Jean-Francois Berube will play an NHL game for the first time in nearly four years when he occupies the crease Sunday.

Berube confirmed he's starting for the Columbus Blue Jackets against the Buffalo Sabres, according to team reporter Jeff Svoboda.

The goaltender got the nod because the Blue Jackets suddenly have three injured netminders. Elvis Merzlikins got hurt in Saturday's practice, while Joonas Korpisalo and Daniil Tarasov were already dealing with ailments of their own.

Berube last suited up in the NHL as a member of the Chicago Blackhawks on April 6, 2018. He played 34 contests with the Blackhawks and New York Islanders over three seasons beginning in 2015-16.

The 30-year-old has played with four AHL clubs since his previous NHL appearance. He's 4-9-4 with an .891 save percentage across 27 games with the Cleveland Monsters - Columbus' affiliate - in 2021-22. Berube is in his second stint with the Monsters after playing 43 contests with them in 2018-19.

Berube isn't the only goalie returning to the NHL on Sunday after a lengthy absence. Andrew Hammond is also making his first start in the league since 2018 for the Montreal Canadiens against the Islanders.

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Finland beat the Russian Olympic Committee 2-1 on Sunday to win gold and cap Olympic men's hockey in Beijing. These five takeaways from the tournament have implications for the NHL.

Fedotov couldn't foil the Finns

Finland's win was historic, but Ivan Fedotov's future is the top NHL story for either finalist. The Russian goalie stopped 29 pucks to keep the gold-medal game close, only for Ville Pokka's prayer from distance and Hannes Bjorninen's netfront tip to beat him and prove the difference.

That two shots eluded Fedotov made Sunday his second-worst game in Beijing. The Czech Republic shelled him for six goals after he'd shut out Switzerland and Denmark back-to-back. Fedotov rebounded in knockout play and held the Danes and Sweden to a goal apiece, stoning Sweden's last five attempts in the shootout that sent the Russians to the final.

Goalies ruled this tournament. Patrik Rybar's heroic .966 save percentage led Slovakia to the bronze medal. Harri Sateri (.962, 16 saves in the final) backstopped the Finns to their first gold medal in 18 Olympic appearances. Fedotov's save percentage wound up at .943.

The Philadelphia Flyers drafted Fedotov in the seventh round in 2015, and they retain his rights as he reportedly eyes a move out of the KHL. The Flyers and Fedotov's agent have initiated contract talks, a source told Philly Hockey Now's Sam Carchidi. If he were to back up Carter Hart next season, he'd become the NHL's tallest goalie ever at 6-foot-8, one inch clear of Mikko Koskinen and Ben Bishop.

Finland staged a masterclass Sunday on how to hold a third-period lead. The Finns generated more solid chances in the frame than the Russians had shots (three). They spoiled Fedotov's marvelous week, and they're the champs because of it.

Slafkovsky boosted his draft stock

Early in the tournament, Slovakia looked doomed to bow out long before the medal games. The Slovaks let in a combined nine goals against Finland and Sweden in the first four periods of the preliminary round. The only player who showed up was younger than everyone: 17-year-old Juraj Slafkovsky scored Slovakia's three goals against those Nordic powers.

Rybar, the third goalie on the Slovak depth chart, drew into action and was close to unbeatable in wins over Latvia, Germany, the United States, and the Swedes. Slafkovsky found the net four times in those games as Slovakia won bronze, the country's first Olympic hockey medal. The kid was the tournament's MVP and its breakout star.

Slafkovsky is fast and deft with the puck at 6-foot-3, and his offensive outburst was no fluke. He scored all seven of his goals at even strength, four of them on pinpoint wristers. One was a snapshot that he roofed. On another, he was the first to pounce on a rebound by the crease.

There's no recent precedent for what he achieved in Beijing. Before the Chicago Blackhawks drafted Ed Olczyk third overall in 1984, he put up eight Olympic points for the U.S. in Yugoslavia. Rasmus Dahlin, the No. 1 pick in 2018, played fewer than eight minutes for Sweden at the PyeongChang Games. The Canadian equivalent of Slafkovsky's star turn would have been Shane Wright, 2022's top draft prospect, lighting up the event as Claude Julien's most reliable forward.

Slafkovsky generally ranks between fourth and eighth in prominent 2022 prospect rankings. Scouts that TSN's Bob McKenzie polled in January slotted him fifth behind Wright, Logan Cooley, Joakim Kemell, and Matthew Savoie. For someone who's barely scored in Finland's top-tier Liiga this season (Slafkovsky has four points in 21 games), producing in Beijing is exactly what he needed to do to maximize his stock.

North American youngsters delivered

None of them took over like Slafkovsky, but Canada and the United States' young guns showed what makes them esteemed prospects: Owen Power's puck poise, Mason McTavish's shot, Matty Beniers' dependability in all zones and situations. Jake Sanderson set up dangerous rush chances in his lone Olympic game before getting hurt. No Canadian forward was as creative and slippery off the cycle as Kent Johnson.

Regrettably, Julien benched Johnson for much of the third period when Canada lost to Sweden. David Quinn never turned to Beniers as Rybar blanked the U.S. in the quarterfinal shootout.

Jack McBain's turnover cost Canada against Sweden, but the prospects generally deserved trust. U.S. forwards Sean Farrell and Brendan Brisson combined to score five goals in Beijing. Brisson and Matt Knies both recorded 13 shots. Defenseman Brock Faber played 24:45 a night. U.S. goalie Drew Commesso, who's eligible to play this summer at the rescheduled world juniors, stopped 53 of the 55 shots he faced against China and Germany.

What's next for this cohort? McTavish has already impressed in a nine-game NHL audition. Power and Sanderson are locks to leave college in the next month or two; Beniers and Johnson might be ready to join them in the NHL next season. One dark horse who could make a pro impact soon is Nick Abruzzese, the 22-year-old Harvard captain and 2019 fourth-round draft pick who distributed three primary assists in Beijing.

Ho-Sang teased his skill

Josh Ho-Sang's career flagged from 2019-21 when he played a mere 31 games between the minors and Sweden. But he found stability with the Toronto Marlies this season, played well enough on an AHL deal to make Canada's Olympic team, and entered the event on the top line.

Did Julien give him a fair shake? Two games in, Ho-Sang's only point was an assist on Mat Robinson's fluke goal, and McBain replaced him on Eric Staal's right wing. Ho-Sang didn't play more than 9:24 the rest of the tournament, even though he recorded a sweet helper against China - his speed on the rush opened a passing lane to Eric O'Dell - and seemed to be the one Canadian in the quarterfinals who could carry the puck into Sweden's zone.

After PyeongChang 2018, Cody Goloubef was the only Canadian Olympian who returned for a time to the NHL. It'd be a stretch to say Ho-Sang was a game away from earning his own contract, but the what-if is tantalizing. In place of breaking out in the medal round, his play for the Marlies is what will prompt any NHL interest he receives.

NHLers were sorely missed

PyeongChang's Olympic tournament had three attributes that this one lacked: memorable knockout matchups, an underdog finalist, and a twist that distinguished it from past Games.

Germany came within an overtime goal of winning gold in 2018. In Beijing, the semis and final were defensive slogs that featured seven goals total. Plus, NHL players staying home wasn't novel anymore.

The Europe-based veterans who headlined most rosters put in respectable efforts, but it's the matchup of elite talent that confers magnitude and produces magic. When CNN likened the U.S. beating Canada to the Miracle on Ice, the comparison was silly because the American college kids hadn't toppled any great opponent. Eddie Pasquale has strong KHL stats, but he's not Vladislav Tretiak.

NHLers emphasize that the Olympics matter to them. Come 2026, the NHL shouldn't need to reschedule scores of games to February, which would free these players to compete for the first time: Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, Auston Matthews, Leon Draisaitl, Andrei Vasilevskiy, Nikita Kucherov, Victor Hedman, Steven Stamkos, Brayden Point, Jonathan Huberdeau, Artemi Panarin, Mikko Rantanen, Sebastian Aho, Juuse Saros, David Pastrnak, Brad Marchand, Cale Makar, Adam Fox, Mitch Marner, Mark Stone, Jack Eichel.

The list goes on. Watch out for Power, Beniers, and Slafkovsky, too: They'll have a shot to become Olympic vets.

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

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The Toronto Maple Leafs have traded winger Nick Ritchie and a conditional draft pick to the Arizona Coyotes in exchange for forward Ryan Dzingel and defenseman Ilya Lyubushkin, both teams announced Saturday.

Arizona will have its choice of the Leafs' third-round pick in 2023 or their second-round selection in 2025.

Ritchie hasn't suited up for the Maple Leafs since Jan. 12 and was assigned to the team's AHL affiliate earlier this month. The 26-year-old was never able to take off in Toronto despite seeing playing time on its top line alongside Auston Matthews. The 2014 10th overall pick registered just two goals and seven assists in 33 contests this season.

He has one season left on a two-year pact that carries an annual cap hit of $2.5 million.

Lyubushkin was listed as a healthy scratch prior to the Coyotes' clash against the Los Angeles Kings on Saturday night. The 27-year-old put up nine assists in 46 games for Arizona this season while averaging 18 minutes a contest. Lyubushkin has a cap hit of $1.35 million and can become an unrestricted free agent this offseason.

Standing at 6-foot-2 and weighing 208 pounds, the right-shot defensive blue-liner has racked up 94 hits and 60 blocked shots in 2021-22. He's spent his entire 180-game career in Arizona.

Dzingel, 29, has four goals and three assists in 26 contests in a part-time role with the Coyotes this campaign. The versatile center can add depth to the Maple Leafs' forward corps. Dzingel can also become an unrestricted free agent after playing out the remainder of this season on a $1.1-million cap hit.

There was no salary retained on either side of the deal, but the Leafs will need to send a player to the AHL on Sunday to be cap compliant, according to TSN's Chris Johnston.

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Montreal Canadiens netminder Andrew Hammond is looking forward to making his first start since 2018 after interim head coach Martin St. Louis confirmed the 34-year-old will take the crease against the New York Islanders on Sunday.

"I'm through-the-roof excited. Last year was difficult at times, but I think it gave me a good opportunity to get ready for this moment. So when I do play, I feel like I'll be ready," Hammond said during his media availability Saturday.

Hammond, who was traded to the Canadiens from the Minnesota Wild earlier this month, last saw NHL action in April 2018 during three playoff contests as a member of the Colorado Avalanche. He surrendered five goals on 37 shots in his last game.

Up until his move to Montreal, Hammond spent the 2021-22 campaign with the AHL's Iowa Wild and went 6-2-3 with a .908 save percentage over 11 games.

Hammond gained some notoriety in the early years of his NHL career with the Ottawa Senators. He became widely known as "the Hamburglar" during the 2014-15 season after helping the unlikely Senators reach the playoffs with a sparkling .941 save percentage and 20-1-2 record.

Following his surprise success, Hammond struggled to rediscover his form and played 24 contests with Ottawa in 2015-16 before recording seven regular-season appearances over the next two campaigns.

"I still want to play in this league," he said. "I think I can play well, and having that self-belief has kind of driven me to keep wanting to keep trying."

He added, "Things haven't always necessarily come easy, and it's taken a little bit longer than it would for some other people but for me, it's just kind of worked out this way."

Hammond has backed up Sam Montembeault during Montreal's past two contests.

He holds a .923 save percentage and a 2.31 goals-against average in 56 career NHL appearances.

Puck drops on Hammond's Canadiens debut Sunday at 2 p.m. ET.

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In the late spring of 1998, Cleveland's Major League Baseball team attempted something never done before in the league: It went public.

With an initial public offering on the NASDAQ exchange, anyone could buy a small slice of the franchise.

The club traded under the ticker symbol "CLEV." Cleveland joined the NBA's Boston Celtics (ticker: BOS) and the NHL's Florida Panthers (PUCK) as the only publicly traded North American pro sports franchises.

Cleveland was coming off a World Series appearance and was selling out Progressive Field for entire seasons. On June 4, 1998, when the stock debuted, the entire allotment of 4 million shares was sold within an hour of the opening bell. The shares debuted at $15 apiece, raising some $54 million after fees for late owner Richard Jacobs, who sold about half his stake in the club but retained voting rights and control.

"I'll find a good use to put it to," Jacobs told the Cleveland Plain Dealer of the cash. "I'm pleased with the acceptance of the offer by institutions and fans."

Jacobs hoped to diversify the club's revenue streams through media and real estate endeavors.

Today, the Guardians, Celtics, and Panthers are all under private ownership. Cleveland's baseball team was publicly traded for a little more than a year until Larry Dolan bought it in November 1999. Shareholders who held CLEV stock were paid $23 per share. The Panthers were purchased by an investment group in 2001. The Celtics were taken private in 2002. That was the end of the direct-listing era of publicly traded North American pro teams.

One can buy indirect stakes in the Atlanta Braves or Toronto Blue Jays through their parent companies, Liberty Media (BATRA) and Rogers Communications (RCI), or in New York Knicks and New York Rangers stock through MSG Sports (MSGS), but there are no longer any North American-based sports franchises listed on their own.

There are a few European soccer clubs, like Manchester United (ticker: MANU) whose shares can be purchased on public markets. The Green Bay Packers are owned by shareholders but shares of the team are not traded on the stock market.

So why don't we see more sports teams go public, at least in a limited fashion? Many fans would love to buy shares in their favorite teams like the San Francisco Giants or Dallas Cowboys.

In this age of record retail trading, with millions of new individual investors opening brokerage accounts and actively trading on apps and elsewhere, there is likely even more demand for pro sports stocks than in the 1990s. Teams could be the new meme stocks.

Team owners often claim they are struggling to turn a profit. They could raise hundreds of millions of dollars by selling off a portion of their clubs at a time of record valuations for many asset classes, including sports franchises. A record number of companies went public in 2021 taking advantage of market conditions.

When MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said last week that MLB owners would be better off to invest in the stock market instead of major-league teams, numerous fans stated on Twitter that they would be happy to transfer funds from their 401(k) to invest in baseball clubs.

Wouldn't fans rather trade in actual shares of the Yankees and Dodgers than NFTs? Fans would likely gobble up shares even if they were owned more as souvenirs than in hopes of ballasting their retirement accounts.

So why isn't this happening?

For starters, MLB introduced a rule in 2017 that prevented a club from going public. The Braves and Blue Jays were grandfathered in.

An industry source familiar with the rule told theScore, "It was decided that having a public company own an MLB team did not mesh with our rules concerning having a controlling owner who has ultimate authority and responsibility for making (team) decisions."

Similar to MLB, the NFL prohibits public ownership, and the NBA and NHL have requirements that make it difficult to go public, according to Stephen Dodson, a portfolio manager for the San Francisco-based Bretton Fund.

Moreover, despite the lofty franchise values that pro sports enjoy, Dodson said Wall Street is not overly enamored with the prospect of investing in sports teams.

"A sports team is almost always worth more to a very rich person than it is to a company who only cares about its cash flows," Dodson said in an email interview with theScore.

"Sports teams are a bit of a vanity asset, like owning a Picasso, and the highest bidder is going to be a very rich person who wants to own the team so they (can) call themselves an owner of a sports team."

Growth opportunities are limited for most sports teams because they are largely still tied to local and regional revenues. Only the most iconic brands could hope to open up revenue streams nationally or globally.

Bill Miller, a financial journalist, said at the time of Cleveland's IPO, "The Indians can only sell ballgames in one spot, and that's Cleveland."

Even the club acknowledged this in its prospectus filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. "The Company's management believes that much of the Club's local revenue potential has been realized and that future increases in the Club's revenues, operating income and net income, if any, are likely to be substantially less than those realized over the past five years."

One fund manager told Reuters of the CLEV stock, "This is something you buy and hang (the certificate) on the wall, or give to your grandson."

While pro sports is big business, and franchises are valuable assets to own if you can afford them, it's relatively minor compared to other publicly traded giants.

Consider that Apple, the most valuable North American company, produced $123 billion in fourth-quarter revenue. That's more than all revenue MLB reported for 18 years combined from 2003 to 2020 ($120 billion).

Raphael de Balmann, co-portfolio manager with Dodson at the Bretton Fund, noted in an email interview with theScore, "Pro sports economics are set up to minimize reported income. This is important for a lot of reasons, not least that you have extremely strong unions. Public companies generally want to show high incomes."

Player pay was another foremost concern for the Cleveland baseball club, as it shared in its 1998 prospectus filing.

"The goal of the Company's player personnel management efforts is to maintain a competitive team while limiting the unpredictability in player salaries resulting from salary arbitration and free agency," the filing stated. "Management's confidence in its ability to identify promising young players has permitted the Club to selectively enter into multi-year contracts with players early in their careers."

It was in the early 1990s that Cleveland pioneered the practice of signing young players to pre-arbitration extensions to control costs. Sandy Alomar Jr., Carlos Baerga, and Charles Nagy were among the first Cleveland targeted.

One member of an MLB ownership group who spoke to theScore said tax implications are a major reason why we don't see owners rushing to ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on the day of an IPO debut. Pro sports teams are akin to a Captain America-like shield for deflecting tax bills. Last year, ProPublica investigated the ways in which owners use their teams to avoid paying millions in taxes.

"There are a few major tax advantages in sports team ownership," De Balmann said. "The most obvious is depreciation in (a stadium). If you own Madison Square Garden, you depreciate the building over 30 years. That's a big tax shield.

"If you also own the Knicks and the Rangers, you have the Knicks and the Rangers pay a massive amount of rent - causing the Knicks and Rangers to be break-even ventures - and then the abnormally large income stream at the building is offset by its depreciation, so neither entity owes any cash taxes. That requires common control of both the arena and the team."

The Braves Group, as shown in Liberty Media's financial reports, wrote down $20 million in depreciation and amortization for their most recent quarter.

The open scrutiny that comes with being a public company would be unthinkable for any group of billionaires.

"You've got quarterly scrutiny with shareholders," Dodson said. "What billionaire wants that?"

Cleveland's IPO prospectus offered a compendium of the team's financials for the years from 1993 to 1998.

"In the current baseball dispute, the MLB teams refuse to open their books to the MLBPA, and in salary-cap sports such as the NBA, there is a very negotiated term, BRI - Basketball Related Income - that the owners insist upon to allow them to hide the rest of their economics," De Balmann said.

All that said, the Celtics and Indians were good investments for Wall Street and fans as publicly traded companies. They weren't just souvenirs; they both beat the market, which runs contrary to Manfred's claim last week that the stock market is a better investment than owning an MLB club.

Joshua Hubman, who wrote a 2011 thesis on the topic for the Finance and Sport Management program at SUNY Brockport, found that during the 14-year run when the Celtics were public, the stock produced an average annual return of 16.4%, including its dividend. That was compared to the S&P 500's 9% annual return during the same period.

(The S&P 500 is a stock market index that tracks the performance of 500 large companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States.)

Cleveland beat the S&P 500 by 34 percentage points during its time being traded.

The Panthers averaged 12% gains per year but trailed the S&P 500's stronger return of 20% during its time on the open market. The NHL was also a much weaker industry at the time. The late Wayne Huizenga was awarded the Panthers as an expansion franchise in 1993 and took it public in 1996 to share the pain with investors after losing millions.

(A special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), a shell company that raises money through an IPO then purchases a company to avoid the IPO process, tried to buy the Panthers in 2009, but the deal fell through and the club remained private.)

With COVID-19 restrictions impacting teams' revenue over the last two years, some franchises have sold pieces of their companies to SPACs that are focused on sports.

Former Oakland Athletics executive Billy Beane is a partner in Redball, a SPAC that sought to acquire 25% of Fenway Sports Group earlier this year, although that deal has reportedly fallen through. Theo Epstein, the former Cubs and Red Sox executive, is a partner in Arctos NorthStar, a sports SPAC that trades on the New York Stock Exchange. Sportico reported that Arctos has $2.9 billion in assets and has already purchased small shares in the Golden State Warriors, Sacramento Kings, Tampa Bay Lightning, and Minnesota Wild.

Increasing franchise valuations is no doubt part of the appeal for SPAC investors. Many pro sports franchise values have greatly outpaced S&P 500 returns.

Fans would love to own small stakes in their favorite teams, but for now, it looks like SPAC shares, or those of Rogers or Liberty Media, are as close as they can get.

Travis Sawchik is theScore's senior baseball writer.

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