Wayne Rooney, Kelly Somers and Kae Kurd discuss the influence Pep Guardiola has had on English football and consider the impact his expected departure from Manchester City will have on the Premier League.

READ MORE: Man City set to replace Guardiola with Maresca

Six years ago, the government rejected a House of Lords select committee proposal to add the Champions League final to the list of “crown jewels” events, which would have ensured it would always be free-to-air.

Highlights of the Champions League final will be available on the BBC Sport website and across social media channels 15 minutes after the final whistle, and on BBC iPlayer and television later in the evening.

Live commentary of all three finals will be on BBC Radio 5 Live.

The Champions League final had been free on ITV for the first 23 years until BT Sport won the rights, starting from 2015-16.

BT Sport continued to make it available without a subscription through to 2023, simultaneously broadcasting the game on its YouTube channel.

This changed after BT Sport was bought by Warner Bros Discovery and rebranded as TNT Sports.

While the finals remained available without cost, fans needed to sign up for a discovery+ account to get access.

Discovery+ has been replaced by Warner Bros Discovery’s new streaming service, HBO Max, which has no free option.

Fans will not need a full TNT Sports subscription, and can instead sign up for HBO Max for one month.

The cheapest subscription starts at £4.99, which would include all three matches, though most Sky customers already get HBO Max at no extra cost.

From 2027-28, TNT Sports will lose its European rights.

Paramount+ has picked up the Champions League, while the Europa League and the Conference League will move to Sky Sports.

Warner Bros Discovery has been approached for comment.

Red Light newsletter 🏒 | This is The Athletic’s hockey newsletter. Sign up here to receive Red Light directly in your inbox.

Good morning to everyone except anyone who picks a player from each team before overtime. You’re only allowed to pick one, according to me, a guy whose kids say he hates fun and whimsy for some reason.

Buffalo captain Rasmus Dahlin. (Joe Hrycych / Getty Images)

While You Were Sleeping Sobbing

No? Just me sobbing? That’s fine, I can take it. Don’t cry because it’s over — smile because it happened. And then cry because the Canadiens ended it.

Heartbreak in Buffalo

The single greatest bandwagon story in recent history is over. The Sabres’ first playoff run since 2011 ended in the second round at the hands of the Montreal Canadiens.

Just to twist the knife a little further, this one needed overtime. And the winning goal had just a bit of an odor to it:

That’s Alex Newhook becoming the first player in Canadiens history to sink a sudden-death Game 7 winner on the road. And that’s Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen whiffing on it, although it may have been tipped. Still, that’s a tough image to etch into the memory banks as the last of a memorable season.

We also got some controversy in the third, when an apparent Sabres goal was waved off due to a whistle. At first, this felt like one of those “intent to blow” scenarios, which are always a mess. But after a few replays, it seems clear that Jakub Dobeš had the puck covered, and it was the right call. Still, we’ll see if this one has any staying power over the next few days and beyond.

The Habs march on to Carolina, where they’ll try to become the first team in this year’s postseason to hang an “L” on the Hurricanes. The Sabres head home, left to wonder how much of this season’s magic they can recapture in the years to come. One of the first steps will be figuring out what to do with Alex Tuch, who heads into the summer as one of the top unrestricted free agents on the board but failed to record so much as a point in this series.

• The one word to describe it from Buffalo’s end? Pain. Lots of it. And it’ll linger for quite some time.

💡 Trivia Time

After last night’s loss, the Sabres have still won just one Game 7 in the 56-year history of the franchise. That one came way back in the Ted Nolan era, when the Sabres beat the Ottawa Senators in an overtime thriller in 1997 on Derek Plante’s clapper that shredded Ron Tugnutt’s glove.

Today’s question: Can you name the Sabres goalie who won that classic?

Hint 1: No, it wasn’t Dominik Hašek. That would be too obvious, and I have too much respect for you readers to serve up something that easy. Hašek suffered a knee sprain earlier in the series, so his backup was in net that night.

Hint 2: This goalie was a journeyman who played for six different teams between 1995 and 2005, though he made 40 starts in a season only once. He was once traded for Teemu Selanne, kind of. He also had two goalie fights in his career.

Hint 3: Honestly, he had a pretty fantastic name for a goalie.

Answer at the end of this email.

(Ethan Miller / Getty Images)

⏭️ Next

Final four

Now we’re down to four teams left. We’re about a month away from crowning a champion. But before we get there, we have a pair of conference finals to play.

First things first: There are no games tonight. So go ahead and take a deep breath.

The Western Conference final starts tomorrow night in Colorado. The Eastern Conference follows on Thursday in Carolina. If you’re in the U.S., the West is the ESPN series and the East is on TNT.

Here’s the good news: Once we get started, both series are sticking with the traditional every-second-night schedule. No weird gaps, no arena conflicts, no extra days off where we all just kind of stare at each other while the momentum drains away. Just the perfect rhythm for playoff hockey: game, one day off to yell at each other about that game, then a new game. Perfection.

Diving a little deeper into each series:

Golden Knights vs. Avalanche

• The Avalanche are clear favorites, but Vegas has a shot. The Mark Stone factor looms large.
• How might the Knights try to slow the speedy Avalanche down? Jesse Granger lays it out.
• These powerhouse Avs seem simply inevitable.

Canadiens vs. Hurricanes

• The Hurricanes have been perfect so far, but they’ll still need to find another level.
• Why this year’s edition of Playoff Freddie Andersen has been different.
• Why could this finally be the Hurricanes’ year? James Mirtle gets into it.
• It took just four years for the Canadiens to rebuild to this point. Arpon Basu and Pierre LeBrun examine the Habs’ model rebuild.
• And just for fun, feel free to look back at our coverage of the pair of offer sheets these teams exchanged a few years ago, sparking a rivalry that will pick up again now: The Habs unsuccessfully targeting Sebastian Aho, and the Hurricanes having better luck with Jesperi Kotkaniemi.

Gabbie Hughes and Peyton Hemp celebrate Hemp’s third-period goal on Monday night. (Troy Parla / Getty Images)

Walter Cup Finals 🔥

Charge extend PWHL Finals

We know that the Walter Cup will end up in Canada for the first time in PWHL history with the Ottawa Charge and Montreal Victoire duking it out. But last night in the nation’s capital, Ottawa decided it wouldn’t happen quite yet.

The Charge came back from down 1-0 late in the third, scoring a pair to take Game 3 in regulation in front of almost 17,000 at the Canadian Tire Centre. Rebecca Leslie scored the winner with less than a minute left, though we needed a lengthy review to confirm the goal. (The situation room was looking for a missed stoppage on a glove pass but couldn’t find conclusive evidence to overrule the goal.)

✅ GAME-WINNING GOAL
✅ RECORD-BREAKING CROWD
✅ HOMETOWN HERO https://t.co/u0vOPNJ0jO pic.twitter.com/Wgsdy5t1GA

— PWHL (@thepwhlofficial) May 19, 2026

The home team has held serve for all three games of the final so far, with the Montreal Victoire taking each of the first two in overtime. Game 4 goes tomorrow night in Ottawa, with a potential winner-take-all Game 5 penciled in for Saturday afternoon in Montreal.

• Last night wrapped a busy day for the PWHL, which also officially confirmed an expansion team in San Jose for next season. San Jose will join Detroit, Hamilton and Las Vegas as the league grows to 12 teams.

Coast to Coast

✅ The Stanley Cup contender checklist series continues, with some less-than-optimistic looks at the Winnipeg Jets and Seattle Kraken.

🏒 Scott Wheeler and Corey Pronman combine for a mock draft that covers the first two rounds of next month’s draft.

🥅 In Edmonton, the task for GM Stan Bowman this summer is straightforward: Do the impossible. The first step would be to avoid any really weird decisions around whom to interview for the coaching vacancy, and whoops too late.

👑 Henrik Lundqvist reveals the three best leaders he played with. Two of them have been in the news lately.

🎙️ On the Monday edition of “The Athletic Hockey Show,” the guys discuss which goalie left in the playoffs is the most trustworthy in net, the Golden Knights forfeiting a second-round draft pick after “flagrant violations” of NHL media regulations, Mitch Marner’s Conn Smythe case and coaching options for the Oilers and Leafs. Listen or watch here.

(Derek Leung / Getty Images)

No Dumb Questions

We believe that in hockey, as in life, there are no dumb questions. So if you have something you’ve always wondered about the sport, ask away by emailing us at redlight@theathletic.com.

Just for kicks

Why is it OK to kick an assist, but not a goal? — Syd

Ah, the dreaded NHL kicking rule. By some miracle, we haven’t really had a good old-fashioned kicking controversy in the playoffs this year, though we came close on Montreal’s first goal last night. When it happens, we know it will be ugly because kicking debates always are.

But for once, there’s some good news: This one is actually a bit simpler than most fans think.

First things first. As Syd suggests, it’s perfectly legal to kick the puck pretty much anywhere on the ice, as long as it doesn’t go into the net.

If you’re trying to win a faceoff, or clear the zone, or pass the puck to a teammate, or pretty much anything else you might want to do on a rink, go ahead and kick it. The only exception: Kicking the puck directly into the net. For any other scenario you can think of, consult this handy guide.

Simple enough. But why? If kicking the puck is legal everywhere else, why not just allow it for goals too? After all, these guys are on skates. If they can figure out a way to bend it like Beckham on ice, shouldn’t we allow it? The no-kicking rule for goals seems arbitrary, bordering on nonsensical.

Some fans will tell you that there’s a safety issue here, and that’s part of it. Skate blades are sharp, and they’re dangerous when they start swinging around. That danger is relatively minimal most of the time, but when we get close to the crease and there’s a good chance there’s a goalie down there reaching for the puck, a kicking motion could do some real damage. The league doesn’t want to encourage that, for good reason.

But the bigger answer is even simpler: You’re not allowed to score by intentionally directing the puck into the net with anything other than your stick. You can’t use your glove, as we saw in Game 5 of the Wild-Avalanche series when Minnesota had a goal waved off. You can’t use your head, as we memorably learned from Andrew Shaw a decade ago. Accidental deflections are fine, and we see them all the time, including off skates. But as far as intentionally directing the puck into the net, it’s sticks only.

When you think of it that way, the rule against kicked-in goals isn’t all that confusing at all — it’s actually a case of the league’s rules being consistent across all scenarios. Moving the puck around the rink is one thing. But getting it over the goal line is a special case, and it’s treated that way. You’ll have to get your kicks somewhere else.

Steve Shields in 1997. (Getty Images)

Trivia Answer

The appropriately named goalie we were looking for was Steve Shields.

He made 25 saves that night, including three in overtime. He kept the starter’s job through the start of the next series, during which he fought Garth Snow in a rare playoff goalie fight.

He also tangled with Sean Burke the following season and was part of the trade that sent Selanne to San Jose in 2001.

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