The Pulse Newsletter 📣 | This is The Athletic’s daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox.Good morning! Hope you weren’t expecting a rah-rah speech today. Coming up:
Winners: The World Cup is already cookingCarl De Souza / AFP via Getty ImagesThis newsletter is about to hit five years old, which means we’ve seen plenty of momentous weeks. This week — NBA Finals, Stanley Cup Final, World Cup, Men’s College World Series, contentious USWNT friendlies, etc. — might be the busiest I’ve experienced. In a great way, to be clear. Before we get to today’s big game left on our schedule, we should discuss yesterday’s winners. Let’s start in hockey:
The Carolina Hurricanes are one win away from claiming the Stanley Cup after a 4-2 win over the Golden Knights that felt like the most normal game of this series thus far. Rookie Brandon Bussi was again great in goal. It’s easy to say the Canes are in control here, but I’ve watched too much hockey — and too much of this series — to fully believe that. Game 6 is Sunday.
Soccer now demands our attention after yesterday’s first two matches of the World Cup. Quickly:
Mexico feels like the biggest winner of yesterday after a feisty 2-0 win in Mexico City over South Africa. The visitors ended the match with nine players due to multiple red cards. It was chaos, but Mexico looked formidable.
