Iditarod: Blizzard at White Mountain

I thought I was done posting about this year's Iditarod. Jessie Holmes had repeated as champion, Jesse Terry got Rookie of the Year, and the remaining teams were either at or near White Mountain, the last major checkpoint before the finish line. Since my last post, six more teams crossed the finish line - rookie Sam Martin, Josi (Thyr) Shelley, Bailey Vitello, Gabe Dunham, Rohn Buser, and Chad Stoddard - for a total of 20 finishers. 

However, that's when a ground storm blew up between White Mountain and Safety, the penultimate checkpoint, with winds up to 60+ mph. Adam Lindenmuth was the last musher out of Elim on his way to White Mountain but faced a strong headwind and rested his team for several hours out on the ice before he got moving again, often walking out in front of the team for a major portion of that stretch. The team eventually made it to solid ground before resting some more. Ultimately, the deteriorating conditions forced him to activate the emergency SOS on his GPS tracker to request assistance, automatically scratching him from the race. He eventually made it to White Mountain, accompanied by rescue snowmobiles in front and behind his team. 

Nine more teams, including the two Mackeys, are currently holed up in White Mountain. Seven of the teams are rookies. They all had decided to stay at the checkpoint beyond their mandatory 8-hour rest due to the storm conditions, and race official encouraged them to stay there overnight until the storm blows past. The forecast for today has the winds calming down to 10 to 20 mph.

The official Iditarod race standings haven't been updated since 11 pm (Alaska time) last night, so it's not yet apparent if any teams have left the checkpoint or are still huddled down, riding out the storm, or even if the remaining race has been officially cancelled due to the worsening conditions. 

If the race is still on, it's also unclear in what order the teams will leave White Mountain. First in/first out? If so, separated by how much time? The first of the nine remaining mushers, Kevin Hansen, arrived there some 15 hours ahead of the last, Sam Paperman, and Hansen would understandably not want to forfeit a 15-hour lead. Or will each team leave whenever they feel they're up to the challenge? Or will there be some other method to the unofficial restart?

Bruins 6, Jets 1

 

The mighty Boston Bruins piled it on the Winnipeg Jets last evening, winning by a score of 6-1. Pastrnak, Pavel, Arvidsson, Minten, and Aspirot all scored goals, and for good measure, Lukas Reichel scored a goal in his Bruins' debut and it turned out to be the game-winner.

It was a blowout win with very little drama, other than the excitement of seeing the lamp light up three times in the third period.

The Bruins improve to 38-23-8, fourth in the Atlantic. Boston, Montreal, and Detroit all have 84 points in the Division, but Montreal is in third place because of the games-played tie-breaker. Detroit is in fifth because of the regulation-wins tie-breaker. 

As for the Wild Card race, both Boston and Detroit still qualify for a berth. However, Columbus has moved up to third place in the Metropolitan Division and an automatic playoff berth, so now it's the Islanders trailing Boston and Detroit by one point for a Wild Card berth.

All of which makes Saturday's game against the Red Wings so pivotal. A win could potentially put the Bruins into third place in the Atlantic and qualify them for an automatic playoff spot. Of course, that depends on how the Canadiens fare, and they have two games coming up against the Islanders and the Hurricanes, two teams hungry to secure their playoff hopes. On the other hand, a loss would break Boston's tie with Detroit, knocking the Bruins down to fifth in the Division and possibly out of the Wild Card race with only 13 games remaining to the regular season.

Iditarod Wrap-Up

 

After Tuesday night's win by Jessie Holmes and yesterday's early-morning finishes by Travis Beals, Jeff Deeter, and Paige Drobney, ten more teams have completed the Iditarod. 

Yesterday, Wade Marrs, Matt Hall, Riley Dyche, Lauro Eklund, Peter Kaiser, Michelle Phillips, Hanna Lyrek, Jessie Royer, and Ryan Redington all crossed the finish line. Early this morning, Jesse Terry finished, earning the 2026 Rookie of the Year Award.

All the rest of the field are now on the Nome peninsula. Rookie Adam Lindenmuth is in last place but is heading toward White Mountain (mile 898) from Elim. Nine other teams, including Brenda Mackey and her Uncle Jason, are currently on their 8-hour break at White Mountain. Chad Stoddard has left White Mountain and is heading for Safety (mile 953), and six teams, including Bailey Vitello and Gabe Dunham, have left Safety for their final run to the finish line (mile 975).

A burlap hero is "one who marches - consciously or not - back to the sea in hopes of making no splash, who understands and embraces the imperfection of being, and in that way, stretches the definition of sainthood to fit" (Nate Wooley, 2022). They are the ones who recognize living as a heroic act and include "the occupiers of sunup barstools, the cubicle-planted, the ghosts of Greyhounds, and the reasonably sketchy."

The Iditarod may have winners but there are no losers. Competing a nearly 1,000-mile traverse of Alaskan wilderness in sub-zero weather without mechanical transport, surrounded by nothing but mountains, bears, wolves, moose, and bison, all while caring for an unruly team of sled dogs, is a heroic achievement in its own right regardless of placement (what have you done this week?). Even the earliest scratch completed 153 miles of wilderness adventure and dropped out only for the safety and well being of the dogs. They're all winners and all burlap heroes, every last one of them. 

Celtics 120, Warriors 99

 

The days of Mr. Brown and Mr. White are over - with the return of Taum to the lineup, we're back to the Two Jays, Jayson and Jaylen. No disrespect to Derrick White and I'm not overlooking his talent and contributions, but the dynamic of the team has shirted from Brown & White to Jayson & Jaylen. 

Case in point: last night, J. Brown dropped 32 points on the Golden State Warriors and J. Tatum dropped 24 while going 5-for-11 on threes and grabbing 10 rebounds for the dubs. The bench stayed strong, with Pritchard scoring 19 points and Garza 15. The Celtics outrebounded the Warriors 49-39 and completed 14 three-pointers to the Warriors 10. 

At some point, it has to be pointed out that all this occurred with the two Curry's - Steph and Seth - out with injuries for Golden State, as well as Jimmy Butler and our old friend Al Horford. We were basically facing Draymond Green and our other old friend, Kristaps Porziņģis, an intimidating duo to be sure but not the high-scoring powerhouse of Golden State in their prime.

Still, I'll take it. A win is a win is a win, and now the C's have 46 of them, twice as many as their losses (23).  

Friday night, the Celtics will be in Memphis, Tennessee to play what remains of the Grizzlies (24-44). But watch out - Memphis may be 2-8 in their last 10 games, but last night they upset Serbian strongman Nikola Jokić and the Denver Nuggets, so anything can happen. Does "anything" include back-to-back wins against NBA powerhouses? Probably not, but the two Jays better be ready to bring some game to Memphis.

 

Jessie Holmes Wins the 2026 Iditarod!

 

Jessie Holmes, the reigning 2025 winner of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, the Last Great Race on Earth, repeats as the 2026 champion. Holmes led the race most of the way, took a commanding lead on the Yukon, and never looked back.  So comfortable was his lead that he left White Mountain (mile 898) yesterday at 11:27 Alaska time yesterday, 17 minutes past his required 8-hour rest. He arrived at the finish line at 5:32 pm last night, making his official finish time 9 days, 7 hours, 32 minutes, and 52 seconds. Although his dog Zeus was in the lead most of the race, Holmes put Polar in front for the last stretch, and Polar was the first dog across the finish line.

Travis Beals came in second at 9d 11h 58m 26s, some 3½ hours after Holmes, followed by Jeff Deeter (9d 15h 10m 37s). Paige Drobny (9d 15h 38m 48s) came in fourth, less than a half-hour behind Deeter. 

Wade Marrs has left Safety (mile 953) and should be the fifth finisher sometime later today. After Marrs, there are 24 teams that have crossed the frozen Norton Sound and are on the Nome peninsula. Five of the teams have left White Mountain, three are still working off their mandatory 8-hour rest at White Mountain, eight are out of Elim (mile 852), five out of Koyuk (mile 804), and three still in Koyuk.  Rookie Adam Lindenmuth has left Shaktoolik (mile 754) and is somewhere out on the Norton ice. 

There were three scratches announced yesterday. Sadly, Mille Pirsild pulled out at the Elim checkpoint, 123 miles from the finish line, following the death of Charley, a four-year-old female on her team. Porsild is an experienced Danish racer, was the 2020 Iditarod Rookie of the Year, and has mushed dogs in Antarctica. Charley's body has been flown to Unalakleet, where a necropsy will be conducted by a board-certified veterinary pathologist to determine the cause of death. Iditarod rules state that if a dog dies during the race, it results in an immediate scratch from the race for that musher.

Jody Potts-Joseph and Grayson Bruton both voluntarily scratched back at Unalakleet. Rookie racer Potts-Joseph had a run-in with a bison on the trail back before McGrath (mile 311). It reportedly charged her and her team repeatedly, although it stopped each time short of the dog team. She hid behind a tree and tried to fire a gun but it jammed. She resorted to chanting "Go away, have mercy on us, leave us alone,” in her native Hän Gwich’in tongue, and the bison backed off before there were any injuries to either dogs or humans. But the encounter left her and the team shook and she was in last or near-last place from then on. She finally scratched after symptoms of kennel cough bagen appearing in her team. However, she still managed to get to Unalakleet before Brunton, who was competing in his second Iditarod. 

Jessie Holmes, originally from Phenix City, Alabama, a town so poor it can't even afford the vowel "o,"  has competed in the Iditarod every year since 2018, when he was the Iditarod Rookie of the Year, but he's probably most famous as a reality-TV star in National Geographic's Life Below Zero. He is the third competitor in the 54-year history of the Iditarod to repeat the year after winning for the first time. The other two were Susan Butcher in 1986-1987 and Lance Mackey in 2007-2008. Both went on to win four titles.

R.I.P., Charley. Impermanence is swift.

Canadiens 3, Bruins 2 (OT)

 

Pavel Zacha scored two goals for the Boston Bruins, but the team let Montreal tie the game up in the second period and neither team scored in the third. In the OT, the Habs' Cole Caufield scored a goal, his 40th of the season, beating a personal record and tying a 32-year-old Montreal record. Big deal. 

That's two straight OT road losses for Boston (37-23-8), who are 4-3-3 in their last ten games. They're in fourth place in the Atlantic Division are tied with Detroit at 82 points for a wild card berth, one point ahead of Carolina. 

The Winnipeg Jets (28-28-11) come to the Garden on Thursday for a 7:00 pm game.

Iditarod: Jessie Holmes to Repeat as Champion

 

Jessie Holmes and Travis Beals have both arrived at White Mountain (mile 898) and are almost assured to finish first and second in this year's Iditarod. Holmes has a four-hour lead on Beals, and with only 77 miles left to the finish line, it would take nothing short of a miracle (or a disaster, depending on your POV) for Beals to catch up with him. 

Holmes will repeat as Iditarod champion. All teams are required to take an 8-hour rest at White Mountain, and we can be assured that Holmes will leave as soon as he's allowed in order to maintain his lead.

Of the next three racers, Paige Drobney was the first to Elim (mile 852), the checkpoint before White Mountain. Jeff Deeter pulled in a half-hour after her. Both took roughly 3½-hour breaks there, and while they were resting, Wade Marrs blew through the checkpoint without a rest, and is now in third place. Drobney and Deeter both left Elim about an hour after Marrs passed through and are dueling it out for fourth place.

Paige has been taking longish breaks at every checkpoint the past day or two and is down to 10 dogs, signs that her team is tired and need frequent rests and TLC. It' a testament to the humanitarian treatment of the dogs in the race that she's basically forfeited at least a second-place finish to care for her team rather than force them on past the point of endurance to try and catch up to Holmes.

Porsild and Dyche are still in Elim. Hall, Phillips, Eklund, and Kaiser are enroute to the checkpoint, and three other teams are back in Koyuk (mile 804). Six teams have left Shaktoolik (mile 754) and are presumably on the open, exposed stretch of trail crossing the frozen Norton Sound. The rest of the field are stretched between Shaktoolik and Kaltag (mile 629), and no team is still back on the Yukon. 

Billionaire "expedition class" racer Kjell Rokke has completed the trail, crossing the finish line mid-day yesterday at 7 days, 22 hours, and 40 minutes. I have mixed feelings about the new "expedition class" contestants, but regardless of assistance, etc., nearly eight days in the Alaskan wilderness in mid-March while covering nearly 1,000 miles is still an achievement. Congratulations are due Rokke (as long as he doesn't swagger around saying that he "won" this year's Iditarod). Also, let's appreciate his generous donations to the race committee and to the indigenous settlements along the route.

Thank you, sir.

Devils 4, Bruins 3, (OT)

 

No, no, no! That's not how you're supposed to do it! The Bruins blow a 2-0, first-period lead and squander a two-goal performance by Pastrnak to lose to the New Jersey Devils in OT, 4-3. 

Pasta and Zacha both scored in the first but the Devils responded with two goals of their own in the second. The Devils took a 3-2 lead early in the third before Pasta scored his second goal two minutes later to tie it up. And then, in the OT, the Devils' Jack Hughes (you might remember him from the Olympics) scored the game-winning goal and handed the Bruins (37-23-7) a road loss.

Tonight, the Bruins head up to Montreal to play the arch-rival Canadiens (36-20-10) and end this three-game road trip. Puck drops at 7:00.    

Celtics 120, Suns 112

 

Mr. Brown with 41 points. Mr. White with 21. Mr. Tatum, 21, too. Mr. Pritchard with 19 off the bench. Brown and Tatum both had seven rebounds, six defensive and one offensive each. 

Devin Booker had 40 points for the Suns, but it was all seeds and stems for Phoenix after that. The entire game was actually pretty close - no team scored more than five points than the other for all four periods. But somehow, when the clock finally expired, the C's had eight more points than the Suns.

Boston (45-23) has managed to move up to within 3½ of Detroit in the Eastern Conference standings, but Detroit somehow managed to arrange two consecutive games against the lowly Washington Wizards tonight and tomorrow, so the Celtics will have to keep pushing hard to cut deeper into that margin, starting with Wednesday night's game against Golden State. Once our kryptonite team, the Warriors have fallen on hard times (33-35), despite an all-star roster that includes Stephen Curry, Jimmy Butler, Draymond Green, and our old friends Kristaps Porziņģis and Al Horford. 

  

Iditarod: Holmes in the Lead

 

Shaktoolik (population 212) is located on Norton Sound on a barrier island at the mouth of the Shaktoolik River. On Cape Denbigh, 12 miles to the northwest, the 6,000- to 8,000-years-old Iyatayet site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. 

The town of Shaktoolik (Unaliq for "scattered things") was occupied as early as 1839 and first mapped in 1842 by the Imperial Russian Navy. Reindeer herds were managed in the area around 1905. The town was originally located some six miles up the Shaktoolik River and moved to the mouth of the River in 1933. That site was prone to severe storms and winds, however, and the village relocated to its present, more sheltered location in 1967. There are currently only two occupied dwellings at the old townsite.

Shaktoolik has served as a checkpoint (mile 754) for the Iditarod since the first race in 1973 and is known for being one of the windiest stretches of the trail, where mushers often encounter severe snowdrifts.  Jessie Holmes was the first to arrive there this year, and he had a big enough lead that he was able to take a 3½ break there and still be the first to leave. Baring a disaster, Holmes is winning the race again this year.

Paige Drobney was second to Shaktoolik,  arriving almost three hours after Holmes. She chose to take a 6 hour break there and while she was resting, Travis Beale, Mille Pirsild, and Wade Marrs all passed through the checkpoint before she finally left. That would seemingly put her back in fifth place, but one has to assume that Travis, Mille, and Wade are going to have to rest their dogs somewhere on the trail ahead, and Paige's well-rested team should be able to pass them and regain some of her standing. With only a little over 200 miles left to the race, it seems unlikely at this point that she can catch up to Holmes' well-rested team three hours up ahead, but this is the Iditarod and anything can happen.

Three teams are currently resting in Shaktoolik. Jeff Deeter arrived about a half hour before Paige left, and Riley Dyche and Matt Hall arrived after she left. Five more teams are back in Unalakleet (mile 714) and a whopping 15 are between Kaltag (mile 629) and Unalakleet. The last two teams are enroute to Kaltag from Nulato (mile 582). There still has been only one scratch so far this year, and this far in, I'd be surprised to see anyone else drop out.

From Shakatoolik, the trail proceeds north to Reindeer Cove, crosses the frozen Norton Sound to Koyuk (mile 804), and then proceeds along the northern shore of the sound to the finish line in Nome (mile 975). 

"Expedition" update: Steve Curtis, who's been listed at the McGrath checkpoint (mile 311) since last Thursday, has officially bowed out, as has Thomas Waerner, who made it to Unalakleet along with billionaire Kjell Rokke, but scratched when he saw symptoms of "kennel cough" among some of his dogs. Rokke has pressed on without his guide and was at White Mountain (mile 898), a required 8-hour rest for racers, but those rules don't apply to billionaires and he'll press on to the finish line in Nome.

Iditarod: From the River to the Sea

 

Sorry if the headline triggers you, but the Iditarod race has now proceeded from Kaltag, the last checkpoint on the (Yukon) River, down toward Unalakleet on the (Bering) Sea, and this is the only coverage of the race with balls enough to use the world's most obvious metaphor to describe this stretch.

As of 7:00 am Alaska time, nine teams have left Kaltag (mile 639). With the mandatory 24-hour and Yukon 8 rests now completed, it's a flat-out race to the finish line from this point forward.

Jessie Holmes was the first through Kaltag at around 4:30 pm, pausing at the checkpoint for only 15 minutes. Paige Drobney passed through some three hours later, followed by Millie Pirsild some 2½ hours after that at about 10 pm. 

Travis Beals was the next musher to arrive at Kaltag, but instead of passing straight through like the first three racers, he took a three-hour rest there and didn't leave until 1:26 pm, after Riley Dyche and Wade Marrs had passed through. So after Holmes, Drobney, and Pirsild, the order now is Dyche (4th place), Marrs (5th), and  Beals (6th).  

Michelle Phillips arrived in Kaltag after Beals had left. She took a 4½ hour rest before leaving at 6:34 this morning. Jeff Deeter passed through the checkpoint while Phillips was resting. Matt Hall arrived after Phillips left, took a three-hour rest, and still managed to leave before another team arrived.  So the next three teams, completing the nine out of Kaltag, are Deeter (7th place), Phillips (8th), and Hall (9th).

Three teams (Ryan Redington, Lauro Eklund, and Peter Kaiser) are still in Kaltag. 

Behind the first twelve, the race is finally starting to spread out a little. There are three teams still heading to Kaltag from the previous Nulato checkpoint (mile 582), four teams back at Galena (mile 545), five teams between Ruby (mile 495) and Galena, and two teams still in Ruby. "Expedition class" racer Steve Curtis remains all the way back in McGrath (mile 311), where he's been for the last three days - I guess he likes it there (I hope he likes it there). Billionaire Kjell Rokke is all the way up to Shaktoolik (mile 754), while his "assistant," Thomas Waerner, is now behind him at Unalakleet (mile 714).

One last dash to the finish line. This is it, folks, and last year's winner, Jessie Holmes, has a three-hour lead on the pack.

Bruins 3, Capitals 2 (SO)

 

While the Celtics were beating the Washington Wizards up in the Garden, the Bruins were down in Washington beating the Capitols. It took a shootout to win, but they got the job done.

Charlie McAvoy (BU, Class of '16) scored both of Boston's goals during regulation, his 8th and 9th of the season. Swayman made 25 saves on 27 shots (.926) in the net.

No one score in OT and it took nine rounds of shootout before Fraser Minten finally scored the only goal after regulation ended. The road win ends a seven-game road losing streak for the Bruins. 

Boston (37-23-6) still qualifies for a playoff spot by a single point ahead of Columbus, but are now tied with Detroit at 80 points each. However, since it took the Red Wings one more game to earn those points than the Bruins, the tiebreaker puts Boston ahead of Detroit in the Wild Card standings. 

The Bruins will head down to New Jersey to play the Devils (33-31-2) on Monday (7:00 pm).