Mikael Samuelsson scored twice and Chris Osgood made 19 saves as the Detroit Red Wings defeated the Pittsburgh Penguins 4-0 on Saturday in the opening game of the Stanley Cup Finals.
Daniel Cleary and Henrik Zetterberg also scored for the Red Wings, who host game two of the National Hockey League’s best-of-seven championship series today.
Osgood notched his second shutout of the postseason by turning aside 12 shots in the first period, four in the second and three in the third. The Red Wings outshot the Penguins 25-7 over the final two periods.
Stanley Cup Final game impressed with the caliber of the opposition.
Marc-Andre Fleury made 32 saves for the Penguins, who were 0-for-5 on the power play and gave up a shorthanded goal.
Sweden’s Samuelsson opened the scoring with just under seven minutes left in the second, after Pittsburgh’s Tyler Kennedy and Jordan Staal went off for a line change.
Samuelsson skated down the left wing and went behind the net before emerging near the right goalpost. As Fleury tried to move across the crease, Samuelsson banked the puck off his left pad and into the net at 13:01.
“I just took a shot at it,” Samuelsson said. “They went to the net. I couldn’t really cut in in front of the net, so I had to go behind. And I guess Fleury committed to me a little bit. So I took a chance to throw it at the net, and it went in.”
He doubled the lead 2:16 into the third period, notching his second multiple-goal performance of the playoffs.
As he and Penguins defenseman Hal Gill collided in the left corner, the puck squirted toward the front of the net.
Fleury poked it to Evgeni Malkin in the bottom of the left faceoff circle, but Malkin couldn’t control it. Samuelsson pounced, and fired the puck past Fleury.
Shohei Ohtani and his wife arrived in South Korea with his Los Angeles Dodgers teammates yesterday ahead of their season-opening games with the San Diego Padres next week. Ohtani, wearing a black training suit and a cap backwards, was the first Dodgers player who showed up at the arrival gate of Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul. His wife, Mamiko Tanaka, walked several steps behind him. As a crowd of fans, many wearing Dodgers jerseys, shouted his name and cheered slogans, Ohtani briefly waved his hand, but did not say anything before he entered a limousine bus with his wife. Fans held placards
Taiwan’s Tai Tzu-ying yesterday advanced to the quarter-finals at the All England Open, beating Kim Ga-eun of South Korea 21-17, 21-15. With the win, Tai earned a semi-final against China’s He Bingjiao, who beat Michelle Li of Canada 21-9, 21-9. Defending champion An Se-young defeated India’s P.V. Sindhu 21-19, 21-11. An on Wednesday cruised into the second round, unlike last year’s men’s winner, Li Shifeng, who suffered a shock defeat. South Korea’s An, the world No. 1, overcame Taiwan’s Hsu Wen-chi 21-17, 21-16 to set up the match against Sindhu. In other women’s singles matches, Taiwan’s Sung Shuo-yun lost 21-18, 24-22 against Carolina Marin of
EYEING TOP SPOT: A victory in today’s final against Storm Hunter and Katerina Siniakova would return 38-year-old Hsieh Su-wei to the world No. 1 ranking Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Elise Mertens on Thursday secured a spot in the women’s doubles finals at the BNP Paribas Open after dispatching Nicole Melichar-Martinez of the US and Australia’s Ellen Perez 6-2, 7-6 (7/5) at Indian Wells. Hsieh and her Belgian partner Mertens, who won the Australian Open in late January, coasted through the first set after breaking their opponents’ serve twice, but found the going tougher in the second. Both pairs could only muster one break point over 12 games, neither of which were converted, leaving the set to be decided by a tiebreaker. Hsieh and Mertens took a 6-3 lead,
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