Taber, Alberta calls itself the Corn Capital of Canada, and until last December it had exactly one sheet of ice. On Dec 17 a propane leak in the Zamboni room ignited and destroyed the arena. Repairs were quoted at $10.8 million, $4.3 million of it uninsured, so a town of about 8,900 people ran street-hockey fundraisers through the winter and entered Kraft Hockeyville. It won on April 5, took the $250,000, and reopened the rink on July 31 with cake and two new names on the wall of honour: Gerry Beckie and Joe Orban. NHL preseason opens Saturday.

Housewarming... Buffalo beat Detroit 41-31 in the first regular-season game at the new Highmark Stadium. Josh Allen scored the building's first regular-season touchdown on a 1-yard run and finished with five in all, three passing and two rushing. Jared Goff threw for 327 yards and four touchdowns, posted a better passer rating than Allen, and lost by ten, because Buffalo ran for 203 yards to Detroit's 66 and converted nine of twelve third downs. Wednesday's Call It settles with the Bills.

Openers only... The Dodgers clinched the NL West 8-2 in Cincinnati without using a starting pitcher. Justin Wrobleski opened with three perfect innings, and Landon Knack threw four shutout innings behind him.

Thirty and thirty... Angel Reese scored 30 points on 11-of-14 shooting in Atlanta's 103-59 win over Connecticut, and it was her 30th double-double of the season, a WNBA record. Teammate Rhyne Howard hit her 129th three of the year, passing Sabrina Ionescu's single-season mark.

Dead even... Cleveland and Chicago are both 78-75 in the AL Central after the White Sox beat Detroit 3-1 on Thursday night while the Guardians sat idle. In the West, Houston beat Kansas City to go 77-76 and Texas lost to Boston to fall to 76-77, which broke a tie one day old and left the Astros a single game up.

The .500 problem... No team has ever won a division at under .500 across a full 162-game season. The worst division winner on record is the 2005 San Diego Padres at 82-80, and Houston would have to go 5-4 over its last nine just to match it. Competitive races have a shorthand: magic number = a team's own wins plus the losses of the club chasing it, added until the chaser can no longer catch up. Nobody in either race has one small enough to finish this weekend.

Everybody gets a turn... The West has been passed around all season.

Nine to go... Cleveland hosts the Athletics, Chicago hosts Detroit, Houston hosts Atlanta and Texas hosts Toronto, so one bad series in either race hands a home playoff series to a team with a losing record. That is worth less hand-wringing than it sounds like. The 2019 Nationals were 19-31 on May 23 and won the World Series from the wild card, and a bracket has never once asked how a team got into it.

— Landen Hull

Mind the gap... Kansas plays Arizona State at Wembley Stadium at noon ET Saturday on FS1, the first FBS game ever played in England and the second college football game played in London. The first was the Imperial Bowl at Crystal Palace on Oct 16, 1988, Richmond 20, Boston University 17.

Six weeks at sea... Instruments cannot fly the way people do, so Kansas put its band instruments and game gear on a ship for a six-week crossing, and called Kansas State, Iowa State and the Jacksonville Jaguars to learn the logistics. Fox is treating it like a European final, with roughly 90 crew and a Technocrane on Arena Square.

Why London... Kansas had a reason to take the road: its stadium is mid-renovation at reduced capacity, and it still has six home games in Lawrence. Arizona State opened its London campus office on Wednesday, a project its president, Michael Crow, said had taken years to get in motion, and the football game landed on top of it.

Next stop... The Big 12 has more London matchups under discussion, and the Jaguars alone have hosted 14 games in the city since 2013. Both of these teams are 1-1, both lost to SEC opponents last week, and neither is ranked, which tells you what the game was sold on.

Chased: Pete Crow-Armstrong homered twice Wednesday to reach 44, and with 37 steals he is three short of the seventh 40-40 season in major league history and the first by a Cub. That's the payoff to Wednesday's Quick Sip.

Un-eliminated: Bristol's night race used to be the cutoff that sent four drivers home. The Chase came back this year with no cuts at all, so Saturday is just a points race, and a win is now worth 55 points instead of 40.

Climbing: Aaron Rodgers is 13 touchdown passes from passing Peyton Manning for third all time, and 45 from Drew Brees in second. He plays at New England on Sunday afternoon.

Compressed: NHL camps opened this week with 12 days until the season starts and four exhibition games per team, down from six to eight, with players who have 100 or more NHL games capped at two appearances. "It's literally five or six practices, two games, 'Let's go!'" Capitals coach Spencer Carbery said.

Bottoms up. See you Monday.