Bryan Rust on Saturday scored two unassisted goals, Tristan Jarry made 23 saves and the Pittsburgh Penguins shut out the Washington Capitals 3-0 to reclaim first place in the East Division.
Trade deadline pickup Jeff Carter also scored his fourth goal in 10 games in a Penguins uniform, while Jarry registered his second shutout of the season as the Penguins beat the Capitals for the sixth time in eight meetings this season.
“We kind of just set a blueprint for ourselves on how we’ve got play to beat this team — things we’ve got to do kind of in the defensive zone, through the offensive zone and I think that’s important moving forward,” said Rust, whose goals were the 99th and 100th of his NHL career.
Photo: AFP
Two nights after each team clinched a playoff berth, this potential postseason preview looked awfully lopsided. The Penguins pounced on opportunities and scored on three of their first 13 shots against Ilya Samsonov to suck the life out of the crowd of just more than 2,000.
“Obviously, you’re going to have games like this,” Washington’s Nicklas Backstrom said. “They’re a good team. They were playing good defensively. Tough loss.”
It was far from the complement of talent either team would want in a playoff series. The Capitals did not have captain and leading goal-scorer Alex Ovechkin and top defenseman John Carlson because of lower-body injuries, and the Penguins remained without forward Evgeni Malkin and Brandon Tanev with injuries that have kept them out for several weeks.
Still, Pittsburgh has not slowed down. With captain Sidney Crosby inching into the MVP discussion, the Penguins have won 16 of 23 games without Malkin and again look like a legitimate Stanley Cup contender.
“It’s just trying to put us in the best possible position come playoff time and I think that’s our mindset,” Jarry said. “We want to do as well as we can in each game and try and finish the season strong and put us in a good position come the time the playoffs start.”
The Capitals did not get the save they needed from Samsonov either when Garnet Hathaway fell down on Rust’s first goal or when Dmitry Orlov could not get back after the puck bounced off him on Rust’s second.
The Penguins had five saves from Jarry during a two-minute span late in the second period when the Capitals were buzzing. Jarry had his left pad on a shot by Anthony Mantha driving to the net and slid over to deny Evgeny Kuznetsov to keep it a shutout.
Pittsburgh went into the season with a goaltending question after trading Matt Murray to the Ottawa Senators and turning the duties over to Jarry and Casey DeSmith.
Now Washington might have a problem in net, since neither Samsonov nor Vitek Vanecek has any playoff experience.
No team since 1945 has won the Cup dressing goalies in the playoffs who combined for fewer than 100 regular-season starts. Samsonov and Vanecek would likely have 77 between them.
Taiwanese tennis veteran Hsieh Su-wei (謝淑薇) and her Latvian partner Jelena Ostapenko finished runners-up in the Wimbledon women's doubles final yesterday, losing 6-3, 2-6, 4-6. The three-set match against Veronika Kudermetova of Russia and Elise Mertens of Belgium lasted two hours and 23 minutes. The loss denied 39-year-old Hsieh a chance to claim her 10th Grand Slam title. Although the Taiwanese-Latvian duo trailed 1-3 in the opening set, they rallied with two service breaks to take it 6-3. In the second set, Mertens and Kudermetova raced to a 5-1 lead and wrapped it up 6-2 to even the match. In the final set, Hsieh and
ON A KNEE: In the MLB’s equivalent of soccer’s penalty-kicks shoot-out, the game was decided by three batters from each side taking three swings each off coaches Kyle Schwarber was nervous. He had played in Game 7 of the MLB World Series and homered for the US in the World Baseball Classic (WBC), but he had never walked up to the plate in an All-Star Game swing-off. No one had. “That’s kind of like the baseball version of a shoot-out,” Schwarber said after homering on all three of his swings, going down to his left knee on the final one, to overcome a two-homer deficit. That held up when Jonathan Aranda fell short on the American League’s final three swings, giving the National League a 4-3 swing-off win after
Seattle’s Cal Raleigh defeated Tampa Bay’s Junior Caminero 18-15 in Monday’s final to become the first catcher to win the Major League Baseball Home Run Derby. The 28-year-old switch-hitter, who leads MLB with 38 homers this season, won US$1 million by capturing the special event for sluggers at Atlanta’s Truist Park ahead of yesterday’s MLB All-Star Game. “It means the world,” Raleigh said. “I could have hit zero home runs and had just as much fun. I just can’t believe I won. It’s unbelievable.” Raleigh, who advanced from the first round by less than 25mm on a longest homer tiebreaker, had his father
Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt yesterday backed Nick Champion de Crespigny to be the team’s “roving scavenger” after handing him a shock debut in the opening Test against the British and Irish Lions Test in Brisbane. Hard man Champion de Crespigny, who spent three seasons at French side Castres before moving to the Western Force this year, is to get his chance tomorrow with first-choice blindside flanker Rob Valetini not fully fit. His elevation is an eye-opener, preferred to Tom Hooper, but Schmidt said he had no doubt about his abilities. “I keep an eye on the Top 14 having coached there many years
RSS