to get over the infield, but not far enough to reach the outfielder. It's a nearly certain base hit, according to Statcast-derived expectations. With two outs, both baserunners are off on contact. Harper gets a good jump on the ball.

3.0 seconds:

Just as the ball is about to land in right field, 210 feet from home plate, the first baseman already has left his position to get in place as the cutoff man. The second baseman, Cesar Hernandez, has begun running to first, where he'll position himself in case the batter, Blandino, takes a big turn around that bag. Lorenzen is about 25 feet from third base, and his body already is orienting itself to go home. The third-base coach, J.R. House, hasn't made his decision yet. House is backpedaling down the third-base line, perhaps 70 feet of the way to home plate as he observes the play developing, his hands still down at his side. The runner on first, Peraza, is running to second base, and he is watching the play in right field. The shortstop, Segura, has walked a step or two in from his position at the edge of the infield dirt and is watching. The pitcher, Irvin, has taken off in a sprint to back up a throw home. Harper is charging hard.

4.0 seconds:

The umpire kicks away Blandino's bat, and Realmuto straddles the plate while he tracks the baserunner coming around third. The center fielder, Adam Haseley, has jogged a few steps toward right field, but he stops and stands in right-center. Lorenzen reaches third base on a sprint, with his body almost directly facing home. By this point, the third-base coach is nearly at home plate, and Lorenzen picks up House's stop sign. Peraza is slowing as he reaches second base, watching Harper. Harper fields the ball cleanly, belt high on one hop.

5.0 seconds:

Harper is just about to release the ball. Lorenzen has stopped around third base and is watching to see Harper's throw. The third-base coach has both arms raised in a stop sign. Peraza has taken one or two steps past second base, his eyes still on Harper. Segura, the shortstop, is still standing almost at his original position, 50 or 60 feet from second base, watching.

6.0 seconds:

The third-base coach has dropped his arms back down to his side and is watching Harper's strong throw come toward home. The throw is 94.9 mph, a rocket. Harper has one of the best outfield arms in baseball: His "max effort" throw is, at 94 mph, the 10th fastest among 95 qualifying outfielders, according to MLB Advanced Media data. This throw is even harder than that, at 94.9 mph, and it's low and on target. Blandino has reached first base. Lorenzen has come to a complete stop, about 25 feet around third base. But Peraza, the trailing runner, has seen the throw going home and taken off on a sprint to third base, unaware Lorenzen is still there.

7.0 seconds:

The first-base coach, Delino DeShields, is pointing at the bag for Blandino to stay put, in case the throw home gets cut off. The first baseman, Hoskins, feints like he is going to cut the ball off -- and he probably should have cut it off, since Peraza is almost 40 feet toward third base -- but he lets the throw go through. At this point, shortstop Segura, catcher Realmuto and third-base coach House all realize Peraza has gotten himself into trouble: Segura takes off toward second base; Realmuto points to second base; and the third-base coach puts up a new stop sign, this one for Peraza. Peraza also realizes he is in trouble, and he stops. Realmuto prepares to receive the throw home.

8.0 seconds:

Realmuto has fielded the throw on one hop, just before it bounces again. (The throw is strong and fairly accurate, but it is slightly to the wrong side of the plate, and Realmuto has to extend a backhand to field it before it bounces a second time. Had Lorenzen been trying to score, it wouldn't have been in a great place for Realmuto to make a tag.) Realmuto's left knee is on the ground as he takes Harper's throw, and he springs up to fire to second with a quick arm stroke. Segura is still a ways from second base, but he has gotten the jump on Peraza, who is now also in full retreat toward second base.

9.0 seconds:

Realmuto, who has perhaps the game's strongest throwing arm from behind the plate, fires to second base. The center fielder, Haseley, realizes late there is going to be throw to second, and he belatedly breaks to back the throw up. The first baseman, Hoskins, standing near the middle of the field, leans back slightly to avoid getting clipped by the throw. Realmuto's throw reaches second base about four feet above the ground and about four feet to the third-base side of the base, which requires Segura -- just arriving at the base -- to reach back over the baserunner. The throw isn't quite in time. Peraza's foot is on the bag when Segura catches the throw, right over Peraza's shoulder. Segura has had to partially leave his feet to reach for the throw and to avoid Peraza.

9.3 seconds:

Segura catches the ball, and his firm tag drops on Peraza's back as he falls over the baserunner. Peraza's slide is a bit awkward: He starts it a little late, and he has too much force as he jams into the bag. His leg jolts over the bag, clearly separating from it for more than a split-second. Segura, landing with his momentum taking him toward third base, manages to hold the tag on Peraza's back in that moment. The call on the field is safe -- the second-base umpire, on the outfield side of the play, doesn't see Peraza's leg lose touch with the bag -- but it is overturned on review. It's definitive. The left fielder, during all of this, has barely moved.

This is what it looked like using Statcast's radar tracking:

Who gets credit

We've observed almost every actor's role in the play, some of it consequential to the final outcome and some of it not. Most of this is recorded. Much of it is ultimately wrapped into stats that give credit, though often in unexpected ways.

In the most traditional way stats are recorded -- the back-of-the-baseball-card stats -- two players get credit: Blandino gets the hit, and his batting average goes from .143 to .250. The pitcher, Irvin, gets the out, and his ERA drops from 7.46 to 7.39. Harper gets an outfield assist, even though he didn't make the final throw. (For that matter, he didn't even throw in the direction of second base, where the out was made, but Realmuto's throw is basically treated as a relay of Harper's throw.) It is Harper's 10th outfield assist of the year, and he will finish the season with a career-high 13, leading all major league right fielders in 2019.

Many of the participants who did their jobs properly aren't recorded at all. Rob Thomson, the Phillies bench coach, will never be credited (besides here, right now) for positioning his team's right fielders shallow for Blandino, assuming it was him who did it. But had the Phillies been playing Blandino five feet deeper, as the rest of the league did this year, Lorenzen quite likely would have scored from third, or at least tried. In that scenario, Peraza probably would have run unimpeded to third. Those were five very consequential feet. Irvin and Realmuto kept the runners from getting good secondary leads -- Irvin by paying close attention and delivering the pitch quickly; Realmuto with the reputation of his arm -- and if the pitch had been taken, each would have received tiny bits of credit by Baseball Prospectus' advanced metrics, which track how often baserunners attempt to steal against each pitcher and catcher. But because the ball was put in play, the pitch does not go into that baserunning data set, so Irvin and Realmuto get no credit. The second baseman who ran to first base, the pitcher who backed up the play at home and the first-base coach who pointed for Blandino to stay on the bag at first base get no acknowledgement.

Some of the participants who arguably didn't do their jobs escape statistical notice. Center fielder Haseley stood watching the play and wasn't in position to back up the final throw to second base. There is no stat for that. Hoskins didn't cut the ball off when he had a play on Peraza at second base, but that isn't recorded. The third-base coach gets no statistical credit or blame for holding Lorenzen at third base, but we will never even know whether that was the right decision or not, whether he deserves credit or blame.

There are parts of this play that are recorded but don't ultimately get calculated as part of a player's WAR. Irvin gets credit, in his chase rate, for inducing the swing on the pitch out of the zone. That is generally treated as a positive skill, frequently cited when trying to assess how good a pitcher is, but it's not part of his WAR. Blandino's chase rate goes up (generally bad), but his contact rate goes up (generally good), though neither of those goes into any stat that attempts to estimate his value.

And then there are the ways the credit gets a bit jumbled up. Peraza made the out at second, but it is the batter, Blandino, whose win probability added takes the hit, because WPA credits the entire play to the hitter. In that recording of events, Blandino cost the Reds 4% of a win by hitting his single and ending the inning. Irvin gets the corresponding credit to his WPA, 4% of a win he earned the Phillies by allowing the single.

Similarly, Blandino's average exit velocity drops on the weak contact, which might be cited against him. But because his hit fell into the donut hole, Statcast gives it credit for being a nearly certain base hit; indeed, it is Blandino's most certain hit of the year, by Statcast's expected batting average stat, and that lifts his expected batting average, or xBA. Neither WPA nor xBA is part of any of the current mainstream WAR models, but an MVP voter might well factor in each. (I consult WPA in filling out my ballot.)

And then there are the parts of the play that do go to a batter's WAR, but the credit is dependent on how different sites code of all what we just watched. Lorenzen's baserunning value gets knocked, because he didn't score from second on a two-out single to the outfield. It might well have been the correct call -- he might have been out at home had he gone -- but 88% of lead baserunners scored from second base on two-out singles to the outfield in 2019. Lorenzen, by holding, is considered to have failed: Baseball Reference docks his WAR by 0.14 runs. It docks Peraza's even more, since he made the crucial baserunning out: 0.51 runs.

But at Baseball Prospectus, Lorenzen -- by holding at third -- absorbs all the lost credit, because he is the lead runner. In that site's formula for baserunning value -- part of the player's WARP -- trailing runners are considered to be "pulled along" by the lead runner. So Lorenzen, who ended the inning safely on third base, is docked 0.6 runs. Peraza's baserunning is not treated as its own event, but only part of Lorenzen's, so Peraza's WARP takes no blame.

The trickiest part of the play, though, is deciding who should get defensive credit: Is it Harper, who made the strong throw home, holding the runner at third and getting the ball quickly and accurately for Realmuto's "relay" -- but who never actually had any intention of getting the runner at second base out? Or is it Realmuto, who alertly saw Peraza's bad baserunning and snapped a quick throw to second -- but whose throw was too late to actually get Peraza before the runner reached the base? Or is it Segura, who made a difficult catch of Realmuto's throw, then crucially kept the tag on Peraza? Couldn't we argue Peraza wasn't even thrown out -- since he got back to the bag safely before any throw arrived -- but was actually tagged out in a separate play altogether, removed from Harper's and Realmuto's throws entirely?

These are not just difficult questions to answer in the abstract, but in the specific. But to the best of our ability to untangle it all, this is how the major WAR systems credited the play:

At FanGraphs, Harper gets some credit for Lorenzen holding at third base and some for the outfield assist. It is worth about 0.33 runs to his WAR. Keep in mind, Lorenzen had the stop sign before Harper ever threw the ball. It was Harper's positioning, his fielding of the ball and the threat of his arm that held Lorenzen. It was his reputation, more than the act itself, that altered the play, and for that he gets credit. Harper could have made a limp throw home that bounced six times and carried 30 feet up the third-base line, but if Lorenzen didn't try to score -- on a play where, in the aggregate, nearly 90% of baserunners do -- it goes to the right fielder's credit.

At Baseball Prospectus, Harper gets some credit for the assist, but most of the play escapes the measures of the site's defensive metric, fielding runs above average, because the out was so unorthodox. The Phillies' team baserunning defense is credited with 0.6 runs prevented -- about the same as Lorenzen is docked -- but not all of that gets distributed to the individual fielders involved.

And at Baseball Reference, where human observers (employed by Sports Info Solutions) credit the defenders on each play, Realmuto gets credit for what SIS labels a good fielding play. That's worth 0.2 runs to his WAR. Harper gets some credit for Lorenzen holding at third.

Segura, across the board, doesn't get credited by anybody. One could argue he made the most important play in the sequence and the most difficult. One could also argue he stood watching the play for far too long, and his late awareness that he was supposed to be covering second base is what ultimately made the play so difficult for him. Maybe he doesn't deserve any credit!

Irvin's WAR improved very slightly at FanGraphs (for the out), improved by a little more at Baseball-Reference (for the runs not scoring) and probably took a slight hit at Baseball Prospectus (for the single). Blandino's WAR improved everywhere but probably least at Baseball Prospectus, because landing singles on weak flares is one of the least stable skills a hitter can have. Harper's WAR, among the defenders, improved at all three sites.

One clear statistical winner of the play is somebody who wasn't even on the field at the time: Pivetta, the pitcher who left the game with Lorenzen on first base earlier in the inning. That would have been his run at the front of everything, but thanks to Irvin -- and Harper, Realmuto, Segura, Lorenzen and Peraza -- it didn't land on his ERA. He left the game in a state of uncertainty, but the rest of his team completed his outing for him.

The Reds began the play with two on and two out, a run expectancy of 0.47 runs. When Blandino singled, the run expectancy jumped, to somewhere between 0.72 (bases loaded with two outs) and 1.52 runs (one run scoring, plus runners at first and third). When Peraza was tagged out, it dropped to 0.0 (inning over).

I've had a few hours with this play, and after all that study, here's how I'd personally assign credit:

• Peraza: -0.75 runs

• Irvin: -0.5 runs

• Lorenzen: -0.2 runs

• House: -0.1 runs

• Pivetta: -0.1 runs

• Hoskins: -0.1 runs

• Realmuto: 0.25 runs

• Segura: 0.3 runs

• Blandino: 0.6 runs

• Harper: 0.6 runs

But I have no idea if that's fair. Those are just opinions, and they took hours to come to. There were more than 100,000 batted-ball plays in major league baseball this year, many of them involving half the players on the field in direct or indirect roles. There were, furthermore, three-quarters of a million pitches, scores of thousands of stolen base opportunities, thousands of pitches in the dirt. To give credit on all of them means building statistical systems that can make assumptions that hold true in as many cases as possible -- and that don't require hours (and that don't rely on personal opinions) for each of them. The act of assigning value for all these possible plays is a titanic act of research and coding that took years of work, trial and error and ever-more-specific tweaks by generations of analysts -- all to be reasonably prepared for an oddity like this play.

Here's a final ironic twist: Irvin's FIP -- an ERA estimator based entirely on his strikeouts, walks and home runs allowed, stripping out the effects of the defense -- went slightly down when Segura tagged out Peraza. That play at second base obviously wasn't a strikeout, a walk or a home run -- and, in fact, didn't involve pitching at all. But FIP is calculated by dividing those three events by innings pitched. When Peraza came off the bag, and the out was recorded, Irvin's denominator went up by a third of an inning, and his FIP dropped slightly. FIP stands for fielding independent pitching. But in a major league baseball play, nothing is ever totally independent of the fielding.

Thanks to Lucas Apostoleris, Jonathan Judge, Matt Meyers, Sean O'Rourke and Mark Simon for research assistance.

The holiday shopping season is upon us, which means you're undoubtedly searching for the perfect toy for the young ones in your life. The one they'll lose their minds over for one day, play with occasionally for the next month and then will be shuffled under the bed with the rest of the forgotten fads.

("Toy Story" was a documentary.)

For the NHL Power Rankings this week, we've decided to match up all 31 teams with a classic or modern holiday toy that best defines them.

How we rank: The ESPN hockey editorial staff submits selections ranking teams 1-31, and those results are tabulated to the list featured here. Teams are rated through Tuesday night's games, taking into account overall record, recent success and other factors such as injuries. The previous ranking for each team is its spot in last week's edition.

1. Boston Bruins

Previous ranking: 2

Tickle-Me Elmo. The year was 1996. A craze swept the nation. Something known for its adorableness, popularity and record-breaking numbers. Something that would shake and giggle when you tried to hold him. Then? Tickle-Me Elmo. Now? David Pastrnak.

2. Washington Capitals

Previous ranking: 3

Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action 200-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle. Or as he's more commonly known, Alex Ovechkin. ("You'll shoot the lights out, kid.")

3. New York Islanders

Previous ranking: 1

Mr. Potato Head. Not only because the Islanders are the most successful bucket of parts in the NHL, but ... I mean, you've seen their coach, right?

4. St. Louis Blues

Previous ranking: 4

Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine. Grinding the ice into shavings through brute force rather than battery-operated machinery. Craig Berube would be proud.

5. Edmonton Oilers

Previous ranking: 5

Fuzzy Dice. Two oversized, colorful, attention-grabbing things that you're more than happy to roll with. And nothing else, to be honest.

6. Philadelphia Flyers

Previous ranking: 17

Play-Doh. A giant pile of mush that has been quickly reshaped into a contender.

7. Carolina Hurricanes

Previous ranking: 6

Barrel of Monkeys. Or as they're known in 2019, a Bunch of Jerks.

8. Arizona Coyotes

Previous ranking: 8

Furby. Look, you can't understand them, you don't really get them, and that's fine. They're not for you. You don't speak Furbish. Just know they're incredibly successful.

9. Colorado Avalanche

Previous ranking: 11

Super Soaker. Other teams are working with squirt guns. At 3.73 goals per game (TK UPDATE THURSDAY AM), even without Mikko Rantanen and Gabriel Landeskog for stretches this season, the Avalanche are working with Super Soakers.

10. Winnipeg Jets

Previous ranking: 10

Weebles. Those egg-shaped little figures from the 1970s. "Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down" pretty much sums up the Jets still being in a playoff spot right now.

11. Dallas Stars

Previous ranking: 7

Yo-yo. They're down. They're up. They're down. They're up. They're ...

12. Florida Panthers

Previous ranking: 9

Tinkertoys. Based on the way Sergei Bobrovsky has played this season, the piece with the five holes seems wholly appropriate.

13. Pittsburgh Penguins

Previous ranking: 12

Heelys. Those shoes with the wheels in them. Extremely fun to watch. High rate of injury. Such are the Penguins.

14. Vegas Golden Knights

Previous ranking: 18

L.O.L. Surprise! Dolls. New, super popular and strangely ubiquitous given their relatively recent arrival on the scene. But without question, one of the hottest toys on the market.

15. San Jose Sharks

Previous ranking: 15

Teddy Ruxpin. The same story, over and over again, but now we're wondering if the batteries are finally running out.

16. Vancouver Canucks

Previous ranking: 16

Easy-Bake Oven. Tastier than expected, but we can't help but wonder when that little light bulb's going to burn us.

17. Montreal Canadiens

Previous ranking: 13

Magic 8-Ball. The die inside of the "magic" 8-ball actually has 20 sides. There are 10 positive answers and five negative ones and five that are of the "reply hazy, try again" category. It's a toy made for countless question marks yet an equal number of random answers. This season, that's the Habs.

18. Toronto Maple Leafs

Previous ranking: 19

That empty Star Wars box. In 1977, toymakers were caught off guard by the success of "Star Wars," to the point where they didn't have action figures ready for that holiday season. They sold empty boxes with images of Luke and Leia and Stormtroopers on it as a "promise" that eventually you'd get them. In summary: Something that looks incredible on the package, but then you realize there might be nothing on the inside. So, anyway, the Leafs.

19. Tampa Bay Lightning

Previous ranking: 14

Origami. A team that becomes so much more interesting the more they fold.

20. Nashville Predators

Previous ranking: 20

"The Monster at the End of this Book." The Predators' goaltending is like that classic Sesame Street storybook: Even though it might be time, everyone's afraid to turn the page.

21. Buffalo Sabres

Previous ranking: 22

Etch A Sketch. Every time you think they've completed the picture, something shakes it up and it's back to the drawing board.

22. New York Rangers

Previous ranking: 21

Legos. Interchangeable building blocks of different shapes and sizes. And eventually they'll figure out what it is they're building.

23. Calgary Flames

Previous ranking: 24

One Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robot. It's really not fair that Milan Lucic doesn't have someone to practice with, especially one that matches his mobility and hands.

24. Minnesota Wild

Previous ranking: 29

Glo Worm. Comforting, but also sleep-inducing.

25. Anaheim Ducks

Previous ranking: 25

Skip-It. A plastic ball and chain that attached to your leg that you'd spin in a circular motion and jump over, exerting yourself but not really going anywhere.

26. Columbus Blue Jackets

Previous ranking: 26

Jenga. They had the whole thing built and then a couple of blocks went away and the whole thing came crashing down.

27. Chicago Blackhawks

Previous ranking: 23

Bubbles from the dollar store. For a second, it looks pretty solid. But boy does that bubble pop quickly.

28. Ottawa Senators

Previous ranking: 27

Slip 'N Slide. Whoa, almost got a little too close to contention there for a minute. Quick, everyone on their bellies ... the conference basement is that way ... weeeeeeee!

29. Los Angeles Kings

Previous ranking: 30

A broken action figure from a discontinued line of toys that no one's sure what to do with. But enough about Ilya Kovalchuk ...

30. New Jersey Devils

Previous ranking: 28

A Nintendo Switch box that doesn't have a Switch inside of it, but instead has a bag of worms. Sorry, we were just trying to find the greatest example of bait and Switch.

31. Detroit Red Wings

Previous ranking: 31

A stocking full of scratch-off lottery tickets. "Now you bring those over to Uncle Stevie," says GM Steve Yzerman, taking a Loonie out of his pocket.