Carolina’s Staal brothers played key roles as the Hurricanes beat the Toronto Maple Leafs 3-1 on Thursday to increase their lead in the NHL Southeast Division to four points.
Jordan Staal scored and brother Eric had an assist to extend his point streak to a league-best 11 games.
Elsewhere, Nashville goalie Pekka Rinne completed back-to-back shutouts in a win over Phoenix, Montreal beat Florida in overtime and the New York Islanders ended a run of five consecutive defeats by beating the crosstown New York Rangers in a shootout.
Carolina’s Joe Corvo had a goal and an assist, while Jussi Jokinen also scored for the Hurricanes. Nazem Kadri scored for Toronto, which had won their previous four games.
Nashville’s Rinne extended his shutout streak to just shy of 138 minutes as the Predators beat the Phoenix Coyotes 3-0.
Gabriel Bourque, Nick Spaling and Mike Fisher had the goals for the Predators.
Montreal’s Rene Borque netted 2 minutes, 10 seconds into overtime, providing the sole goal in the Canadiens’ 1-0 win over the Florida Panthers.
Bourque’s winner came on a tip-in just in front of the net. The puck drifted in front of the crease and Shawn Matthias could not clear it for Florida. Instead, it bounced off goalie Jose Theodore’s pad and Bourque poked it in.
The Islanders’ John Tavares scored one of his team’s three second-period goals and then netted the winner in a shootout as they beat the Rangers 4-3.
Tavares followed Frans Nielsen’s goal in the opening round of the tiebreaker with one of his own and goalie Evgeni Nabokov stopped two shots to give the Islanders the elusive win.
They had dropped eight straight at Madison Square Garden, including a loss there last week.
The Rangers squandered a 2-0 lead and had their three-game winning streak snapped.
Colorado’s Milan Hejduk and Matt Duchene scored in a shootout to lift the Avalanche to a 4-3 win at the Minnesota Wild, while Washington’s Eric Fehr scored twice as the Capitals beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 4-3 to notch a third straight victory after a dire start to 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
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
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