Rocco Grimaldi scored twice and Aleksander Barkov got his 27th goal as Florida beat the Toronto Maple Leafs 4-3 on Monday night to set a franchise record with their 99th point this season.
Florida clinched their fifth playoff berth on Sunday and then surpassed the 98 points reached by the 1999-2000 Panthers.
The Panthers were the worst team in the NHL as recently as 2013, but now lead the Lightning by four points for first in the Atlantic Division and do not think they are a surprise team any more.
Photo: AP
“I like our team and I think coaches comment around the league that we are a good hockey team,” Panthers coach Gerrard Gallant said. “We all believe that. The players believe that. You do not sneak up on people anymore. They know we are a good hockey team.”
Chris Kreider and Derek Stepan each scored their 20th goals as the New York Rangers hung on to beat the Columbus Blue Jackets 4-2 in Ohio and earn a sixth consecutive playoff berth.
Dan Boyle and Mats Zuccarello also scored for the Rangers, who ended a three-game losing streak to move three points behind second-placed Pittsburgh. They remain two points ahead of the fourth-placed Islanders in the Metropolitan Division.
“It is tough to get to the dance,” Rangers coach Alain Vigneault said. “People do not realize how hard it is to be able to get an opportunity to play for the Stanley Cup. We finally got our check mark. We can still work for home ice and that is what we are going to try and do.”
John Tavares got his 30th goal and two assists as the New York Islanders scored three times in a 5 minute, 15 second span to get a crucial 5-2 victory over Tampa Bay.
Ryan Pulock, Matt Martin, Brock Nelson and Johnny Boychuk also scored for the Islanders, while Thomas Greiss had 32 saves. The Islanders hold the Eastern Conference’s first wild-card spot and won for the third time in four games to reduce their magic number to two over Boston to secure a third straight post-season berth.
Vladimir Tarasenko’s 37th goal midway through the third period was the go-ahead score for the St Louis Blues, who scored five straight goals to beat the Arizona Coyotes 5-2 and tie for first place in the Western Conference.
The Blues and Stars each have 105 points, also tied for the Central Division lead, with two games to play. Dallas holds the tiebreaker with more regulation wins.
Kyle Brodziak scored twice, while Troy Brouwer and Patrik Berglund also scored, and goalkeeper Brian Elliott won his 10th consecutive decision for St Louis, who shook off the Coyotes’ two-goal first period. St Louis are 11-0-1 in their past 12 games against Arizona, including 3-0 this season.
Jared McCann scored the winner in the second period, while Ryan Miller made 40 saves as the Vancouver Canucks beat the Los Angeles Kings 3-2.
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