New Jersey Devils goaltender Martin Brodeur became the NHL’s all-time minutes leader during his team’s 2-1 shootout win against the Boston Bruins on Friday.
Canadian Brodeur overhauled Patrick Roy’s mark of 60,235 minutes played early in the second period before ending the game with a career total of 60,275, the National Hockey League’s official Web site said.
“That was nice,” the 37-year-old told the Web site. “You can tell it’s a real hockey place here, and even though they’re not Devils fans or Marty Brodeur fans, I think they recognize some of the stuff and what’s going on in hockey. round the League, when you [each]milestones people have a lot of respect, even though after it’s over they’re going to boo you for sure.”
New Jersey’s Zach Parise opened the scoring in the second period before Blake Wheeler made it 1-1 in the third.
Parise and Jamie Langenbrunner scored for the Devils in the shootout after Brodeur had sent the game into overtime by denying Marc Savard in the final seconds on a point-blank shot.
“I was trying to battle real hard and be competitive,” said Brodeur, who has more career wins than any other NHL goalie. I think this team, with their shots, there’s always a guy going to the net and so they have a lot of traffic. I just wanted to make sure I was in good position all the time. I’m making the first save, guys are there to recover rebounds and that makes my life a lot easier.”
Brodeur has long been recognized as the NHL’s top goaltender, with a resume boasting an Olympic gold medal from the 2002 Winter Games and three Stanley Cups.
New Jersey’s win, sealed when Langenbrunner skated in and fired a shot past Tuukka Rask in the third round of the penalty-shot tiebreaker, snapped Boston’s four-game winning streak.
■COYOTES V STARS
REUTERS, PHOENIX, ARIZONA
The Phoenix Coyotes broke free of their goal-scoring struggles to pound the Dallas Stars 5-2 on Friday.
Mired near the bottom of the NHL scoring charts, the Coyotes finally found some firepower to avoid a third defeat in a row.
Lauri Korpikoski recorded his first two goals of the season while Robert Lang, Adrian Aucoin and Zbynek Michalek also scored to give Phoenix (14-11-1) a 5-0 lead.
In other NHL action, it was:
• Sharks 5, Oilers 4, SO
• Islanders 3, Penguins 2
• Flames 3, Red Wings 0
• Ducks 3, Blackhawks 0
• Sabres 4, Flyers 2
• Lightning 5, Rangers 1
• Blues 3, Predators 1
• Wild 5, Avalanche 3
• Maple Leafs 6, Panthers 4
• Thrashers 6, Hurricanes 4
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