Colorado and St Louis both needed overtime to win their NHL Playoffs openers on Thursday, while the New York Rangers and San Jose both had more comfortable wins on home ice.
St Louis’ Alexander Steen scored 26 seconds into third overtime to give the Blues a 4-3 victory over defending Stanley Cup champions Chicago in Game One of their first-round series, while Colorado needed a tying goal with 13 seconds left in regulation and then a Paul Stastny goal in overtime to edge Minnesota 5-4.
New York won at home against Philadelphia for the ninth straight time, downing the Flyers 4-1, while San Jose quickly got on top of Los Angeles and beat the Kings 6-3.
St Louis’ Steen scored the winning goal off a pair of short passes from Steve Ott and David Backes to cap the longest overtime game in franchise history.
The Blues’ previous longest overtime game was a 4-3 loss at Detroit in 1984 that extended 37 minutes, 7 seconds.
St Louis had to kill off delay-of-game penalties for shooting the puck into the stands in the first two overtimes. The Blackhawks killed a holding penalty in the second overtime.
Patrick Kane scored on a breakaway to put Chicago up 3-2 late in the first period, while Jaden Schwartz tied it for the Blues with 1:45 to go in regulation.
Schwartz, Vladimir Tarasenko and Adam Cracknell all scored their first playoff goals for the Blues.
Defensemen Johnny Oduya and Brent Seabrook also scored for Chicago.
Colorado’s Paul Stastny used close-in wrist shots both to score 7:27 into overtime and earlier, as he tied the game with 13.4 seconds remaining in regulation.
Gabriel Landeskog, Ryan O’Reilly and Jamie McGinn also added goals for Colorado in coach Patrick Roy’s postseason debut behind the bench. The Hall of Fame goaltender led the Avalanche to two Stanley Cup titles as a player.
Erik Haula, Charlie Coyle, Ryan Suter and Kyle Brodziak scored for the Wild.
New York’s Brad Richards and Derek Stepan scored power-play goals 47 seconds apart in the third period to help the Rangers beat Philadelphia.
The teams were locked 1-1 when Jason Akeson — playing in just his third career NHL game — was given a double high-sticking penalty for clipping Rangers forward Carl Hagelin with 7:35 remaining.
New York quickly took advantage. Richards gave the Rangers their first lead of the night when a rebound came to him, and he fired it in from the right circle.
Richards and St Louis hooked up again to help set up Stepan’s insurance goal. Hagelin pushed New York’s edge to 4-1 with 4:08 left.
Defenseman Andrew MacDonald had given the Flyers a 1-0 lead in the first, but the Rangers answered with Mats Zuccarello’s goal.
San Jose’s Tomas Hertl and Raffi Torres both scored in their first game together as teammates to help the Sharks defeat Los Angeles.
Joe Thornton, Patrick Marleau and Marc-Edouard Vlasic also scored for the Sharks, who managed just 10 goals in losing a seven-game series to Los Angeles in the playoffs last year. Antti Niemi made 31 saves.
Kings goalie Jonathan Quick allowed three goals in the first period for the first time in his playoff career, including two in the final minute as the Kings were completely outclassed.
He was replaced by Martin Jones after allowing five goals on 28 shots in two periods, and only watched as the Kings showed life in the third period with goals from Jake Muzzin, Slava Voynov and Trevor Lewis.
However, Brent Burns sealed it with an empty-net goal as the home team won for the 17th time in the past 18 meetings between these teams.
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