Kirk Maltby scored his second goal of the night 2:39 into double overtime to lift the Detroit Red Wings to a 3-2 victory over the Edmonton Oilers in Game 1 of their first-round playoff series on Friday.
Edmonton's Dwayne Roloson made 54 saves while Manny Legace finished with 23 for the Red Wings.
Maltby ended the game that lasted well over 3 hours with a long shot from outside the right circle that was deflected past Roloson by the stick of Oilers teammate Rem Murray.
PHOTO: AP
Maltby, who had only five goals this season, made it 2-all with 6:17 left in regulation.
Game 2 of the best-of-seven Western Conference series is todaydayin Detroit.
Three of the four regular-season meetings went to overtime with Detroit winning the lone game decided in regulation.
Robert Lang scored on the power play to give Detroit a 1-0 lead at 4:05, but Sergei Samsonov tied it midway through the first period and Chris Pronger put Edmonton ahead 2-1 in the second period.
Predators 4, Sharks 3
At Nashville, Tennessee, Adam Hall scored the go-ahead goal at 12:06 of the third period by redirecting a shot by Paul Kariya, who assisted on all four of Nashville's power-play goals.
Mike Sillinger scored and had an assist, and Martin Erat and rookie defenseman Shea Weber both netted their first career playoff goals as the Predators showed why they enjoyed the NHL's best home-ice advantage this season.
Nashville leads the best-of-seven Western Conference series 1-0, with Game 2 back in Tennessee today.
The fifth-seeded Sharks had won eight of nine, but only got one assist from NHL scoring champion Joe Thornton.
Mike Smith scored 4:12 in for the Sharks, who went 30-8 in the regular season when taking a 1-0 lead. Nils Ekman was set up by Thornton in the second period, and Scott Thornton tied it 3-3 in the third.
Chris Mason, who has won seven straight games, made 31 saves in his playoff debut.
Senators 4, Lightning 1
At Ottawa, Martin Havlat and Jason Spezza scored power-play goals 1:07 apart early in the third period and Mike Fisher added a short-handed goal as Ottawa rallied to beat Tampa Bay in the opener of the Eastern Conference playoff series.
Daniel Alfredsson scored into an empty net with 1:02 remaining and Ray Emery made 35 saves for the Senators in his postseason debut. Game 2 of the best-of-seven series will be Sunday in Ottawa.
Emery, playing in place of injured goalie Dominik Hasek, also earned an assist on Spezza's go-ahead goal 6:13 into the third.
Vincent Lecavalier opened the scoring on a two-man advantage late in the first and Tampa Bay -- which outshot Ottawa 16-11 in a fast-paced opening period -- held a 1-0 lead through 40 minutes.
Flames 2, Mighty Ducks 1, OT
At Calgary, Alberta, Darren McCarty scored 9:45 into overtime to lift Calgary to a series-opening playoff win over Anaheim.
McCarty skated freely into the Ducks zone and one-timed a pass from Kristian Huselius by Ilya Bryzgalov, a surprise starter for the Mighty Ducks.
Anaheim's No. 1 goalie, Jean-Sebastien Giguere, practiced in the morning but missed the game with what the team called a lower-body injury. Bryzgalov was solid in his place, finishing with 28 saves.
Bryzgalov had started only one of the Ducks' final 14 regular-season games, but he didn't look rusty.
Tony Amonte scored in the second period for the Flames, and Jeff Friesen got Anaheim even in the third.
It was only Friesen's second goal in 18 games for the Mighty Ducks since being acquired from Washington at the trade deadline.
Miikka Kiprusoff made 33 saves for the Flames.
Game 2 of the best-of-seven series will be in Calgary today.
Dean Lombardi was hired as president and general manager of the Los Angeles Kings on Friday after Dave Taylor was dismissed earlier in the week.
Lombardi, who helped build the expansion San Jose Sharks into an annual contender in the National Hockey League, faces a large rebuilding task with the Kings.
He takes over a team that has not made the NHL playoffs for the past three seasons, and has won only one playoff round in the past decade.
The 45-year-old Lombardi was considered one of North American ice hockey's brightest young executives after he took over a San Jose team that had won more then 20 games just once in its first five years. After he became the GM in 1996, the Sharks improved their point total six years in a row, won one Pacific Division title and twice made the second round of the playoffs.
He was let go, however, with three weeks left in the 2002-2003 season.
Taylor was fired on Tuesday as part of a shakeup after he served nine years as the president and GM. He has been asked to remain with the organization in a different capacity.
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