Anaheim moved back into a tie for the NHL Eastern Conference lead by shutting out the Toronto Maple Leafs 4-0 on Wednesday, with Corey Perry scoring a hat-trick.
The Ducks moved level with the Nashville Predators on points at the top of the league standings, but had played two games more.
In Wednesday’s other games, the Washington Capitals scored the sole goal to beat the Philadelphia Flyers, the Montreal Canadiens closed within a point of the Atlantic Division lead by winning at the Columbus Blue Jackets and the New Jersey Devils scored three goals in 68 seconds to beat the Los Angeles Kings.
Anaheim goaltender Frederik Andersen made 28 saves, while Kyle Palmieri also scored for the Ducks, who had lost their previous six against the Maple Leafs.
Perry capped his league-leading third hat-trick of the season with an empty-net goal, taking over the team lead with 18 goals this season, despite missing 15 games with illness and injury.
Washington goalie Braden Holtby’s iron-man run produced another shutout as he made 21 saves in his 20th consecutive start, helping the Capitals beat Philadelphia 1-0.
Holtby put up his fourth blank slate of the season, including three since he became too hot to rest. He has played in 26 straight.
Jason Chimera’s first-period goal was all the the Capitals needed as they won a seventh straight home game.
Holtby was nearly matched by Flyers goalie Rob Zepp, the 33-year-old rookie who filled in for the second straight game while Steve Mason is out injured. Zepp made 25 saves, including a terrific left-pad save on Eric Fehr late in the second period.
Montreal’s Max Pacioretty scored two power-play goals, while P.K. Subban added another — all in a span of 3 minutes, 53 seconds of the third period — to lead the Canadiens to a comeback 3-2 victory at Columbus.
New Jersey’s 68-second goal rush came in the second period to set up a 5-3 win at Los Angeles, with Steve Bernier netting his first two power-play goals of 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
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