Justin Williams returned to the building that was the scene of his only Game 7 loss, and left the ice relieved and redeemed after knocking off his old friends and defending Stanley Cup champions.
The man who earned the “Mr Game 7” moniker shook Alex Ovechkin’s hand after the Carolina Hurricanes’ stunning 4-3 double-overtime victory over the Washington Capitals on Wednesday and beamed with pride in his upstart team’s latest triumph, which added another piece to one of the craziest first rounds in recent NHL history.
Each conference’s top seed, all four division champions and the teams that met in last year’s Stanley Cup Final are all out, and the pesky Hurricanes are storming on to face the New York Islanders in the second round.
“You can kick the snot out of each other and look each other in the eye and say: ‘Man that was a great series, you really pushed us,’” Williams said. “We pushed each other.”
Carolina pushed Washington out of the playoffs by erasing a two-goal deficit and dominating two overtime periods in the third-longest Game 7 in NHL history.
Unheralded forward Brock McGinn, who dived to prevent a Capitals goal late in regulation, redirected Williams’ shot past Braden Holtby 11 minutes, 5 seconds into the second overtime to send his teammates into a wild celebration and the heavily favored Metropolitan Division champions home early.
The Hurricanes outshot the Capitals 18-6 in the overtimes, and it was clear Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom, Evgeny Kuznetsov and the big guns were gassed after each surpassing 30 minutes of ice time.
“Both teams were [tired],” said Ovechkin, who had a series-high nine points. “Players played a lot of minutes.”
The Capitals played a lot of hockey over the past year in winning the first title in franchise history, enduring a mid-season seven-game losing streak and still finishing first after 82 games.
However, they on Monday missed an opportunity to close out the Hurricanes in Game 6 on the road, coughed up a lead in Game 7 and bowed out in the first round for the first time since 2013.
It is the first time in NHL history that all four division winners were eliminated in the first round. Unlike Presidents’ Trophy winners Tampa Bay, who got swept, or Western Conference top seeds Calgary, who got bounced by Colorado in five games, this was right there for the Capitals with a series lead and a two-goal advantage in Game 7 before it slipped away.
“It’s tough right now,” Backstrom said. “It’s tough. Double overtime. Tough one for us. We were up 3-1. Looking back at that, we need to find a way to shut them down there or keep them out of the score sheet there when we got a 3-1 lead. We gave it to them.”
In just as many ways, the Hurricanes took it. Undaunted by an early deficit, they got second-period goals from Sebastian Aho and Teuvo Teravainen and tied it early in the third on Jordan Staal’s third of the series.
Petr Mrazek finished off an inconsistent round by stopping 34 of 37 shots and got bailed out by McGinn when he saved a would-be Capitals go-ahead goal with two minutes remaining in the third period.
“It’s just a reaction,” McGinn said. “I don’t know if it had enough steam to cross the line, but I don’t think I was taking that chance.”
The Capitals joined the Predators and Penguins as teams that all won at least one series each of the past three years, but failed to get out of the first round in these playoffs.
They were hurt by a season-ending torn left hamstring to defenseman Michal Kempny and a broken collarbone on winger T.J. Oshie, whose appearance in the final minutes of regulation fired up the crowd, but was not enough to spark an overtime win.
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
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
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