Carey Price got his second shutout and Andrei Kostitsyn scored twice to lead the Montreal Canadiens to a 5-0 win over the Boston Bruins on Monday in the deciding game of their first-round playoff series.
Price stopped 25 shots overall, including 11 shots in the opening period. He got his first playoff shutout in a 1-0 win in Game 4.
Mike Komisarek opened the scoring 3:31 in amid one of the first of countless roars from the raucous Bell Center crowd over the course of the evening.
PHOTO: AFP
The Canadiens took control of the game in the second, outshooting the Bruins 17-6 while building a three-goal lead on a superb goal by Mark Streit midway through the period and Kostitsyn’s second goal of the series at 15:13.
Kostitsyn punctuated the win with his second of the game, a power-play goal with 2:02 remaining in the third. Sergei Kostitsyn scored with 7.3 seconds remaining.
Top-seeded Montreal will face Philadelphia in the second round, if the Flyers win their Eastern Conference quarter-final against Washington.
Otherwise, the Canadiens will face the New York Rangers.
Tim Thomas stopped 30 shots for Boston, which fell short in its bid to overcome both 2-0 and 3-1 series deficits for the first time in team history.
Capitals 4, Flyers 2
At Philadelphia, held without a goal for four straight games, Alex Ovechkin scored twice in the third period to lift the Capitals to a win over Philadelphia and send the series back to Washington for a decisive Game 7.
The Capitals have rallied back from a 3-1 hole and had a chance to win only the second Game 7 in franchise history last night.
The other one should be painfully familiar to the Flyers faithful: Dale Hunter scored an overtime goal that led Washington past Philadelphia 20 years ago this month.
The Caps have a shot to advance on home ice thanks to Ovechkin’s timely goals.
They are trying to become the 21st team in league history to come back from a 3-1 deficit and win a best-of-seven series.
Ovechkin never seemed overly concerned that he hadn’t scored a goal since the Game 1 winner. The Flyers had stymied and frustrated the NHL’s leading scorer so much that he wasn’t much of a factor the last four games.
After the Caps erased a 2-0 deficit late in the second period, Ovechkin made the Flyers pay early in the third.
‘DEVASTATED’: Argentina’s win was a reversal of their 28-24 defeat last week, with Australian forward Fraser McReight adding that ‘we did the same thing last week’ Argentina flyhalf Santiago Carreras punished an undisciplined Australia with 23 points off the tee as the Pumas held on grimly for a 28-26 win in Sydney yesterday to breathe new life into their Rugby Championship campaign. A try-fest beckoned in afternoon sunshine at Sydney Football Stadium, but Argentina needed only one through captain Julian Montoya, with Carreras doing the damage with seven penalties and a conversion in front of a sell-out crowd. A week after letting a 14-point lead slip in a 28-24 defeat to Australia in Townsville, Argentina saw most of a 21-point advantage erased in the final quarter as the
ELEVEN STRIKEOUTS: Blake Snell allowed two singles and two walks against the Rockies as he ended a personal three-game skid with his first win since Aug. 16 Blake Snell on Wednesday struck out a season-high 11 in six innings, while Mookie Betts hit a grand slam in the eighth as the Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the Colorado Rockies 9-0 for their fourth straight win. Helped by their third series sweep of the Rockies this MLB season, the Dodgers increased their National League West lead to three games over the San Diego Padres, who lost 2-1 at home to the Cincinnati Reds. Betts went four for five with five RBIs, capped by his seventh career slam on a 3-0 pitch from reliever Anthony Molina to make it 8-0. Andy Pages and
Captain Vijay Kumar led the way yesterday as the Hsinchu Titans claimed the Taiwan Premier League title at the Yingfeng Cricket Ground in Taipei’s Songshan District (松山), beating PCCT by 27 runs. The weather was a topic again, but not the rain that played a role in previous matches in the often-delayed tournament. Kumar, who made 80 not out from 63 deliveries, and teammate Vishwajit Kumar (58 from 43) rescued the Titans from a precarious state at the end of the power play in the T20 match. The visitors were put in to bat and struggled to 26-3 as PCCT
China’s state-run People’s Daily newspaper on Monday published an essay about Chinese basketball it said was written by LeBron James, but a representative for the NBA star said on Thursday that the article was based on a series of interviews. The paper, better known as the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, had said James authored the essay, “Basketball is a Bridge that Connects Us,” a tribute to Chinese players and fans of the sport written in the first person. “LeBron James Pens an Article in the People’s Daily,” read a post published on the newspaper’s official WeChat account. On Thursday, a representative