The Colorado Avalanche erased a two-goal deficit before handing the Detroit Red Wings a first loss of the season when Brandon Yip netted the winner in the sixth round of a shootout on Tuesday.
Yip was the only player to score in the shootout when he fired a wrist shot past Red Wings goalie Jimmy Howard to give Colorado a 5-4 victory, the team’s second win of the new season coming after Monday’s loss at Philadelphia.
Colorado (2-1-0) displayed an intense fighting spirit to battle back to parity three times, including from a 3-1 hole after Detroit’s Johan Franzen scored his second goal of the contest 13 minutes into the second period.
PHOTO: AFP
Ryan O’Reilly’s goal late in the second period and Daniel Winnik’s tally early in the third tied the score at 3-3, but the Red Wings (2-1-0) edged ahead again on a short-handed goal from Patrick Eaves.
However, the Avalanche replied once more when David Jones beat Howard with a backhand shot a little over eight minutes from the end of regulation to score his second goal of the contest.
“We’ve got a lot of fight in us,” Jones told reporters. “We had Philly last night and tonight we’re in Detroit, which is a tough place to play. To come back from two goals down against a team as talented as them is great.”
Red Wings captain Nicklas Lidstrom was annoyed that his team had allowed the Avalanche a chance to get back into the contest when they had opened a 4-3 lead.
“When you have a one-goal lead at home you want to take care of the puck a little better,” he said. “In the third, we had bits and pieces where we played well. They didn’t give up. They created some turnovers and capitalized. Those turnovers were costly.”
Despite playing catch-up on the scoreboard for most of the game, the Avalanche outshot the Red Wings 38-28.
“The whole thing was disappointing,” Red Wings coach Mike Babcock said. “We weren’t as good as we should have been. Our work ethic wasn’t up to their work ethic. They were quicker and harder on the puck than we were.”
Pavel Datsyuk scored the other Red Wings goal, the 200th of his career.
KINGS 3, THRASHERS 1
In Los Angeles, Ryan Smyth scored the tying goal and set up Jarret Stoll’s go-ahead goal in the opening minutes of the third period, as Los Angeles rallied for a victory over Atalanta in its home opener.
Smyth added an empty-net goal and Jonathan Quick made 31 saves for the Kings, who saw two scoreless periods before a late flurry led by veteran forward Smyth. Chris Thorburn scored for the Thrashers.
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