Boston Bruins forward Milan Lucic will not be suspended for his hit that sidelined Buffalo Sabres goalie Ryan Miller with a concussion, the National Hockey League (NHL) said on Monday.
NHL disciplinarian Brendan Shanahan ruled that the minor penalty for charging that Lucic received for the hit during Saturday’s game was suitable even though the Sabres have said Miller is out indefinitely with a concussion.
“I had the hearing because I did make an initial assessment of the play as I do with all plays, but I did have some questions for Milan and I wanted to hear directly from him,” Shanahan told the league’s Web site.
“They were regarding his intent — at what point did he know there was going to be a collision — and whether or not he felt he had the time to avoid the collision. I was satisfied with his answers,” Shanahan said.
Miller, a former All-Star and Vezina Trophy winner as the NHL’s top goalie, left his crease during the first period of the game to deny Lucic a breakaway chance. Lucic’s hit sent Miller’s mask flying and knocked the goalie to the ice.
Sabres general manager Darcy Regier had called on the league to suspend Lucic for the hit.
“If this hit and other types of hits like this are not suspended, we are opening up the possibility of losing goaltenders to injury. And not just injury, but concussion,” Regier told the **Buffalo News.
Miller, 31, allowed three goals in two periods and did not return for the final period because of what the team originally described as a neck injury.
“Fifty pounds on me and he runs me like that?” Miller told reporters after the game. “That was gutless. Gutless.”
For Miller, who led the US to a silver medal in last year’s Vancouver Olympics, it was his second concussion in eight months. He missed time last season after being struck in the head by a shot from New Jersey’s Brian Rolston in March.
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