Michal Rozsival and Ryan Callahan scored second-period goals as the New York Rangers earned their third straight win, beating Ilya Kovalchuk and the slumping New Jersey Devils 3-1 on Sunday night.
Kovalchuk, in the first season of a 15-year, US$100 million deal, returned to New Jersey’s lineup a night after he was benched by coach John MacLean for undisclosed reasons.
Kovalchuk didn’t play in the Devils’ 6-1 home loss to Buffalo and wasn’t much of a factor on Sunday until he scored with five minutes, 52 seconds remaining to make it 2-1.
Kovalchuk, who along with MacLean said the issue between them was resolved, was in the penalty box when Callahan scored the power-play goal that gave the Rangers a 2-0 lead.
Rozsival and Callahan both had an assist and Brandon Dubinsky scored an empty-net goal with a second left for the Rangers, who returned home after wins at Toronto and Boston. Henrik Lundqvist made 27 saves, but fell a few minutes short of his 25th NHL shutout.
FLAMES 4, SHARKS 0
At Calgary, Alberta, Miikka Kiprusoff made 27 saves for his second shutout of the season and 36th overall and Rene Bourque scored twice in Calgary’s victory over San Jose.
Bourque has six goals this season, five in his last two games. He had three goals and an assist on Friday night in Calgary’s 6-2 victory in Columbus.
PREDATORS 4, LIGHTNING 3
In Tampa, Florida, Anders Lindback made 42 saves to help Nashville complete a weekend road sweep.
Lindback made in-close saves on Vincent Lecavalier and Ryan Malone during the second and stopped Lecavalier on a third-period breakaway.
Shea Weber, Sergei Kostitsyn, Cody Franson and Colin Wilson scored for the Predators, who are the only NHL team (5-0-3) not to have a loss in regulation this season. Nashville was coming off a 1-0 victory on Saturday night in Dallas, Texas, where Pekka Rinne made 30 saves.
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