Ryan O’Reilly on Wednesday night scored for the fourth straight game and rookie Jordan Binnington stopped 32 shots in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final to lead the St Louis Blues to a 4-1 victory over the Boston Bruins and their first NHL championship.
Alex Pietrangelo added a goal and an assist, while Brayden Schenn and Zach Sanford scored one each for the St Louis Blues.
The Blues woke up on New Year’s morning with the worst record in the league, but won 30 of their final 49 regular-season games and soared through the playoffs to reach the final for the first time since 1970.
Photo: Winslow Townson-USA TODAY
Coach Craig Berube, who took over when Mike Yeo was fired in November last year, is the fourth coach in the past 11 years hired in mid-season to lead his team to the NHL title.
Matt Grzelcyk scored the Bruins’ only goal and Tuukka Rask stopped 16 shots for Boston.
Boston outshot St Louis 33-20, but the Blues went ahead at the end of the first period on goals from Reilly and Pietrangelo about three minutes apart.
The second period was scoreless, then Schenn put it out of reach with 8 minutes, 35 seconds to play and Sanford made it 4-0 before the Bruins spoiled Binnington’s bid for a shutout.
St Louis can stop singing the blues — it is time to play Gloria.
Returning to the site of their last appearance in the final, which ended when Bobby Orr sailed through the air after scoring the Stanley Cup winner, the Blues won for the third time in Boston this series and an NHL record-tying 10th time in the post-season.
O’Reilly won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the Most Valuable Player of the post-season. He is the first player since Wayne Gretzky to score in four consecutive Stanley Cup Final games.
Not so surprising with Gretzky, who is the NHL’s leading regular-season and playoff scorer, but O’Reilly had just three goals in his first 22 post-season games.
Boston will have to console themselves with the two major sports championships they have already won in the past year, or the dozen trophies that have been chauffeured through the city in a parade of the city’s iconic, amphibious Duck Boats.
Three of them have come at St Louis’ expense.
The Bruins tried to harness all the local karma they could.
Olympic gold medalist Aly Raisman and New England Patriots wide receiver Julian Edelman waved a banner before the game while wearing David Ortiz jerseys; the Red Sox slugger was recuperating about a kilometer away after an assassination attempt in his native Dominican Republic.
Retired Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling was also in the crowd, wearing his World Series ring and a Bruins jersey. Former New England Patriots tight end and portable party Rob Gronkowski also made an appearance on the video board.
The Bruins responded, dominating for long stretches of time, except in the way that mattered most.
The Blues had just one shot on goal heading into the final minutes of the first period, but they scored first when O’Reilly deflected a shot from Jay Bouwmeester into the net.
Then, with just eight seconds left in the period and Bruins forward Brad Marchand tentative on a line change, Pietrangelo beat Rask to make it 2-0.
Bouwmeester played in 1,184 regular-season games — the third-most among active players who had not gotten their names etched on the Stanley Cup.
Badminton world No. 3 Anders Antonsen clinched his first Indonesia Open title yesterday after beating Taiwan’s Chou Tien-chen, while South Korea’s An Se-young won her second championship in Jakarta. The 28-year-old Dane sank world No. 7 Chou at the Indonesian capital’s Istora Senayan arena, winning 22-20, 21-14 in a 60-minute match to secure the prestigious Super 1000 event. Antonsen came out on top in a tightly contested first game before cruising to victory in the second. In a more closely fought women’s singles final, South Korean ace and world No. 1 An fought back from one game down to beat China’s
Italy crashed to a 3-0 loss away to Norway, as the four-time FIFA World Cup champions made a disastrous start to their 2026 World Cup qualifying campaign on Friday, while Belgium had to settle for a draw in North Macedonia. Alexander Sorloth, Antonio Nusa and Erling Haaland all scored in the first half in pouring rain in Oslo as Norway made it a night to forget for Italy, who missed out on the past two World Cups. “I have no explanation. Our supporters don’t deserve this kind of match. We need to do some soul-searching. It’s unacceptable,” Italy captain and goalkeeper Gianluigi
‘STILL’: In front of a packed New Jersey arena attended by Donald Trump and Mike Tyson, UFC 316 delivered high drama as Merab Dvalishvili retained his title Georgia’s Merab Dvalishvili scored a second-round submission win over Sean O’Malley to retain his bantamweight title at Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) 316 on Saturday, with Kayla Harrison also winning by submission in the co-main event, tapping out Juliana Pena to claim the women’s bantamweight crown. In front of a packed crowd at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, which included US President Donald Trump and retired heavyweight great Mike Tyson, Dvalishvili, a 34-year-old from the country of Georgia, won the belt in a convincing, although not aesthetically pleasing, unanimous decision. Dvalishvili (19-4) sat on top of the cage and shouted
Manchester City on Monday completed the signing of left-back Rayan Ait-Nouri from Wolverhampton Wanderers for a reported ￡31 million (US$41.8 million). The 24-year-old Algeria international has signed a five-year contract and will be available for the FIFA Club World Cup, which begins later this week. Ait-Nouri is expected to be just one of a trio of new City faces for that tournament with deals close to completion for AC Milan midfielder Tijjani Reijnders and Olympique Lyonnais playmaker Rayan Cherki. After missing out on a major trophy in the recently completed season for the first time since 2016-2017, City are hoping
RSS