David Legwand and Andreas Johansson each had two goals and an assist as the Nashville Predators inched closer to moving out of the cellar in the Western Conference with a 5-1 win over the Columbus Blue Jackets on Monday.
Goaltender Tomas Vokoun, starting a franchise record 16th consecutive game, made 21 saves, while Scott Hartnell had Nashville's other goal.
The Predators, 9-8-3-0 in their last 20 games after starting the season 2-10-4-4, are only one point behind Columbus. Nashville has lost 11 one-goal games.
The Blue Jackets entered unbeaten in their last three (2-0-1) after a season-high five-game losing streak. Mike Sillinger scored for Columbus.
Senators 5, Rangers 2
In New York, Marian Hossa scored twice, and Magnus Arvedson snapped a third-period tie as Ottawa defeated New York.
Hossa, with 27 goals, brought the NHL's top team into a 1-1 tie in the first period and then stretched Ottawa's lead to 4-2 at 5:25 of the third. Hossa is just one goal behind Vancouver's Markus Naslund for the league lead.
The Senators looked every bit like a focused team despite waiting for pay checks that weren't delivered on Jan. 1.
A finance plan is expected to be in place this week that will help the club meet its obligations, commissioner Gary Bettman said last week.
Kings 3, Wild 2
In St. Paul Minnesota, Rookie Joe Corvo scored his first career goal, as injury-ravaged Los Angeles beat Minnesota to end a four-game losing streak.
Felix Potvin made 26 saves, while Steve Kelly and Brad Chartrand scored for Los Angeles, which was missing six of its top forwards and has seven skaters on injured reserve. The Kings dressed six rookies.
Potvin bounced back from a rough stretch in which he lost three of four starts and allowed 14 goals. Backup Jamie Storr started the last two games.
Sharks 5, Oilers 5
In San Jose, California, Dan McGillis scored his second goal of the third period with 5:14 remaining to complete San Jose's rally from a three-goal deficit to tie Edmonton.
Scott Thornton started San Jose's rally with a goal in the Sharks' wildest home game this season. The teams combined for 78 shots and had numerous scuffles.
After Ryan Smyth scored two of Edmonton's three power-play goals in the first two periods, the Sharks rebounded from terrible play on special teams and defense to pound Edmonton goalie Tommy Salo with 20 shots in the third period and four more in overtime.
Todd Marchant, Shawn Horcoff and Mike York also scored for the Oilers, who extended their winless road skid to six games with terrible defensive play in the third.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier