Alex Ovechkin scored his 40th and 41st goals of the season and added an assist, while Braden Holtby made 32 saves as the Washington Capitals ended a three-game losing streak with a 4-0 victory over the Toronto Maple Leafs on Sunday.
Ovechkin struck just 33 seconds into the game and added a second-period score as he surpassed the 40-goal mark for the seventh time.
Marcus Johansson and Joel Ward (empty net) added third-period goals for Washington, while Holtby picked up his seventh shutout and 30th win of the season.
Pittsburgh’s Evgeni Malkin scored twice and added an assist as the Penguins revived power play dominated the Columbus Blue Jackets in a 5-3 win.
David Perron, Steve Downie and Derrick Pouliot also scored for the Penguins, who have won four straight.
Sidney Crosby picked up two assists and Marc-Andre Fleury stopped 22 shots as Pittsburgh condemned the Blue Jackets to their sixth consecutive defeat.
Curtis McElhinney made 36 saves for the Blue Jackets, while James Wisniewski, Ryan Johansen and Nick Foligno scored.
In Sunrise, Florida, Jaromir Jagr had a goal and an assist as the Panthers beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 4-3.
Aaron Ekblad, Brad Boyes and Aleksander Barkov also scored for the Panthers. Al Montoya made 20 saves and Jonathan Huberdeau had three assists.
Tyler Johnson, Steven Stamkos and Anton Stralman scored for the Lightning.
The Winnipeg Jets downed the Sacramento Kings 5-2 to boost their playoff hopes after Andrew Ladd scored twice.
The Jets also got goals from a pair of recent acquisitions — Drew Stafford and Tyler Myers — and held the defending Stanley Cup champions to 20 shots on goal in one of their more complete efforts of the season.
Blake Wheeler added an empty-net goal.
In Sunday’s other games, Clayton Stoner scored the go-ahead goal in the third period with his first of the season as the Anaheim Ducks beat the Dallas Stars 3-1, while Nick Bonino, Radim Vrbata and Chris Higgins scored in a shootout as the Vancouver Canucks recovered from blowing a three-goal lead for a 6-5 win over the St Louis Blues.
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