Patrice Bergeron scored 1:26 into overtime to give Boston a 2-1 victory over the Montreal Canadiens on Friday night and lift the Bruins to a 2-0 lead in the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs.
Andrew Raycroft stopped 25 shots, and Michael Nylander also scored for the Bruins. Jose Theodore made 17 saves, and Patrice Brisebois had the Canadiens' only goal. Bergeron and Nylander teamed up on Boston's other goal, too.
"In our dressing room, I don't know if anyone looks at him [Bergeron] as a rookie. Both him and Andrew [Nylander], they have a certain maturity level,'' Bruins coach Mike Sullivan said.
PHOTO: EPA
The best-of-seven series moves to Montreal for Games 3 and 4 on Sunday and Tuesday.
"This was our best effort. We should be proud of ourselves the way we played," Montreal forward Alex Kovalev said. "Now we have the home advantage and if we play like we did, we should be OK."
Avalanche 5, Stars 2
In Denver, Colorado's top line of Peter Forsberg, Alex Tanguay and Milan Hejduk combined for two goals and four assists, lifting the Avalanche over Dallas.
Forsberg and Tanguay scored for the second straight game and had an assist each, and Hejduk added two assists to give Colorado a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven-series. Joe Sakic also scored for the second straight game and Dan Hinote added a goal.
The Stars who got goals from Mike Modano and Chris Therien.
Flames 2, Canucks 1
In Vancouver, British Columbia, Jarome Iginla and Matthew Lombardi scored 50 seconds apart in the first period, and Miikka Kiprusoff made 25 saves as Calgary evened its first-round playoff series with Vancouver.
The Flames' first playoff win since 1995 gave them home-ice advantage in the best-of-seven Western Conference series.
Markus Naslund scored and Dan Cloutier made 22 saves for the Canucks, who had won seven straight, six in the regular season and the series opener against Calgary on Wednesday.
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