Henrik Lundqvist became the fifth NHL goalie to start a career with four 20-win seasons as the New York Rangers downed the slumping Pittsburgh Penguins 4-0 on Monday.
Lundqvist made 27 saves for his first shutout of the season and 18th overall. He is the fourth Rangers goalie to post four consecutive 20-win seasons.
The Rangers got power-play goals from Nigel Dawes and defenseman Paul Mara and jumped over idle New Jersey and Philadelphia to regain first place in the Atlantic Division, a position they held all season until last weekend.
Chris Drury sealed it with a third-period goal, and Scott Gomez added a short-handed tally into an empty net with 3:11 left.
The defending Eastern Conference champion Penguins have dropped five straight games, six of seven, and seven of nine to fall below the playoff cutoff halfway through the season. They have only eight goals in seven games.
OILERS 3, ISLANDERS 2
At Edmonton, Alberta, Andrew Cogliano’s goal midway through the third period gave Edmonton a victory over New York.
Kyle Brodziak and Jason Strudwick also scored for the Oilers, who moved into a tie with Minnesota for eighth place in the Western Conference.
Kyle Okposo and Blake Comeau had goals for the Islanders (12-25-4), who have lost 13 straight road games and 15 of their last 17 overall in falling to last place in the NHL standings.
■GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS
AFP, BUFFALO, New York
The Buffalo Sabres got some good news and some bad news on Monday as captain Craig Rivet declared himself fit but right wing Maxim Afinogenov was sidelined indefinitely.
Afinogenov is out after injuring his groin when he took a hard hit from captain Zdeno Chara during the first period of Saturday’s 4-2 triumph over the Boston Bruins.
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