Corey Crawford stopped 30 shots, while the Chicago Blackhawks got goals from Bryan Bickell and Marian Hossa for a 2-0 win over St Louis on Sunday.
The Blackhawks lead the NHL with 68 points and have won five in a row. They are 3-1 against the Blues, all with Crawford in net.
The Blues rarely tested Crawford until the third period and lost their second straight in front of a standing room-only crowd of 19,385 that had a healthy contingent of Blackhawks fans.
St Louis have seven games remaining in the regular season, all but one at home.
Bickell tapped in his own rebound on a rush early in the second period to end Blues goalie Brian Elliott’s shutout streak at 214 minutes.
Hossa’s short-handed goal off a faceoff win by Jonathan Toews was the crusher early in the third period, coming 17 seconds after Duncan Keith was whistled for cross-checking David Backes in front of the Chicago net.
SABRES 3, LIGHTNING 1
In Buffalo, New York, Jhonas Enroth stopped 32 shots and helped Buffalo keep up their late-season playoff push.
Tyler Ennis got his first goal in 12 games, while Jochen Hecht and Kevin Porter also scored for Buffalo (18-19-6), who took over sole possession of 10th place in the Eastern Conference — four points behind the eighth-placed New York Rangers.
Benoit Pouliot score for the Lightning, who dropped to 1-4-1 in their past six.
Tampa Bay have particularly struggled on the road, where they are winless in four straight (0-3-1) and 1-6-1 in the past eight.
RED WINGS 3, PREDATORS 0
In Nashville, Tennessee, Henrik Zetterberg scored in the second period as Detroit gained two crucial points in the chase to extend their streak of playoff berths.
The Red Wings got their first win in four games, the last two shootout losses, and moved into sole possession of eighth in the Western Conference — two points ahead of Dallas and Columbus.
Johan Franzen also scored a goal, while Justin Abdelkader added an empty-netter late on.
Jimmy Howard made 22 saves for his third shutout this 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