Glen Metropolit and Doug Weight scored in a 17-second span in the second period to help the St. Louis Blues stop the Dallas Stars' four-game winning streak with a 4-2 victory on Monday night.
With the game tied at 1, Metropolit put the Blues in front with his 14th goal from the right circle at 13:44 after Stars defenseman Stephane Robidas turned over the puck.
Weight's deflection for his 15th of the season at 14:01 extended St. Louis' lead to 3-1.
PHOTO: AP
Lee Stempniak scored two goals, including an empty-netter with 24 seconds left.
Curtis Sanford stopped 28 shots for the Blues, who won three of the four meetings this season.
Mike Ribeiro and Brenden Morrow scored for the Stars, who remain at 102 points, four behind the Anaheim Ducks, who lead the Pacific Division.
Dallas had gone 10-1-1 over its previous 12 games to put the pressure on Anaheim, but the Stars have only three games left to overtake the Ducks.
The Stars, who have already clinched a spot in the playoffs, could have captured the division title if they had won their final four games.
By finishing with four straight victories, the Stars would have been no worse than tied with the Ducks and would have had more victories, the first tiebreaker.
Now the Stars need help.
St. Louis is 5-6-4 in its past 15 games and won't be in the playoffs.
Stempniak skated unimpeded from the right boards and into the circle, where he beat Dallas goaltender Marty Turco with a wrist shot for his 26th goal at 10:46 of the first period to make it 1-0.
Ribeiro tied it at 1 with his 18th goal of the season, taking a cross-ice pass from Morrow and lifting a sharp shot over Sanford, who was sprawled on the ice, at 10:09 of the second period.
After the Blues scored twice in the second period, Morrow made the score 3-2 on a power play with his 14th goal of the season at 19:45 of the second period, banking a sharp-angled shot off Sanford's pads.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
Rafael Nadal on Tuesday lost in straight sets to 31st-ranked Jiri Lehecka in the fourth round at the Madrid Open, while Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei advanced to the semi-finals in the women’s doubles. Nadal said that he was feeling good about his progress following his latest injury layoff. Nadal called it a “positive week” in every way and said his body held up well. “I was able to play four matches, a couple of tough matches,” Nadal said. “So very positive, winning three matches, playing four matches at the high level of tennis. I enjoyed a lot playing at home. I leave here with