IN MID-DECEMBER, when Liam Hendriks squinted at the PET scan of his body and saw hundreds of spots illuminated by radioactive dye, his first thought was that he looked like his dalmatian, Olive. Hendriks was diagnosed earlier that month with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a blood cancer, and he had figured it was Stage 1, maybe Stage 2, easily treatable. The imaging -- from his neck to his ankles, his blood to his bones -- told a different story.

For the previous six months, Hendriks had wondered why the lymph node on the back of his neck had swelled to the size of a walnut and why the ones under his jawline jutted out and fattened his face. His wife, Kristi, saw them during a game midseason, and though she knew that the veins in his neck bulge in some photos, this looked off. Maybe it was the light hitting him in unflattering fashion or sweat warping the image. When Hendriks returned home that night and Kristi inspected the lumps, she asked what they were. Hendriks didn't know.

A blood test came back clean, and because Hendriks was diagnosed at 18 with autoimmune hepatitis -- a disease that affects the liver and flared again in 2015 -- the working theory was that his body was fighting off an illness and the inflamed lymph nodes were likely a product of that. Hendriks' back hurt more than usual, his elbow was barking, he wasn't recovering like he once did, but hey, that's life in the 30s for a professional athlete. He saved 37 more games for the Chicago White Sox, booked another All-Star appearance, continued one of the great stories in baseball of the past half-decade, in which a long underestimated, tossed-aside-five-times, profane, preening, impossibly nice guy emerged as one of the most productive relief pitchers in baseball.

He waited until the winter for further examination. An otolaryngologist in the Phoenix area, where the Hendrikses live in the offseason, used a needle to extract a biopsy from a node in Hendriks' neck. The results were inconclusive, so he underwent a CT scan and kept working out at the White Sox's facility in Glendale, going about his business as normal, until the phone call Dec. 7 that changed his life.

It was lymphoma. More tests were needed to determine the severity. The PET scan confirmed: It was Stage 4. Doctors told Hendriks that immunotherapy alone wouldn't rid his body of the poison attacking his white blood cells. He would need chemotherapy, too. And that, more than anything before, would test the ceaseless optimism that had taken him from Perth, Australia, to the big leagues to the apex of the sport.

When Hendriks, now 34, announced his diagnosis Jan. 8, well wishes poured in from the hundreds of fans who cheered his copious strikeouts and friends who valued his more contemplative side. Gift baskets started arriving, with Preggie Pops to stem chemo-induced nausea and weighted blankets with which he could wrap himself for comfort. One wicker basket, sent by Heather Grandal, a nurse and the wife of Hendriks' catcher with the White Sox, Yasmani Grandal, was packed with some teas for Kristi, a blanket, socks and a skull cap in case Hendriks' hair fell out.

It also included a duffel bag in which he could carry items to his infusion sessions. At first, Hendriks didn't notice the words on one side of the bag. Kristi alerted Hendriks to them, and when he flipped the bag right side up, it spelled out what over the previous month he'd come to believe.

"CANCER MESSED WITH THE WRONG MOTHERF---ER."

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ANDREW VAUGHN STILL laughs at what he saw that mid-January afternoon. The White Sox's first baseman and his wife, Lexi, swung by Hendriks' house in Scottsdale to visit. Vaughn's sister-in-law had non-Hodgkin lymphoma in recent years, and he knew the necessity of support. Vaughn was struck by Hendriks' unrelenting positivity, which was clearest when he pulled out his phone, opened a calendar app, flipped to May and gestured at it.

"That's what I'm shooting for," Hendriks said.

Two days after his first treatment for Stage 4 cancer, Hendriks had already pinpointed when he wanted to be back on a big league mound. It was audacious, hubristic even, but Vaughn knew better than to doubt his friend who had willed himself from nothing to a star, who stared down the baddest men in the sport, challenged them to a my-best-versus-yours contest and almost every time emerged victoriously.

"I want to be the best version of myself as I can be," Hendriks says. "Everything I do is trying to beat something. Whether it's beat the opponents into oblivion or ... "

"Beat cancer," Kristi says.

" ... beating the date that I think I wanted to be back at," Hendriks continues. "That is my goal at all times. Beating everything is my goal at all times."

This has been Hendriks' reality for as long as he can remember. His father, Geoff, played Australian Rules Football professionally, and with plenty of bulk on his 6-foot frame, Hendriks could've done the same. (At 15, he had played on a national football team with Patty Mills, now a 14-year NBA veteran.) But football was the backup plan. Baseball was the dream. More than any game he had tried, it brought out in him something raw and pure. Baseball, Hendriks says, is about "the competitive nature and the drive to succeed and the will to kind of embarrass the other guys' families. Until you get to that point, you're almost OK with mediocrity. I need to go out there, and if I'm not completely eradicating them from the face of the earth ... I don't have a middle ground. I want to eviscerate you, or you're OK. And I much prefer the evisceration."

Summoning that took years to wrangle. In 2007, just six years after he nearly quit baseball when he was in the first round of cuts at tryouts for his state-level team, he signed with the Minnesota Twins at 18 for $170,000. In 2010, then a starting pitcher, he nearly won the minor league ERA title. He ascended to Triple-A the year after, more command-and-control artist than embarrass-eradicate-eviscerate vanquisher, with a low-90s fastball and five times as many walks as strikeouts. The Twins summoned him to the big leagues in September 2011, and it wasn't until more than a year later, in his 18th career start, that Hendriks notched his first win. He was enough of a nonentity that Boston manager Bobby Valentine once wrote out a lineup card filled with right-handed hitters because he thought the "L" in "L Hendriks" meant he was left-handed.

By the end of the 2013 season, the Twins saw Hendriks, 24, as a AAAA player -- too good for Triple-A, not good enough to succeed in the major leagues, with a 2-13 record and 6.06 ERA in 156 innings over 30 games. Minnesota cut him in December and he was quickly snatched up by the Chicago Cubs, who 10 days later let him go to the Baltimore Orioles, who held onto him for two months and took him off their roster as spring training began in 2014. Toronto pounced, snuck him through waivers, sent him to Triple-A, called him up for three starts and traded him to Kansas City in July. The Royals toyed with making him a reliever but didn't see much growth potential there either, and in October, Hendriks was designated for assignment for the fourth time in less than a year, the standard path for a dead-end career.

Hendriks resuscitated it in 2015, rejoining Toronto, transitioning full-time to a relief role, adding nearly 4 mph to his fastball because he could go max effort in shorter stints and posting a 2.92 ERA in 64.2 innings. The Blue Jays traded him that winter to Oakland, where Hendriks settled in as a middling middle reliever, fungible enough to be DFA'd again in 2018 with no bites from the other 29 teams. Their baseball life on the precipice, Hendriks and Kristi, who married in 2013, grasped for help and found it in a most unusual place.

Kristi had seen an Instagram post from the actress Sarah Hyland in which she talked about Rubi Sandoval, a Tarot card reader and healer in Southern California. Kristi reached out to Sandoval and encouraged Hendriks to talk with her. Sandoval noticed something immediately: Hendriks' self-involvement caused him to ask, "Why?" with things he couldn't control. She knew nothing about baseball -- she called the pitcher's mound "the mount" -- but Sandoval did know that wondering why the manager was giving others opportunities Hendriks believed he deserved led nowhere good. She encouraged him to stop shouldering the burden of his own expectations, much less others', and instead appreciate what he has. If this was indeed the end of his career, at the very least he shouldn't sabotage himself with shackles of his own making.

"I knew I needed to have what they call white-line fever, where I'm a different person on the field than I am off the field," Hendriks says. "If I'm going to go out, I'm going to go out on my own terms."

So he stopped running. He gave up traditional workouts. He started long-tossing as far as he could. He watched baseball's attitude relax toward on-field displays of emotions and screamed after big strikeouts and f-bombed his way through bad pitches. He was angry that everything had come to this, and, he learned, he pitched better angry.

"He just went out there and just started throwing because his job and his life depended on it," Kristi says. "And I think Liam always does the best when he is backed into a corner. ... You can get so wrapped up in what is expected from you from teams, expected from you from fans and things and [Sandoval] just brings a calm, cool [presence] that resets his feelings, his emotions and his purpose out there on the mound. Everybody has their own thing. I know people think that we're crazy when we say that we do these things, but we don't care. It works for us."

In 2019, Hendriks made the A's Opening Day roster and worked his way from the middle innings to higher-leverage spots to the closer role. He put up more wins above replacement than any reliever in baseball. He learned to balance the fierceness of his on-field persona, spending his time off the mound playing with the couple's 10 adopted pets or building Lego sets or getting lost in young adult fiction books. Finally, everything was clicking. The next season, he led MLB relievers in WAR again, and the White Sox, in search of a closer, lavished him with a three-year, $54 million contract in free agency during the winter of 2020. Hendriks followed with a third consecutive year topping the WAR reliever leaderboard in 2021.

He thinks about that 2021 season sometimes, not because his 113-7 strikeout-walk ratio was the second best in baseball history, behind only Dennis Eckersley's 1990 season, or because he successfully fulfilled his end of the big money contract. It's because when Hendriks saw the PET scan for the first time and studied it, he noticed the spots in his hips were bigger than the ones in his neck. That meant they'd been growing even longer. And it occurred to him that not only was it likely that he had pitched the entire 2022 season with cancer, there was a good chance he'd been throwing in 2021 with it, too.

WHEN SHE WAS 24 years old and in medical school for orthopedics, Allison Rosenthal was diagnosed with leukemia. For the next 2½ years, as she underwent chemotherapy, it dawned on Rosenthal that as much as her chosen field had fascinated her -- she was an elite gymnast and competed collegiately for Utah State, and she wanted to help athletes -- something else was calling her.

"Because of my life experience, it steered me in a different direction," says Rosenthal, today an oncologist and hematologist at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix. "And here I am now helping other people, paying it forward best I can because somebody saved my life so that I could do it for others."

Rosenthal met Hendriks and Kristi in late December, about two weeks after the Dec. 7 call from Dr. Paul Charnetsky, in which the only words Hendriks remembers are: "There's a possibility it's lymphoma." Kristi was at the dining room table, working on a five-minute gratitude journal, when Hendriks called to tell her. And as stoic as he was trying to be, as strong as he felt like he needed to be, it couldn't erase the panic that coursed through her. Five days later, when another biopsy confirmed that the nodes were hard, a telltale sign of lymphoma, Kristi took a still slightly sedated Hendriks home, helped him to bed, went into their walk-in closet and cried for 10 minutes. And then there was the first call with Rosenthal, a lymphoma specialist, in which she tried to explain what the Hendrikses already knew from all the panic Googling they were doing: Lymphoma is the most common blood cancer, diagnosed in around 90,000 people a year in the United States, and while it's curable with a long life expectancy, it's easier if caught earlier, and they'd need to do more testing to determine the severity.

So Hendriks went in for the PET scan, the one that made him look like Olive the dalmatian, and Rosenthal at first shattered the Hendrikses' illusions when she said Stage 4. It was not, she made sure to say, necessarily terminal like other Stage 4 cancers; Stage 4 non-Hodgkin lymphoma simply means the cancer cells have spread beyond the lymph nodes and to other areas -- in Hendriks' case, his bones. This was serious, yes, but as the tears again welled in Kristi's eyes and Hendriks tried to maintain his steely resolve, Rosenthal uttered 10 words that brought them a semblance of calm in a sea of concern.

"I've been worried before," she said, "but I'm not worried with you."

There was a path to remission. It would involve grueling eight hours-long intravenous immunotherapy sessions that target B cells -- a white blood cell that makes antibodies to keep the immune system afloat -- infected by cancer. The normal immunotherapy-chemotherapy treatment for Stage 4 non-Hodgkin lymphoma is six courses, each two days in a row followed by a 28-day break. Hendriks nodded along at everything but the six treatments. Might four be enough to cure him? He wanted to return to the White Sox as soon as possible, and six months of infusions would keep him out until at least August. Rosenthal was open to the possibility.

"I certainly understand the commitment that competing in athletics at an elite level takes, and I understand what a big part of your life that is when you're an athlete," she says. "That's your primary identity and main way that you make a living. So I think I could identify easily with Liam and how important sports were to him and how all of the determination and skills and competitiveness and everything was going to factor into how he was going to respond to the cancer diagnosis and what he had to do to get back to playing."

With the treatment set, Hendriks and Kristi told almost no one, including immediate family members. They didn't want to ruin Christmas. Even close friends didn't find out until Jan. 8, when the Hendrikses sent a text about Liam's diagnosis and prognosis, adding that they'd be announcing the news on social media a half-hour later. Spring training was soon approaching, and even if they could keep it secret for another five weeks, eventually the reason for Hendriks' absence would raise questions.

Treatment started the next day. Hendriks arrived at 6 a.m., his inscribed duffel bag in tow, loaded with an iPad, a book, headphones, chargers, enough to keep him busy for the next 10 hours as the medicine went to work. Nurses inserted an IV into his left arm -- always his left arm, Hendriks requested -- and within a half-hour, he was conked out. He slept like a log that night, returned for a second day of infusions and spent the following two days, he says, "pretty much catatonic on the couch." Immunotherapy and chemotherapy took a toll. The stomach pain. The jaundiced skin. The drugs were killing healthy cells, too. And they wouldn't know for at least a month whether they were working at all, let alone ridding him of the disease.

Sometimes Kristi would wake up in the middle of the night crying, catastrophizing about losing Hendriks, about all the incredible things they were supposed to do that cancer might steal from them. Then she would listen to Hendriks, eternally sunny, back at the White Sox's complex playing catch three days removed from his first chemo session. He never forgot what Sandoval, the Tarot card reader, had told him about asking why. The instinct to say "Why me?" can haunt cancer patients, so Hendriks flipped the question on its head.

"Out of all the people I know, why not me?" he says. "I feel like I am capable of handling this challenge a lot better than some, a lot worse than others, but a lot better than some. If I can do that while having the support of an amazing family, an incredible wife and a bunch of little furry babies running around, then why not me? I know that I can handle this head-on and attack it, and no matter what happens, a lot of good is going to come from this. ...

"I like shouldering the burdens for whatever reason. I don't know. I always take it back to when I was in high school. We went on a camping thing with school. And I was the guy who was walking up with a bag, going down and getting two more bags, and walking up because some other people are struggling. For some reason that always clicks into my head, but I like being there."

In between sessions, to kill the time he'd normally be spending preparing for the season, Hendriks sequestered himself in the garage, built Legos and listened to podcasts. The White Sox -- whose "exceptional" treatment of him, Hendriks says, included allowing him to park at the stadium in owner Jerry Reinsdorf's space -- brought him a lime-green Lamborghini set to build. He constructed the Titanic out of more than 9,000 bricks. Then an AT-AT walker and Starship Destroyer and BD-1 from the Star Wars universe and a McLaren F1 supercar and a Fender guitar and even a bonsai tree.

He heard from well-wishers -- out of nowhere one day, Luis Arraez, the Miami Marlins' hitting impresario and Hendriks' lockermate at the All-Star Game last year, FaceTimed him with reigning National League Cy Young winner Sandy Alcantara to send their best -- and let them distract him from the nausea and hot sweats. In March, he got lost in the wonder of the World Baseball Classic rather than another bone marrow-harvesting session, in which doctors drilled into the back of his hip to take a sample that would help track his progress.

Rosenthal alerted Hendriks and Kristi to the progress after the third session, typically the halfway point of treatment. It was working. The spots on the PET scan were almost all gone. The lumps had receded. The marrow test looked good. They could cut the infusion rounds to four, and his last would start April 3, the day of the White Sox's home opener. He fell in and out of sleep that afternoon, hoping the end was near.

Seventeen days later, Hendriks returned to the Mayo Clinic for a PET scan. He hadn't had coffee yet that morning, so he and Kristi went to a Starbucks nearby. His phone beeped with a text message. It was Rosenthal. The results were in.

"Hey boss," the message read. "PET looks great, so let out a big breath, try not to yell, 'f--- yeah' too loud if you're still on campus and give your amazing wife a big hug. See you guys soon."

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They scurried back to the hospital. Hendriks' stone face belied the joy that suffused his body. Kristi teared up. Rosenthal looked at her and said, "There's no crying in baseball." When Hendriks rang the bell to signal that he was cancer-free, Kristi locked eyes with Rosenthal again, and both of them started to bawl.

Now, like Rosenthal, the Hendrikses are looking for ways to pay it forward. Research and support for adolescent and young adult cancer -- defined as patients ages 15 to 39 -- is wildly underfunded, and the Hendrikses want to change that. Their first time at Mayo Clinic, they had seen a shop with dozens of mannequin heads topped with wigs. While Hendriks did not lose his hair, plenty of people do -- and many among them can't afford a wig that can offer dignity and comfort and the sort of positive feelings Hendriks and Kristi believe helped him through the process. Insurance often doesn't cover the cost, either. The Hendrikses asked the hospital how many total wigs they had in stock and what they would cost. When told, they cut a check for $24,000 and asked Mayo Clinic to distribute them to anyone for whom the cost would be prohibitive.

"It was an unexpected and a really generous gesture on their part that just proves the fact that despite going through everything that he did the whole time, they were wondering how they could help other people," Rosenthal says. "And if that doesn't speak to the character of the Hendrikses as a team, I don't know what does."

EARLIER THIS MONTH, on the final leg of his return, Hendriks arrived in Charlotte for a rehabilitation assignment with the White Sox' Triple-A affiliate wearing a shirt that said, in all caps, "STRUCKOUT CANCER." He was his typically magnanimous self -- Hendriks summoned a different food truck to the ballpark nearly every day and offered to buy lunch for his teammates and opponents -- and made time for those who sought advice or selfies. But he was focused: He knew this was real, with near-big-league caliber hitters to get out if he wanted to fulfill his prediction to Vaughn.

As easy as Hendriks made baseball seem the last four seasons, pitching after cancer, he's learning, isn't exactly a get-on-the-bike-and-ride-it exercise. His stride length felt wrong for weeks. He wasn't ripping through sliders with his typical ferocity. His fastball had lost a couple ticks, and while they'll probably come back, only a true believer would rely upon anything because of the past. But then belief helped Hendriks return, so who's to question it?

"I still remember her saying," Hendriks says, looking at Kristi, "'at some point, something has to not be worst case.'"

"Because it's the rule of thumb in baseball," she says. "Eventually that ball's not going to drop in anymore."

"Eventually," Hendriks says, "you're going to get an out."

Today is that day. The White Sox plan to activate Hendriks this afternoon. He wanted to return at home, to give fans at Guaranteed Rate Field who have seen far too much bad baseball from the White Sox something to cheer for. He coveted a return in May, being back on a major league mound less than six months after the pain of the first treatment -- and that the White Sox are facing the Los Angeles Angels, and Hendriks could be standing 60 feet, 6 inches from Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout, makes it that much better.

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He has been yearning to go through his full routine: Spend the first four innings in the clubhouse, head to the bullpen, don't move until the phone rings and the word "Liam" echoes, throw a few warm-ups, whip off the arm sleeve to signal it's time, tighten the belt, slug 4 ounces of pre-workout loaded with 300 milligrams of caffeine, run in to a Queen/Rage Against the Machine/Prodigy/Skrillex mash-up and embarrass, eradicate, eviscerate. When he gets his first strike, his first expletive, his first out, his first inning, his first save, he'll hear so many of those noises he missed and reckon with the cognitive dissonance of knowing he was too close to never hearing them again.

"One of the most difficult parts of being a cancer patient is actually survivorship, believe it or not, because when there's a problem and there's a plan for the problem, you come and you get it done," Rosenthal says. "You show up for your appointments, you get the treatment that's been prescribed and then we tell people, all right, we fixed it. Looks good for now. And then we send people out with a plan for follow-up, but sometimes that's the scarier part, because somebody isn't checking in with you every day and somebody isn't able to tell you, oh, that ache you have in your knee today isn't something to worry about, you slept funny. Survivorship is its own thing that people have to navigate through."

He'll have help. Rosenthal will always be a phone call away if necessary -- and she's planning on heading to Chicago on Sept. 15, not to see her beloved Cubs but rather to join Hendriks on the South Side for the White Sox game on World Lymphoma Day. He'll have the rest of his family who looked after him and the teammates who kept him in good spirits. He'll have the fans whose messages resonated. Around this time last year, he couldn't have imagined this future. A lump showed up and life got scary and the control that is his hallmark on the mound didn't exist off it.

"In cancer, there are days when I'm 99% for him and he's 1%," Kristi said. "And there are days where I'm just so beside myself in the sense of, I just feel so much pain for him that he's 99% for me. I feel that when you get married, you know, oh, 50/50. And I just think as marriage actually continues on, you realize it's not like that at all. And my heart goes out to every cancer patient, every cancer survivor actually. Because the day you are diagnosed with cancer, you become a survivor. It is such an overwhelming thing. But there is still so much life to be lived. And I hope that what he does on the field encourages a lot of people to know that you can get through this and there's just so much happiness when you just live."

How does someone who could have died live? In Hendricks' case, he lives like the boy who ascended the mountain, came back down again and recognized the climb back was his duty, like the man who refused to ask why and instead asked why not, like the husband who said everything was going to be all right and wasn't lying.

He lives like the motherf---er cancer messed with and lost.

Former US Open champion Sloane Stephens showed why she is one of the French Open's most dangerous unseeded players by knocking out Karolina Pliskova.

Stephens, runner-up in Paris in 2018, was not ranked high enough to be seeded when the draw was made last week but is now 30th, which would have been enough.

Compatriot Madison Keys also advanced.

Keys, beaten by Stephens in the 2017 US Open final, won 6-1 3-6 6-1 against Estonia's Kaia Kanepi, while 2021 runner-up Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of Russia beat Czech teenager Linda Fruhvirtova 6-2 6-2.

Later on Monday, French fifth seed Carolina Garcia opens her campaign against China's Wang Xiyu, while two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova and Elina Svitolina are also in action.

Britain's Jack Draper's injury problems continued as he retired from his French Open first-round match with a shoulder issue.

The 21-year-old lost the opener 6-4 and needed physio treatment on his left shoulder at the end of the set.

The left-hander lost when receiving in the first game of the second set before deciding he could not continue.

More to follow.

Ireland will travel to Marseille to face France in the opening game of the 2024 Six Nations after tournament organisers confirmed the Stade de France will not be used.

The Irish will open their title defence against Les Bleus under the lights at Stade Velodrome on 2 February.

France will also host Italy in Lille and England in the final game in Lyon.

The Stade de France has hosted all of France's Six Nations matches except for their win over Italy in 2018, which took place in Marseille.

The Stade Velodrome has a capacity of 67,394 and is home to Ligue 1 football club Olympique Marseille.

Lille's Stade Pierre-Mauroy can hold 50,186 fans and has a retractable roof while Parc Olympique Lyonnais in Lyon is the newest of the three grounds having opened in 2016.

France won the Six Nations in 2022 but surrendered their title to Grand Slam winners Ireland earlier this year.

France are also preparing to host this year's Rugby World Cup, with the Stade de France set to stage the final.

France's home 2024 Six Nations fixtures (times GMT)

France v Ireland, Stade Velodrome, 2 February, 20:00

France v Italy, Stade Pierre-Mauroy, 25 February, 15:00

France v England, Parc Olympique Lyonnais, 16 March, 20:00

Remember Game 3 of the Western Conference finals? And the questions that followed?

Were the Vegas Golden Knights really about to sweep the Dallas Stars? Or was it more likely the Golden Knights would close out the series at T-Mobile Arena in Game 5? What could the Stars do to avoid being swept? How could the Stars fare without Jamie Benn, and would Benn return at some point in the series? Or would next season be the earliest anyone would see the Stars captain take the ice?

But now, there's a different set of questions.

Are the Golden Knights in serious trouble -- or is this temporary? How did the Stars hand the Golden Knights back-to-back losses for the first time since late March? Can the Stars force a Game 7? And if they do, are the Stars really about to come back from a 3-0 series deficit to reach the Stanley Cup Final?

Clearly, there are questions about what could happen Monday in Game 6 at American Airlines Arena in Dallas (8 p.m. ET, ESPN/ESPN+). That said, we've put together a guide featuring what to watch from each team, along with some questions of note from Ryan S. Clark and an in-depth statistical analysis from ESPN Stats & Information.

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Vegas Golden Knights at Dallas Stars

Monday, 8 p.m. ET | Watch live on ESPN+
Line: DAL -130 | O/U: 5.5

Clark's keys

At this point in the series, is it more about what's gone right for the Stars in the last two games, or more about what's gone wrong for the Golden Knights?

For those who want to get philosophical about it, look at the last five games this way: Mistakes cost the Stars a chance to win Game 1 in overtime. If Wyatt Johnston scores in overtime before Chandler Stephenson's winner, then, the series would be split after two games. Game 3 was a four-goal blowout, whereas the Stars changed their fortunes by winning their first overtime game of the series -- and the playoffs as a whole -- in Game 4. Of course, Game 5 was tied at 2-2 before Ty Dellandrea's two third-period goals forced a Game 6.

But what else could one expect in a conference finals in which three of the five games have gone to overtime? What occurred in Game 5 appears to have offered more insight into how this series has changed for both teams.

One of the problems facing the Stars was the inability to generate high-danger scoring chances in the first three games. It's why they finished with a total of 19 high-danger chances in 5-on-5 play before Game 4, per Natural Stat Trick. Since then, the Stars have accounted for 30 high-danger chances -- 15 in each game -- which has played a role in what has made them look even more formidable.

"I think we try to limit turnovers and I think that's something in the whole series has been a key point to play very well and play in their zone," Stars forward Jason Robertson said. "Avoid the neutral-zone turnovers and the 'hope' plays. I think for the majority of the game we did that very well -- this game and last game. We gotta continue that in Game 6."

To Robertson's point, the Stars were charged with nine giveaways in Game 5. That was a bit of contrast compared to the Golden Knights, considering how much they struggled with their puck management. Through the first four games of the Western Conference finals, the Golden Knights were responsible for committing 33 giveaways. In Game 5 alone they had 24 giveaways, which is another reason why the Stars likely held a shot-share percentage of more than 60%.

"We had 24 giveaways. I'm not sure you're beating the Arizona Coyotes in January with 24 giveaways -- no disrespect to Arizona," Golden Knights coach Bruce Cassidy said. "It's not the right way to play. Twenty-four giveaways. We're trying to go to the Stanley Cup Final against a desperate team. To me, that's the whole game right there. That falls under urgency obviously, right? You're not making the right decisions with the puck, you're not supporting it well, so it starts right there."

What does getting Jamie Benn back mean for the Stars?

Benn's return from a two-game suspension after his Game 3 cross-check against Golden Knights captain Mark Stone gives Stars coach Pete DeBoer another top-nine option. Being without Benn was not the only adjustment DeBoer and his coaching staff had to account for over the last two games. They've also been without Evgenii Dadonov, who has been out of the lineup with a lower-body injury since the early stages of Game 3.

Adding Benn to the lineup can be viewed in a number of different ways. The Stars are adding a player who scored 33 regular-season goals, at what looks like a bit of a pivot point following Game 5. Benn has scored three playoff goals, but there's a point to be made about how he scores those goals.

More than 50% of Benn's regular-season shots, along with 60% of his goals, came from those high-danger areas such as the low slot and net front, according to IcyData. It's possible that adding Benn and his ability to get those goals in those portions of the ice could prove beneficial, considering the Stars have found more success in consistently generating high-danger scoring chances over the last two games.

Now add what Benn could potentially provide to a team that just got three of its four goals in Game 5 from Luke Glendening and Dellandrea, while also factoring in what Robertson has done in scoring five of the Stars' 12 goals in the conference finals.

"We have a lot of belief in this room that we can beat anyone on any given night," Stars forward Max Domi said. "That being said, we've got to come ready to play. We do all the things we talk about, we execute the game plan to the best of our ability and we've been able to do that the last couple games."

What does Vegas need to do in order to close out the series?

It could start with finding ways to firmly gain control. Even though the Stars owned possession in Game 5, it's not the first time the Golden Knights have gone through that experience. All but one of their wins against the Edmonton Oilers in the second round ended with the Golden Knights having a short-share percentage of less than 50%. It reinforces the belief that the Golden Knights don't necessarily need puck control to win games. Like Cassidy said, it could be a matter of limiting their turnovers in Game 6 compared to Game 5.

"We mismanaged another puck and we were out of it there," Cassidy said. "Credit to them for how they created some of their offense tonight and caused some problems for us. At the end of the day, they scored goals in the third and we didn't."

Exactly how damaging were those turnovers? Look no further than a few of the Stars' goals. Miro Heiskanen forced the turnover that eventually led to Dellandrea scoring his first goal. Dellandrea's second goal was a byproduct of a turnover. Zach Whitecloud tried playing the puck off the boards behind the net, only to have Domi gather the puck and throw it on goal. That led to a loose puck at the net front that Dellandrea lifted over Adin Hill for a 4-2 lead.

Let's say the Golden Knights are able to limit turnovers and reduce the number of high-danger chances they've allowed. That still leaves them with the task of trying to find success against Stars goaltender Jake Oettinger in an elimination game. In the first round last year against the Calgary Flames, Oettinger showed what he's capable of achieving with his team's proverbial back to the wall. That continues to hold true this postseason, with Oettinger accruing a .948 save percentage in five career elimination games, which also includes what he did in Games 4 and 5 when he had a combined .940 save percentage to keep the Stars' season alive.

"There's no doubt in here," Golden Knights defenseman Alec Martinez said. "There's frustration, obviously. You want to close out a series. But, again, the Dallas Stars are a really good hockey team. This is that time of year that they're playing really well and like I said before, we've got to match their urgency and desperation."

What does Dallas need to do to force a Game 7?

Everything the Stars did in Games 4 and 5 provided a blueprint. Force the Golden Knights into committing the sort of turnovers that can be parlayed into high-danger chances. Continue to tap into the additional scoring options beyond Robertson. Plus, find a balance that allows Oettinger to harness his elimination game success while offering him support in the defensive zone.

Yet there could be one more item the Stars may add to that plan: Getting on the power play.

Several factors have contributed to how the Stars reached the Western Conference finals, and executing one of the NHL's strongest power plays is one of them. They finished the regular season fifth in the league, converting 25.0% of their chances, and have pushed that number to 32.0% in the postseason; that's good for fifth in the playoffs overall, and tops among the three teams that are still alive.

Despite scoring four goals, the Stars never went on the power play in Game 5. But if they can go on the extra-skater advantage in Game 6, it could give them another dimension toward pushing the series to Game 7 -- especially when the Golden Knights' penalty kill has a 61.4% success rate that ranks 15th among the 16 playoff teams. But that rate comes with the caveat the Golden Knights have faced three of the top five power-play units in the postseason in the Winnipeg Jets, Oilers and Stars.

"It just shows you how fast things can change," Oettinger said. "We were down 3-0 yesterday, it seems like. Now, it's 3-2 and we're going home."

Notes from ESPN Stats & Information

Golden Knights

• Vegas has scored 44 goals at 5-on-5, seven more than any other team this postseason (the Stars are second, with 37). The next 5-on-5 goal by the Golden Knights will pass the 2021 team for the most in a single postseason in franchise history.

• The Golden Knights have outscored the Stars 6-4 in the first period this series, but Vegas still has the worst first-period goal differential in the playoffs at minus-4. This comes after they had the second-best first-period goal differential in the regular season, at plus-30 behind only the Boston Bruins at plus-31.

• While the Golden Knights have nine different goal scorers in the series, Jack Eichel is not among them. While he doesn't have a goal, he has tallied four assists, all at even strength. Eichel does have the most shots on goal of any Golden Knights player in this series (17) and his 13 scoring chances created (eight scoring chance shot attempts plus five scoring chance assists) are tied with Jason Robertson for the most of any player in this series.

• Eichel needs two points to become the third player in Golden Knights history to score 20 in a single postseason. The others were Reilly Smith, with 22 in 2018, and Jonathan Marchessault, with 21 in 2018.

• William Karlsson, Marchessault and Chandler Stephenson each have eight goals this postseason, which are tied for the Golden Knights single postseason record with Marchessault in 2018 and Alex Tuch in 2020.

• Goalie Adin Hill has played eight games this postseason on one day of rest between games, and has posted a save percentage of .933 in those games. During the entire regular season, Hill played five games with one day of rest, and posted a save percentage of .907 in those games.

Stars

• The Stars have won each of their last three home games when facing elimination over the last two postseasons (won 3-2 in Game 4 of this series, won 2-1 in Game 7 of second round vs. the Seattle Kraken & 4-2 in Game 6 of 2022 first-round series against the Calgary Flames).

• Dallas scored four goals at 5-on-5 in Game 5, which tied its single-game high this postseason with Games 1 and 5 of the second round. The Stars had scored a total of four goals at 5-on-5 in the previous four games of the series.

• Robertson has scored five goals this series, which is only one fewer than the rest of Stars forwards have scored in this series (Ty Dellandrea's two goals in Game 5 are the only other Dallas forward with more than one goal in this series). Outside of his 11-shot performance in Game 4, Robertson has a total of eight shots in the other four games.

• Robertson's next goal will give him the most in a semifinals/conference finals series in Dallas/Minnesota North Stars franchise history. He is currently tied with Bill Goldsworthy in the 1968 semifinals, Jamie Langenbrunner in the 1999 conference finals and Brett Hull in the 2000 conference finals.

• Jamie Benn's return makes for a tough lineup decision for Dallas. The fourth line of Fredrik Olofsson-Radek Faksa-Luke Glendening combined for a goal (Glendening's 1-1 goal) and 10 shot attempts in Game 5. According to Stathletes, the Stars generated 1.07 expected goals at 5-on-5 when they were on the ice together in Game 5, the highest of any Stars forward unit.

• Stars goalie Jake Oettinger is 4-1 with a .949 save percentage in his five career starts when facing elimination, in a virtual tie for the second-highest save percentage all-time when facing playoff elimination among goalies with at least five such starts. The only time Oettinger has allowed more than two goals in his five previous starts when facing elimination was when he gave up three on 67 shots in Game 7 of the 2022 first round against the Flames.

Ajax midfielder Steven Berghuis has apologised after he appeared to strike a fan following their 3-1 loss at FC Twente on Sunday that ended their dire season on a low note.

In a video circulating on social media, Berghuis is seen lashing out at what appears to be a Twente supporter in front of the Ajax team bus before an official intervened.

"I regret my actions, I should not have done this," Berghuis said in a statement. "After every away game, we get a lot of treats thrown at us at the bus while we take time out to sign autographs for fans.

"I'm used to it by now, but people think they can just shout anything. My reaction doesn't solve anything, I get that. It's not good, I have an exemplary role as a player of Ajax."

The Netherlands international joined Ajax from Feyenoord at the start of the 2021-22 season in a move that caused controversy in the country due to the intense rivalry between the clubs.

An Ajax statement read: "Steven reacted in the wrong way. He quickly made this known to John Heitinga and immediately apologized. Upon arrival at the Arena, he had a conversation with Heitinga, Edwin van der Sar and Sven Mislintat.

"They also wanted to hear his side of the story. The conclusion is that his reaction was wrong and that Ajax disapproves. We will resolve it internally with him."

Ajax finished the campaign in third place in the Eredivisie, outside the two Champions League qualification spots for the first time since 2009.

League champions Feyenoord, who finished 13 points ahead of Ajax, have qualified for the group stage, while second-placed PSV Eindhoven will play in the third qualifying round of Europe's elite club competition.

Ajax qualified for the Europa League playoff round.

Napoli president Aurelio De Laurentiis has confirmed head coach Luciano Spalletti will step down at the end of the season and take a one year sabbatical.

Spalletti, 64, has been in charge at Napoli since July 2021 and still has one more year on his contract after guiding the club to their first Serie A title in 33 years this season. However, he will step down this summer.

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"He is a free man," De Laurentiis said of Spalletti. "After 50 years in cinema [as producer], and so many exclusives with directors, actors, when someone comes to you and says: 'After all, I've done my best, a cycle of my life has ended, I still have a contract with you, but I'd rather have a sabbatical year.' What are you going to do, are you going to oppose it?

"You have to be generous in life, I never expect anything in return. He gave us, I thank him, now it's right that he continues to do what he loves to do."

Napoli also reached the Champions League quarterfinals this season under Spalletti before losing 2-1 on aggregate to AC Milan.

Spalletti, who recently got a tattoo on his arm to commemorate Napoli's third league title, said after Sunday's 2-2 draw at Bologna: "I have so many things inside, because to build a Scudetto-winning campaign like we did you need the contribution of every component. Certainly, the warmth and love of the people of Naples is what made the difference.

As for the tattoo, Spalletti said: "Naples was obviously under my skin and I have brought out what I already had inside me after these two years. This city, this group, these people, they all deserve the happiness we are experiencing."

Spalletti's last game in charge will be at home against Sampdoria on June 4.