Jonathan Tovell
Jonathan Tovell writes about professional hockey for The Hockey News, concentrating on high-stakes NHL moments and the playoff traditions that surround them. His coverage uses decisive games and series results to show how superstition, momentum and history intersect on the sport’s biggest stages.
Golden Knights and the Clarence S. Campbell Bowl
Tovell’s piece on the Vegas Golden Knights’ sweep of the Colorado Avalanche in the Western Conference Final centers on the team’s decision not to touch the Clarence S. Campbell Bowl after clinching the series. By putting that choice in the headline, he treats the trophy ritual as more than a visual detail, positioning it as a window into how players think about luck, focus and unfinished business.
In this kind of story, he treats playoff superstition as a legitimate part of the narrative, on par with the result itself. The emphasis on the Campbell Bowl reflects an interest in the culture and lore of the NHL postseason, not just the scoreline or individual stat lines.
Highlighting series-defining moments
In the same Golden Knights–Avalanche story, Tovell links the sweep directly to the franchise reaching the Stanley Cup Final, framing the game as a turning point in a larger campaign. That framing shows a preference for situating a single result inside the broader arc of a team’s season and playoff run.
His language around the sweep and advancement underscores the drama of closing out a series and the shift in stakes that comes with moving on to the Cup Final. For teams and players he covers, that approach puts emphasis on milestones, thresholds and the psychological weight of progressing deeper into the playoffs.
4 more sports journalists.
Adair Reid
Adair Reid is a sports columnist for The Cavalier Daily who covers Virginia men’s programs with a blunt, fan-aware voice that treats them as long-term projects rather than one-off games. He focuses on trajectory, legacy and risk, using opinion columns to question coaching decisions and program strategy while grounding his arguments in recent results, records, tournament performance and roster realities. Men’s lacrosse is a recurring subject, and his work on the program’s coaching change shows how he uses a single decision to examine overall health, standards and competitive standing. He frames games in terms of stakes, identity and institutional expectations, emphasizing postseason implications, recruiting, national perception and alignment with a championship standard. He writes mostly in the first person only when needed, keeps the spotlight on institutional choices and brings analysis-first, evidence-based judgment to Virginia’s flagship men’s teams.
Adam Stern
Adam Stern covers the business of motorsports and combat sports at Sports Business Journal, focusing on how sponsorships, media deals and new events reshape racing and fighting. His beat includes NASCAR, IndyCar, Formula 1, NHRA, rallycross, UFC and boxing. He tracks brands, broadcasters, manufacturers, promoters and streaming platforms, with reporting on sponsorship strategy, rights deals, original content, series growth, team projects and technical regulations. He examines how Cadillac’s Formula 1 entry supports broader marketing aims, how F1 Academy builds commercial momentum and whether new MMA promotions can challenge UFC. His work includes short speed reads on deals and longer features on multi-party investments. He reports on the money and strategy behind the action, treating motorsports and combat sports as connected marketplaces shaped by branding, dealmaking and media innovation.
Albert Burneko
Albert Burneko writes about how systems of power bear down on ordinary people, using sports, politics, technology, food, and domestic life as entry points. He is an assignment editor and writer at Defector and part of its founding ownership group. His politics and capital reporting examines how policy, policing, and public rhetoric turn into harm for specific people, centering victims and vulnerable people. He also covers artificial intelligence, media criticism, and technology’s effects, asking who benefits and who absorbs the costs. His domestic writing focuses on parenting, bodily discomfort, and everyday frustration. His recurring Chefector column turns cooking failures into comic studies of impatience, ego, and routine. He writes sharp reported essays, first-person dispatches, mock explainers, and sports-adjacent guides. His work combines moral seriousness, comic voice, close attention to ordinary life, and a focus on how people live under larger systems.
Albert Samaha
Albert Samaha is a sports investigative reporter who uses games to examine how power, money and culture shape players, workers, fans and communities. He works in The Washington Post sports section, covering global tournaments, migration, fan culture, sports betting, match-fixing, ownership, NIL money, football safety, participation gaps and the changing culture of women’s basketball. His reporting connects events on the field to decisions in boardrooms, betting markets, government offices and law enforcement. He previously reported for BuzzFeed News and wrote for the Village Voice, San Francisco Weekly and the Riverfront Times. His work has also appeared in The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, The New York Times and The Paris Review. He writes long, deeply reported stories that combine narrative scenes, data analysis, public records, medical records and other documents.