Matt Cooke scored two goals, Evgeni Malkin added his 40th of the season and Sidney Crosby had three assists to lead the Pittsburgh Penguins to their 11th straight NHL win, 5-2 over the New Jersey Devils on Saturday.
With the surge, the Penguins have 93 points — two behind the Eastern Conference-leading New York Rangers. Their winning streak is the longest in the NHL this season.
Crosby came through with a strong effort in the second game of his comeback from recurring -concussion-like symptoms, assisting on the goals by Cooke and Malkin.
Photo: Reuters
The Penguins ended a three-game losing streak to the Devils, winning for the first time in their last five visits to New Jersey.
Andy Greene and Petr Sykora scored for the Devils, winners of five of six coming in.
BRUINS 3, FLYERS 2, SO
In Boston, Tim Thomas stopped Danny Briere on the final shot after the first five skaters in the shootout all scored for the Boston Bruins to end a four-game losing streak.
Briere skated in quickly on Thomas, but found himself too close to the crease. Pulling up, he put a weak shot right into Thomas to end it.
Thomas made 27 saves in regulation and the five-minute overtime. Thomas, the reigning Vezina Trophy holder, is 6-0 in shootouts this season.
Ilya Bryzgalov made 31 saves for the Flyers, who lost for just the second time in nine games.
BLUES 3, LIGHTNING 1
In Tampa, Florida, Jaroslav Halak made 22 saves and Jaden Schwartz scored his first NHL goal as St Louis beat Tampa Bay.
Halak had an in-close stop on league goals leader Steven Stamkos in the first, and made a glove save on Brett Connolly during a second-period breakaway.
Schwartz put St Louis up 2-0 from just outside the crease on a power play in the first.
Patrik Berglund and David Perron also scored for the Blues, who became the first NHL team to reach 100 points this season.
Brendan Mikkelson got a late third-period goal for Tampa Bay, who are seven points behind eighth-place Washington in the Eastern Conference.
AVALANCHE 3, RANGERS 1
In New York, Colorado rookie Gabriel Landeskog broke a second-period tie and Semyon Varlamov made 41 saves to lift the Avalanche over New York.
Landeskog gave the Avalanche the lead and Varlamov made it count as playoff-hopefuls Colorado finished their Eastern road trip with two wins from three games.
The Rangers’ once seemingly comfortable lead in the Eastern Conference is nearly gone with 11 games remaining. New York lost their second straight, and fifth in seven games, as surging Pittsburgh closes in. The Penguins, who beat New Jersey earlier on Saturday to close within two points, were in a position to get even with the Rangers with a win yesterday in Philadelphia.
Colorado moved past idle Phoenix into seventh place in the West, but the Avalanche have played two more games than the Coyotes.
MAPLE LEAFS 3, SENATORS 1
In Ottawa, Phil Kessel had a goal and an assist, while James Reimer made 29 saves to help Toronto beat Ottawa.
Tim Connolly and Dion Phaneuf also scored for Toronto. Reimer won his second straight to improve to 4-0 at Scotiabank Place, allowing only Colin Greening’s goal.
Ben Bishop, making his sixth straight start, faced just 18 shots in his first regulation loss.
PANTHERS 3, SABRES 2, SO
In Sunrise, Florida, Dmitry Kulikov returned from a knee injury and scored the winning shootout goal.
John Madden and Mikael Samuelsson scored in regulation for the Panthers. Jose Theodore made 24 saves.
Derek Roy and Tyler Ennis scored goals for the Sabres, while Ryan Miller stopped 15 shots.
Florida’s Wojtek Wolski and Buffalo’s Ennis each scored in the second round of the shootout. Kulikov backhanded in his goal in the seventh round to give Florida the win in his first appearance since missing 23 games.
The Panthers won their fourth straight and are five points ahead of Washington in the Southeast Division.
ISLANDERS 3, CANADIENS 2, SO
In Montreal, Josh Bailey scored the shootout winner to lead the New York Islanders over the Montreal Canadiens.
Mark Streit and Frans Nielsen scored in regulation for the Islanders, who ended a five-game losing streak. Al Montoya stopped 28 shots.
Aaron Palushaj scored his first NHL goal and Louis Leblanc added another one for Montreal. Peter Budaj made 36 saves.
It was a tense shootout that needed six rounds to decide the winner. Nielsen and Montreal’s David Desharnais in the first round, then the Canadiens’ Rene Bourque and the Islanders’ Matt Moulson put the puck in the net in the fourth round.
Bailey put the game away when he cut in front of the crease, waited out Budaj and then fired the puck past him.
HURRICANES 5, WILD 3
In St Paul, Minnesota, Tim Brent and Brandon Sutter scored in a 48-second span of the third period as Carolina rallied past Minnesota.
Drayson Bowman scored twice and recorded an assist for the Hurricanes. Goaltender Brian Boucher made 21 saves and recorded his first win of the season.
Kyle Brodziak had a goal and two assists for Minnesota. Nick Johnson and Erik Christensen also scored for the Wild, who have lost eight of nine games.
In other NHL play, it was:
‧ Canucks 4, Blue Jackets 3
‧ Kings 4, Predators 2
‧ Sharks 3, Red Wings 2, OT
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