Scott Laughton on Tuesday scored the winner in overtime and captain Claude Giroux rediscovered his scoring touch as the Philadelphia Flyers kept their NHL Playoff hopes alive with a 4-3 win over the New York Islanders.
Laughton scored on a tip from the front of the net that snuck past Islanders goaltender Semyon Varlamov, as the Flyers cut New York’s Eastern Conference series lead to 3-2.
Canadian forward Giroux snapped a 14-game goal drought, opening the scoring for the Flyers at 15 minutes, 45 seconds of the second period to tie it 1-1.
“In games like this, you need everyone pulling the rope and moving in the right direction,” Flyers forward James van Riemsdyk said. “Everyone did their job and played their role tonight.”
Philadelphia had a two-goal lead early in the third period, but allowed the Islanders to claw their way back to force overtime.
Game 6 is today in Toronto.
Giroux finished with a goal and an assist and goaltender Carter Hart stopped 29 shots for the Flyers, who are trying to become the first team in the post-season to come back from a 3-1 deficit. Six others tried in the first round, but failed.
If anyone has the blueprint to rally from 3-1, it is Flyers coach Alain Vigneault. He has done it before, including guiding the New York Rangers back from 3-1 to defeat the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2014.
The Rangers did it again in 2015, when they stormed back from a 3-1 deficit to beat the Barry Trotz-coached Washington Capitals. Trotz coaches the Islanders.
“They don’t need me to motivate them,” Vigneault said of the Flyers. “They’re a group that motivates themselves. They’re got a lot pride and a lot of compete.”
Giroux and Van Riemsdyk scored their first post-season goals after New York went up 1-0 on Josh Bailey’s first-period strike. Matt Niskanen scored early in the third period to give Philadelphia a 3-1 lead.
The Islanders did not give up, tying it in the third quarter on goals by Brock Nelson and Derick Brassard, only 93 seconds apart, to set up the overtime.
Canucks 2, Golden Knights 1
In Edmonton, Alberta, goaltender Thatcher Demko won his first career playoff start, as the Vancouver Canucks held on to beat the Vegas Golden Knights 2-1 in Game 5 of their Western Conference series.
The 24-year old Demko made 42 saves, including several key ones in the final minutes, for the victory.
Vancouver stayed alive in the post-season, cutting the Golden Knights’ lead to 3-2 in the best-of-seven series.
Elias Pettersson and Brock Boeser scored, while J.T. Miller had two assists for Vancouver.
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