Milan Lucic scored twice and David Krejci added a goal and two assists as the Boston Bruins beat the Toronto Maple Leafs 6-3 on Wednesday for their 12th win in 13 games.
The defending Stanley Cup champions rebounded from a slow start this season and went 12-0-1 last month, marking the first time since January 1969 that the Bruins went an entire month without a regulation loss.
Tim Thomas made 34 saves and earned his ninth consecutive win.
Zdeno Chara, Benoit Pouliot and Brad Marchand also scored for Boston (15-7-1), who have not lost in regulation since Oct. 29 in Montreal.
Mikhail Grabovski, Joffrey Lupul and Matt Frattin had goals for Toronto (14-9-2).
RED WINGS 4, LIGHTNING 2
In Detroit, Tomas Holmstrom’s power-play goal broke a tie early in the third period, and Pavel Datsyuk and Jonathan Ericsson each had a goal and an assist in Detroit’s victory over Tampa Bay.
Darren Helm also scored for Detroit, who won their sixth straight. Jimmy Howard made 33 saves, including stopping Matt Gilroy on a short-handed breakaway with 4:11 left.
Martin St Louis and Steven Stamkos scored for Tampa Bay, and Dwayne Roloson stopped 31 shots.
WILD 3, OILERS 2, SO
In Edmonton, Alberta, Kyle Brodziak scored in regulation and added the winner in the sixth round of the shootout as Minnesota beat Edmonton to move into first place in the NHL standings.
Devin Setoguchi also scored in regulation for the Wild (15-7-3), who jumped past Eastern Conference-leading Pittsburgh with their seventh win in nine games. Niklas Backstrom made 28 saves for the win. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Jordan Eberle had goals for the Oilers (12-10-3), who have lost three straight. Nikolai Khabibulin stopped 27 shots.
DUCKS 4, CANADIENS 1
In Anaheim, California, Corey Perry and captain Ryan Getzlaf each had a goal and two assists and Jonas Hiller made 19 saves as Anaheim snapped a seven-game skid with a victory over Montreal.
Rookie Devante Smith-Pelly scored a power-play goal and Getzlaf snapped a personal 14-game goal drought for the Ducks, who killed seven penalties in just their third victory in 19 games since mid-October. Niklas Hagman added an empty-net goal for Anaheim, who had not won since Nov. 11.
Andrei Kostitsyn scored a first-period goal and Peter Budaj stopped 23 shots for the Canadiens, who opened a three-game California road trip with their third straight loss. Montreal played without goals leader Max Pacioretty, who served the first game of his three-game suspension for a hit to the head of Pittsburgh defenseman Kris Letang.
Bobby Ryan, the subject of numerous trade rumors in recent days, received an ovation when he was introduced in the Ducks’ starting lineup.
AVALANCHE 6, DEVILS 1
In Denver, Ryan O’Reilly had a goal and two assists, and Semyon Varlamov made 18 saves in Colorado’s rout of New Jersey.
Milan Hejduk had a goal and an assist, and T.J. Galiardi, Jay McClement, Stefan Elliott and Jan Hejda also scored for the Avalanche. Kyle Quincey had two assists.
Ilya Kovalchuk scored New Jersey’s only goal, and Martin Brodeur made 19 saves in the loss.
The Avalanche scored three times on their first five shots. Hejduk got the Avalanche started when he beat Brodeur just 7:37 in for his eighth goal of the season.
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