Your Thursday Evening Briefing

Valeri Nichushkin’s game isn’t all the way back, but he’s certainly making a big impact. Nichushkin scored the lone goal in the fifth round of a shootout Wednesday night to give the Colorado Avalanche a hard-earned 2-1 victory against the Vegas Golden Knights at Ball Arena. The 29-year-old power forward also had the team’s only goal in regulation.

SALT LAKE CITY — If the Nuggets need to be coming off a loss or playing from behind to bring their best effort, that’s a larger problem that’ll need to be addressed this season before it’s too late. But for now in a tight Western Conference, they’ll take what they can get, however they can get it.

SALT LAKE CITY — The “Middle Eight” may be known best as a principle of game management tracked by football coaches, but Michael Malone and the Nuggets are encountering their own version of it in basketball. There’s an essential difference, though. For the Nuggets, the minutes that seem to matter most are not the last four of the first half combined with the first four of the second half. Look earlier in the game instead, and there will lie the answer to Denver’s baffling habit of playing from behind. “We were talking about that the other day, about how I think there’s only one time in the first 16 games this season that we’ve won the last four minutes of the first quarter and the first four minutes of the second quarter,” Malone said Wednesday night before taking on Utah.

Jameis Winston’s passionate speeches and radiant smile have made him a media darling since taking over as the Browns’ starting quarterback. But those were traits Sean Payton saw every day while coaching him in New Orleans. “You hear him before you see him,” the Broncos coach said about his former player, who he will face on Monday night at home.

Questions follow massive recall of California raw milk after bird flu testing Yahoo! VoicesView Full Coverage on Google News

Sluggish gas exchange in the lungs may be involved in long-COVID brain fog University of Minnesota Twin CitiesCognitive deficits after COVID-19 associated with brain injury biomarkers and volume loss Nature.comLong COVID Brain Fog Linked to Lung Function PR NewswireNew research shows younger and middle-aged adults have worse long COVID symptoms than older adults Northwestern Medicine NewsroomLong COVID ‘brain fog’ linked to lung dysfunction in new study Henry Herald