Ben Smith scored just hours after being acquired by San Jose in a deadline deal as the Sharks shut out Montreal for the third straight meeting in a 4-0 win over the Canadiens on Monday.
Joe Pavelski, Matt Irwin and Patrick Marleau also scored for the Sharks, who snapped an eight-game home losing streak by beating the top team in the Eastern Conference.
Alex Stalock made 20 saves for his fourth career shutout and first win since Jan. 6 in Minnesota.
Photo: Ed Szczepanski-USA TODAY
That performance followed Antti Niemi’s two shutouts against the Canadiens last year, giving San Jose three straight shutouts against a single opponent for the second time in team history.
The Canadiens got off to a bad start on their four-game West Coast trip as they were outplayed from the start against San Jose.
Carey Price made 33 saves and snapped his franchise record 10-game road winning streak.
Chicago’s Jonathan Toews had two goals and assisted on Marian Hossa’s score as the Blackhawks rolled past the Carolina Hurricanes 5-2 for their third win in four games.
Brandon Saad scored his 20th to reach that mark for the first time in his career, while Marcus Kruger also connected for the Blackhawks. Toews increased his total to 21 goals.
Corey Crawford made 27 saves for Chicago, but could not stop Carolina’s John-Michael Liles scoring 4 minutes, 29 seconds into the third period.
Alexander Semin also scored late in the third for the Hurricanes, who snapped a three-game winning streak.
The Texas Rangers downed the NHL-leading Nashville Predators 4-1 after Mats Zuccarello and Derick Brassard both had two assists.
Marc Staal, Chris Kreider, Dominic Moore and Rick Nash had goals for the Rangers to make it a successful debut for defenseman Keith Yandle, acquired on Sunday from Arizona. Cam Talbot stopped 25 shots in place of injured No. 1 goaltender Henrik Lundqvist, who turned 33 on Monday.
The Rangers moved into a tie with the Islanders atop the Metropolitan Division.
Zuccarello had a big game shortly after the Rangers announced he agreed to a four-year contract extension.
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