Normally the NHL is coming out of the dog days of the regular season in late February as teams begin the final push for a playoff berth. However, most are hoping after a thrilling 4 Nations Face-Off that hockey can continue its momentum.
One of the first tests will be Saturday night when ESPN carries the Stadium Series matchup between the Columbus Blue Jackets and Detroit Red Wings from Ohio Stadium.
“The season feels very different to me this year,” said ESPN's Steve Levy, who will host the outdoor game. “I think the players that were involved or those not involved were energized by watching. The NHL has a ton of momentum really at a perfect time, and it has kick-started the final quarter of the season.”
It also doesn't hurt that the league has plenty of storylines coming off 4 Nations. Washington’s Alexander Ovechkin needs 11 goals to surpass Wayne Gretzky’s career NHL record of 894 while the league’s trade deadline is less than one week away.
ESPN announced this week that it has added seven additional games, including two featuring Ovechkin and the Capitals.
“That keeps the hockey interest going overall, and that helps motivate us internally as well as externally. So 4 Nations into Ovechkin into Stadium Series, that’s a great position for all of us to be in right now,” said Linda Schulz, who oversees ESPN's NHL production.
The Stadium Series usually has significance due to the location, but it carries huge implications in the Eastern Conference playoff race. After Thursday night's 5-2 victory, Columbus is tied with Detroit for the first wild-card spot. Both have 66 points, and are four points clear of Ottawa, Boston and the New York Rangers.
The Red Wings haven't been to the Stanley Cup playoffs since 2016 while the Blue Jackets are in contention even while mourning the deaths of Johnny Gaudreau and his brother Matthew in August. Columbus has been to the playoffs only six times in 24 previous seasons, with its most recent trip being in 2020.
Besides the Ohio-Michigan rivalry being manifested on ice, Ohio Stadium should provide a great backdrop because college stadiums seem to be more conducive to NHL Stadium Series games with not a lot of sideline room. The fans are also more on top of the rink and closer to the ice compared to when the outdoor games have taken place in baseball parks.
“The NHL does a really good job of finding these iconic settings. And ‘The Horseshoe’ just screams that," Levy said. “If you’re naming five iconic college football stadiums, this is one. Just like ‘The Big House’ in Michigan (which has also hosted an outdoor game) is on that list.”
With the game being outdoors, ESPN will use a drone to capture some of the views as well as testing some new virtual graphics.
While Canada's 3-2 overtime victory over the United States in the 4 Nations championship averaged a record 9.3 million viewers, Levy and ESPN are hoping that some stick around for the rest of the season and going into the playoffs.
“We’re not going to keep them all. But what percentage of those same fans who were wowed by 4 Nations can we keep a little longer? Because everybody in this sport knows once we get to the Stanley Cup playoffs, you can get them to that point. They’re going to stick around regardless of what teams are in just because the postseason so intense and crazy,” Levy said.
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Washington Capitals left wing Alex Ovechkin celebrates his goal during the third period of an NHL hockey game against the Calgary Flames as he skates towards the bench, Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.
West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.
The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.
Decisions are expected by early summer.
President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.
Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.
“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”
She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.
Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.
She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.
Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.
“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.
Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.
The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.
About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.
"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”
But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.
“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”
Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”
“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.
One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.
Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”
The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.
The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.
The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.
The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.
If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.
“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)
