Marian Gaborik scored his fourth goal in four games as the Minnesota Wild beat Phoenix 3-1 on Wednesday night, handing goalie Ilya Bryzgalov his first loss in five games with the Coyotes.
Gaborik, who leads the Wild with nine goals, took advantage of Steven Reinprecht's turnover at the blue line to beat Bryzgalov on a breakaway in the second period.
James Sheppard and Stephane Veilleux also scored for the Wild.
Radim Vrbata scored his team-leading ninth goal for Phoenix.
Bryzgalov finished with 25 saves.
Blues 4, Sabres 3
At Buffalo, New York, Brad Boyes broke a tie with 58 seconds left, and Manny Legace made 20 saves in St. Louis' victory over Buffalo.
Mike Johnson and Paul Kariya each had a goal and assist, Martin Rucinsky also scored, and Boyes added an assist for St. Louis. The Blues have won three straight and seven of their last eight games.
Jason Pominville, Ales Kotalik and Andrej Sekera scored for Buffalo. The loss snapped the Sabres' winning streak at five.
The Sabres are winless in their last 11 games against St. Louis.
Islanders 3, Senators 2, SO
At Uniondale, New York, Mike Sillinger scored the go-ahead goal in the third period and then added the winner in the shootout to help New York snap an eight-game losing streak against Ottawa.
New York led 2-1 after the teams traded goals early in the third, but the Senators appeared set to continue their dominance over the Islanders when defenseman Andrej Meszaros scored his second of the game with 1:55 left in regulation.
Rick DiPietro sealed New York's first shootout win of the season when he gloved Dean McAmmond's drive in the sixth round of the tiebreaker. The Islanders got even at 1 in the shootout when captain Bill Guerin scored on their last regulation attempt.
In other games, it was: Devils 4, Stars 2; Panthers 2, Capitals 1, SO; Flyers 3, Hurricanes 1; Blackhawks 5, Lightning 1; Kings 3, Sharks 2, SO.
A recent bench-clearing hockey brawl involving eight-year-old boys has provoked an uproar in Canada, and may lead to charges against a coach accused of fueling the melee, police said on Wednesday.
"We were called to a local rink [in Guelph, Ontario] last Friday after the players all started fighting on the ice," Guelph Police Service Sergeant Cate Welsh said.
"Now, we're considering charges against a coach of one of the teams who was involved ... for allegedly spitting on the opposing team's coach," she said.
One assistant coach has already resigned amid a public outcry over the rumble, and the Ontario Minor Hockey Association suspended the coaching staffs of both teams until it concludes its own investigation.
Newspapers nationwide meanwhile described the violence as "obscene," "shocking," "borderline child abuse" and "a low point in Canadian sports."
Last Friday, boys barely 137cm tall with their skates on and weighing an average 27kg jumped from their respective benches to fight each other at the end of a match.
According to reports, their coaches purportedly encouraged them, going as far as opening the gates at their respective benches when some players started pushing each other around on the ice.
The Niagara Falls Thunder Novice AAA had just been defeated 8-1 by the Toronto-area Duffield Devils in a tournament in Guelph.
By police accounts, based on interviews with parents and arena staff, the game had been rough from the start, with players taking cheap shots at each other.
Then, when the final buzzer sounded, a "donnybrook," the likes of which has not been seen in the National Hockey League since the heady 1970s and 1980s, erupted with dozens of young boys skating onto the ice to join the melee.
Given their diminutive size and strength at that age, and protective gear, however, no one was injured.
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