The St Louis Blues moved to within a point of a playoff berth in the tight Western Conference standings with a 5-3 win over the Minnesota Wild on Sunday.
The Blues scored three of their goals on power plays.
“We had penalties at the wrong time,” coach Jacques Lemaire told reporters. “We had two penalties and they got three goals. They scored two on five-on-three and one four-on-three. We’ve got to try and play at our best and make the least mistakes possible.”
PHOTO: AP
The Blues pulled into a tie for 10th in the West with the Wild on 72 points, leaving them just one point behind Edmonton and Nashville for the final playoff spot with 13 games remaining.
“You hardly ever see that against a team like Minnesota, giving up that many penalties and us capitalizing on them,” the Blues’ Keith Tkachuk said. “It was huge. We got some quality opportunities on the five-on-threes. That was nice. Every game we play now is so important because of the standings so this was a huge win for us.”
David Perron, Brad Boyes, David Backes, Brad Winchester and Tkachuk scored for the Blues while Chris Mason made 19 saves.
The Wild trailed 4-1 while being out-shot 29-11 over the first two periods, before they scored twice in the third period. Boyes, however, scored into an empty net in the final minute to seal the win.
SHARKS 1, DUCKS 0
At Anaheim, California, Evgeni Nabokov made 34 saves for his sixth shutout of the season as the Sharks reached 100 points and wrapped up a playoff spot.
Moen, acquired from Anaheim at the trade deadline, deflected Jamie McGinn’s backhander past goalie Jonas Hiller with 1:05 left in the second period.
Nabokov made 12 saves in the third period to secure the win, his second in two days after missing seven games because of injury. He has 46 career shutouts.
In other games it was:
• Rangers 4, Flyers 1
• Red Wings 4, Blue Jackets 0
• Penguins 6, Bruins 4
• Islanders 4, Blackhawks 2
• Canucks 4, Avalanche 2
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later