ry. Opara made a career-high 18 appearances last season a

NEW ORLEANS - The Toronto Raptors were without Jonas Valanciunas on Wednesday for their game in New Orleans against the Pelicans. Valanciunas, who left Tuesdays loss to the Hawks late in the third quarter with a lower back sprain, missed his first game of the season. Head coach Dwane Casey announced the news an hour and a half prior to tip-off. "His back is still tight," Casey said. "[He] wasnt able to get it loose. (Director of Sports Science) Alex (McKechnie) put him through some preliminary work and it still was tight so hes going to be out." Valanciunas sustained the injury turning to set a screen, feeling immediate pain in his lower back before McKechnie and the Raptors training staff made the call to pull him from the game. After navigating through a mini-slump to close the month of February, the Raptors sophomore centre had been playing some of his best basketball of the season over the past week. Getting off to hot starts in each of his last three games, Valanciunas has totalled 34 points on 14-of-20 shooting in the first quarter of those contests. The Raptors were already undermanned in the frontcourt, missing Patrick Patterson for a seventh straight game Wednesday. He is expected to be out at least another week resting an elbow injury. Tyler Hansbrough started in place of Valanciunas. Both he and Chuck Hayes will see increased playing time as long as the teams starting centre in sidelined. Amir Johnson also played against the Pelicans after tweaking a lingering right ankle injury at the end of regulation in Tuesdays overtime loss. "Weve been very fortunate not to have that many injuries up until this part of the season," said Casey. "A lot of teams had them earlier and its unfortunate were hitting them now but its part of the NBA. Now weve got to adjust to it and make hay from it." Valanciunas is considered day-to-day. Air Jordan 11 Cheap Sale . Joakim Nordstrom and Garret Ross also scored for Chicago and Corey Crawford made 30 saves. Tomas Tatar scored twice for Red Wings (2-3-0), Jonathan Ericsson added a goal and Gustav Nyquist had three assists. Air Jordan 11 Wholesale . Every. Single. Game. Thats 1,230 in total to cover the regular season. The man is Corey Sznajder, a soft-spoken 23-year-old Salisbury University grad who lives in Annapolis, Maryland and has been charting zone entries and zone exits throughout the NHL. I love big projects, he said. No kidding. At the 2013 Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, I met Eric Tulsky, who presented research on the value of controlled zone entries (short answer: about twice as valuable to enter with control of the puck rather than dumping it in) and Sznajder had charted a couple hundred games that were included in that study. http://www.cheapairjordan11.net/ . But Paul Osbaldiston, Hamiltons assistant special teams and kicking coach, said the team still relished the championship game workout. Discount Air Jordan 11 . The Rays hope to stay alive for the postseason and salvage the finale of this series Sunday at Rogers Centre, where they dropped a 7-2 decision Saturday. Chris Archer lasted 2 1/3 innings in the no-decision, charged with a run and five hits, and Alex Torres suffered the loss in relief. Jordan 11 Retro Cheap . The agreement comes a little more than one week after the video game manufacturer agreed to a $40 million settlement in a similar but separate case, bringing the total payout planned for athletes to $60 million, said Steve Berman, an attorney for the plaintiffs, and the NCAA.KANSAS CITY - Sporting Kansas City returns to action for the first time in two weeks as the club gets set to take on the Montreal Impact at Sporting Park on Saturday. You can listen to the action on TSN Radio 690 Montreal beginning at 8:30pm et. Sportings last outing was a 0-0 draw with Real Salt Lake two weeks ago in a rematch of last seasons MLS Cup final, while Montreal is still searching for its first win of the 2014 campaign after playing to its third successive draw last weekend, a 1-1 stalemate with Chicago. Montreal lost its first three games to begin the season, but has rebounded to take three points from its last three matches. And although the team sits on the bottom of the Eastern Conference and has yet to record a win this season, goalkeeper Troy Perkins is encouraged by the last three results. "Everybody seems to see the negative, but the reality is weve gotten points in our last three games," Perkins said. "Were unbeaten, its still early in the season and were getting points, so we keep moving forward." In the Impacts last game, the club got a goal from Jack McInerney in the 43rd minute to take the lead on the Fire with McInerney scoring in his debut following a trade that sent Andrew Wenger to the Philadelphia Union in exchange for the 21-year-old. But McInerneys debut was spoiled by a second-half goal from Chicagos Quincy Amarikwa, forcing Montreal to settle for a point. The Impact wont be expected to pick up their first win on Saturday, but Perkins feels that the atmosphere in Kansas City will force his team to raise its level on play and that Saturdays contest will be a greeat test.dddddddddddd "You go to places like that and it demands that you step up your game," said Perkins of Montreals trip to Kansas City. "As professional athletes, you want to prove yourself against the best. You have to play at a higher level. You want to be tested. Its a high energy environment and I love playing those types of games." Sporting will be pleased to have some extra rest ahead of the match, but it wont do any good for defender Ike Opara, who is likely to miss the rest of the season with an ankle injury. Opara made a career-high 18 appearances last season after joining Sporting from San Jose in midseason, but now head coach Peter Vermes will have to replace the 25-year-old along the back line. One player who Vermes can rely upon is goalkeeper Erik Kronberg, who is making the most of his first season as the starting netminder after spending eight years as the number two, first to Kevin Hartman and then Jimmy Nielsen. "It always is tough for players like that to be able to follow in somebody elses footsteps," Vermes said of Kronbergs emergence this season. "But I truly believe that hes starting to forge his own path, and I think people are starting to see that he has qualities that are important to our team as well. Hes going to continue to grow as a keeper, and thats what we need him to do." The 0-0 draw with RSL marked Kronbergs second clean sheet of the season in the five games he has started, while Montreal will hope to replicate the success it had against Sporting last term when the Impact won two of the three meetings between the sides. ' ' '