Jussi Jokinen scored two goals and added an assist, while Pascal Dupuis had a goal and two assists as the Eastern-Conference leading Pittsburgh Penguins beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 6-3 on Thursday.
Chris Kunitz, Evgeni Malkin and Tanner Glass had the other Pittsburgh goals. Dupuis has three goals and eight points during a four-game points streak.
Pittsburgh defenseman Kris Letang was back in the lineup and had an assist after missing the previous six games with a lower body injury.
Teddy Purcell had two goals for the Lightning. Brett Connolly scored the other Tampa Bay goal.
Montreal goalie Peter Budaj stopped 14 shots as the Canadiens clinched a playoff berth, regaining the Northeast Division lead with a 5-1 win over the Buffalo Sabres.
P.K. Subban and Andrei Markov had a goal and assist each, while Rene Bourque, Alex Galchenyuk and Brendan Gallagher also scored for the Canadiens, who moved one point ahead of the Boston Bruins, who were beaten 2-1 by the New York Islanders.
In earning their fourth post-season berth in five years, Montreal are returning to the playoffs after bottoming out last year, when the Canadiens finished last in the Eastern Conference.
In Los Angeles, Jeff Carter scored his 24th goal and scored again in the shootout as the Kings moved back into fourth place in the Western Conference with a 3-2 victory over the Colorado Avalanche.
Mike Richards scored in the first period and Jonathan Quick made 26 saves for the defending Stanley Cup champions, who ended a two-game losing streak. Captain Dustin Brown and Anze Kopitar also scored in Los Angeles’ three-for-three shootout against goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere.
Josh Bailey scored twice as the Islanders added another big win in their surge toward the playoffs with a 2-1 victory over the Bruins.
The Islanders, seeking their first trip to the post-season in seven years, started the day tied with Ottawa and the New York Rangers with 44 points.
New York kept pace with Ottawa, who won at Philadelphia. The eighth-placed Rangers did not play.
The Washington Capitals won their sixth straight game and extended Carolina’s losing streak to seven with a 3-1 win over the Hurricanes, while Patrick Marleau scored the winner in the shootout and had a short-handed goal early in the game to lift the San Jose Sharks over the Detroit Tigers 3-2.
In other games on Thursday, the Ottawa Senators downed the Philadelphia Flyers 3-1, the St Louis Blues blanked the Minnesota Wild 2-0 and the Winnipeg Jets trounced the Florida Panthers 7-2.
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