Gästearea / Bannertausch » John Gibson made 29 saves and Troy Terry

NEWARK Authentic Mikael Backlund Jersey , N.J. (AP) —scored his first NHL goal and set up another, helping the sending the new-look Anaheim Ducks beat the New Jersey Devils 3-2 on Saturday.The Ducks have won two straight after a franchise-record 12-game losing streak.Daniel Sprong also had a goal and an assist and Derek Grant, playing in his second game with the Ducks after being acquired Wednesday, got the insurance goal early in the third period. Grant scored on a setup by Terry, who was recalled from the minors Wednesday.The Ducks made four trades in a three-day span leading to their shutout victory over Minnesota on Thursday night. Gibson also was in goal for that one.Marcus Johansson and Jesper Bratt scored for New Jersey.LIGHTNING 6, SHARKS 3TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Steven Stamkos scored twice and NHL points leader Nikita Kucherov added a pair of assists tp lead NHL-best Tampa Bay.Victor Hedman had a goal and an assist, and Alex Killorn, Mathieu Joseph and Yanni Gourde also scored for Tampa Bay, which is 6-2 since the Sharks ended the Lightning’s 16-game streak of consecutive games with a point on Jan. 5.Andrei Vasilevskiy made 36 saves and recorded his 20th victory of the season.Evander Kane had two goals, and Marcus Sorenson also scored for the Sharks. San Jose was without All-Star defenseman Erik Karlsson, who was a late scratch after participating in warmups.Martin Jones stopped 20 shotsRANGERS 3, BRUINS 2BOSTON (AP) — Mika Zibanejad scored two goals, Henrik Lundqvist made 27 saves to take over sole possession of sixth place on the NHL’s career wins and New York won for the fourth time in five games.Filip Chytil also scored for the Rangers, and Lundqvist got his 446th win to break a tie with Terry Sawchuk and move eight behind Curtis Joseph for fifth. It was New York’s eighth win in the last nine meetings against Boston.Danton Heinen and Brad Marchand scored for the Bruins, who lost in regulation for just the second time in 10 games (7-2-1). Boston also lost starting goalie Tuukka Rask to a concussion late in the first period.STARS 4, JETS 2DALLAS (AP) — Brett Ritchie, Blake Comeau and Radek Faksa scored their first goals of the new year and Dallas beat Central Division-leading Winnipeg.The goals by Ritchie, Comeau and Faksa gave Dallas a 3-0 lead after two periods. Tyler Seguin scored in the third period. Ben Bishop made 15 of his 27 saves in the third period as Dallas snapped a four-game losing streak.Branden Lemieux and Kyle Connor scored 21 seconds apart in the third period, rallying the Jets to 3-2. Connor Hellebuyck stopped 36 shots for the Jets, who had won four in a row and were 18-6 in their previous 24 games.PANTHERS 4, PREDATORS 2NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Aaron Ekblad and Vincent Trocheck each had a goal and an assist to lead Florida.Jared McCann and Frank Vatrano had the other goals for the Panthers, who snapped snapped a seven-game losing streak with a home victory over Toronto on Friday night. James Reimr stopped 37 shots.Nick Bonino and Austin Watson each scored and had an assist, and Juuse Saros made 26 saves for Nashville, which has lost four of its last five.Ekblad got his 62nd career goal, moving him into first place in Florida franchise history for a defenseman.BLUES 3, SENATORS 2ST. LOUIS (AP) — Carl Gunnarsson scored the go-ahead goal with 7:44 left in the third period, lifting St. Louis past Ottawa.Vladimir Tarasenko and Vince Dunn also had goals for the Blues, who beat Ottawa for the fourth straight time. Jordan Binnington made 28 saves.Gunnarsson’s goal was his first in 29 career games against Ottawa, and his second goal overall in as many games. The Senators unsuccessfully challenged the goal, claiming Anderson had covered the puck moments before it was knocked free by Pat Maroon.Nick Paul and Magnus Paajarvi scored for the Senators, who lost for just the second time in their last six games. Craig Anderson made 35 saves.AVALANCHE 7, KINGS 1DENVER (AP) — Mikko Rantanen scored two of Colorado’s franchise record-tying six second-period goals, Semyon Varlamov stopped 30 shots and the Avalanche routed Los Angeles.Colorado had six goals in a period for the first time since March 3, 1999 Mike Smith Jersey , at Florida. Gabriel Landeskog, Tyson Barrie, Sheldon Dries and Colin Wilson also scored in the decisive period. Dries’ short-handed goal made it 5-0 and chased goalie Jonathan Quick. Carl Soderberg got things rolling with a goal in the first period. Ilya Kovalchuk ended Varlamov’s shutout big with a power-play goal in the third.FLYERS 5, CANADIENS 2MONTREAL (AP) — Nolan Patrick scored twice in the third period and Philadelphia beat Montreal for its third straight win.Travis Konecny and James van Riemsdyk also had goals and Michael Raffl scored an empty-netter, and Shayne Gostisbehere had two assists. Carter Hart stopped 33 shots while making his fifth consecutive start.Max Domi and Brett Kulak scored for the Canadiens, whose season-best four-game winning streak was snapped.It was the first of three meetings this season between the Canadiens and Flyers, who have now beaten Montreal in five straight games dating to the 2016-17 season.FLAMES 5, OILERS 2EDMONTON, Alberta (AP) — Mark Giordano, Johnny Gaudreau, Sean Monahan and Mikael Backlund each had a goal and an assist as Calgary beat Edmonton.Oliver Kylington also scored for the Flames, who have gone 7-0-1 in their last eight games. David Rittich stopped 22 shots.Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Milan Lucic had goals for the Oilers, who had won back-to-back games before playing Calgary. Mikko Koskinen finished with 29 saves.GOLDEN KNIGHTS 7, PENGUINS 3LAS VEGAS (AP) — Jonathan Marchessault scored three goals for his second career hat trick to lead Vegas.Shea Theodore, Max Pacioretty, Oscar Lindberg and William Karlsson also scored as the Golden Knights improved to 16-4-3 at home this season. Marc-Andre Fleury, who spent his first 13 seasons with the Penguins, stopped 34 shots to up his record to 27-12-4.Marchessault scored twice less than four minutes apart in the second period to give Vegas a 5-3 lead. His empty-netter with 21 seconds left in the game completed the scoring with the Golden Knights’ first hat trick of the season and third in franchise history.Phil Kessel, Dominik Simon and Sidney Crosby scored for Pittsburgh, and Casey DeSmith finished with 28 saves.WILD 2, BLUE JACKETS 1ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Zach Parise scored his team-leading 20th goal and Devan Dubnyk had 19 saves as Minnesota held off Columbus.Jordan Greenway also scored his ninth goal for Minnesota, which handed the Blue Jackets their second straight loss. Newcomers Pontus Aberg and Victor Rask had assists for their first points with the Wild since being traded earlier in the week from Anaheim and Carolina, respectively.Artemi Panarin scored Columbus’ lone goal, and Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 29 shots. NEW YORK (AP) There is usually another guest at the table when Gary Bettman and his wife, Shelli, go out to dinner with other couples during the NHL playoffs.Friends come to accept the glow of the TV screen set up so Bettman can keep an eye on games, ready to go from enjoying a nice meal to running a multibillion-dollar business and back again. The commissioner of a storied league with 24 teams in the United States and seven in Canada doesn’t put work on hold for life or vice versa. When his 11-year-old grandson, Matthew, wanted to hang out with him in Tampa during All-Star weekend, he brought him along for meetings.”They all blend together because I’m never off,” Bettman said. ”It’s all part of what I do and who I am.”For 25 years, Bettman has overseen the growth of the NHL from $437 million in annual revenue to nearly $5 billion, guiding the league into and out of work stoppages and expanding hockey’s reach to places that never seemed a fit for the fastest game on ice.The Stanley Cup Final opens Monday in Las Vegas, where Bettman had a guiding hand in the expansion process that yielded the Golden Knights and led to the most successful inaugural season in league history. When he was there in November 2016 for the unveiling of the team name, Bettman was booed by the crowd and could not have cared less.”No Sean Monahan Jersey , no, keep the booing,” he told the crowd. ”That proves you’re now an NHL city.”Once perhaps an unlikely leader for a game with its roots north of the border, the 65-year-old lawyer from Queens who got his start in the NBA has become one of the most powerful and long-lasting influences in professional sports. More than two decades into the job, Bettman still feels energized by the thrill of work – and the sugar supplied by dark chocolate Milky Way candy bars doesn’t hurt.He isn’t going anywhere, either.”I think he’s the best that we could do,” said Jeremy Jacobs, the Boston Bruins owner and board of governors chairman. ”I mean, there are things that might irritate you from time to time about him. But you know where his heart and soul is, he’s always interested in the game, the improvement of the game.”It hasn’t always been pretty. Bettman has had a role in three lockouts, the relocation of five franchises, has repeatedly denied any link between head injuries and the degenerative brain disease CTE, and recently refused to allow NHL players to go to the Olympics after doing so five times. Confident in his decisions and willing to accept the ramifications to his reputation and legacy, Bettman has earned respect – sometimes begrudged – and made some enemies while serving longer than the other three major sports commissioners combined.”He’s a force, so he’s not going to roll over because somebody thinks it’s a good idea,” said John Collins, a former NHL chief operating officer. ”He’s very principled and he sticks up for his principles. And those principles could be business principles or they could be just kind of moral principles and he’ll fight for that. That’s the way he lives his life, and that’s the way he runs the league.”Part of Bettman’s work involves keeping 31 ownership groups and markets on the same page. Former Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment President and CEO Richard Peddie said Bettman bringing almost every owner into the league has its benefits.”They’re all there because Gary ultimately blessed them, so I think they always have some kind of IOUs,” Peddie said. ”I don’t mean that in a disingenuous or unfair way. But he was the gatekeeper, so he has that going for him.”Bettman, who was NBA general counsel under then-Commissioner David Stern and a senior vice president before starting at the NHL on Feb. 1, 1993, orchestrates things in such a way that there’s rarely public dissent. Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis has watched how Bettman builds a united front among owners.”He’ll pre-brief and sell some of the key owners, if you will, and he backchannels and he’ll literally call and brief every owner personally on a subject so that when you come to the meeting, you’re briefed, you’ve asked your questions,” Leonsis said. ”Because he puts in the work and he has the data and his competence is not questioned in any way and he does have the data, he’s able to land the planes, if you will, with efficiency.”Bettman acknowledges some events during his tenure were not of his making. To this day, he insists moving the Quebec Nordiques to Colorado and the original Winnipeg Jets to Arizona had to be done, and that the 2004-05 lockout that wiped out an entire season was necessary to ensure the long-term health of the league.”There are things I wish might not have happened,” Bettman said. ”Work stoppages are a good example. The fact is I knew what we needed TJ Brodie Jersey , and we had to get it. And if it took a long time to ultimately convince the Players’ Association that this was in everybody’s best interest, I wish it could’ve happened sooner, but it didn’t.”There are some in hockey who can’t forgive Bettman for the lockouts, most recently one in 2012-13. There are others like Peddie who’d rather consider them part of an entire body of work that includes overseeing expansion into the Sun Belt.”It’s putting hockey where it hasn’t traditionally been,” deputy commissioner Bill Daly said. ”That’s proven successful. … I think his legacy of having franchises there and putting hockey in nontraditional markets and making it relevant in nontraditional markets kind of exceeds the business success of the teams.”The deaths of enforcers Derek Boogaard and Bob Probert brought CTE and hockey to the forefront, and the NHL is currently facing a federal lawsuit from more than 100 former players who allege it had the resources to better prevent head trauma, failed to properly warn players of such risks and promoted violent play. In a July 31, 2015, deposition, Bettman said: ”There’s no medical or scientific certainty that concussions lead to CTE.”Bettman said the NHL was a leader on concussion studies, testing and solutions as far back as the 1990s. He also said he believes the lawsuit has no merit.”People can embrace that position, understand it, dismiss it – that’ll be individual opinions,” he said. ”But I have to do what I have to do on behalf of the game, and it starts with player safety being a priority.”Bettman is paid more than $9 million annually and with that is willing to take the brunt of responsibility for the NHL’s good, bad and ugly. He doesn’t have too many fans at the Players’ Association, but owners line up behind him based on his work in raising franchise values, negotiating U.S. and Canadian TV deals and steering the sport through trouble.”I think the league is lucky to have had him as long as they’ve had,” said Collins, who worked under Bettman for nine years. ”That role for any sport is a really tough one and it’s really tough when you’re in it for a long time because it’s inevitable that you collect a lot of dents.”The dents don’t keep Bettman up at night, but he works so much that he’ll sleep at most 6 hours on the weekend and often much less. When he returned home at 2 a.m. from a playoff game this spring, he walked 13-year-old golden doodle Lola and 4-year-old Teddy before bed, slept under three hours and postponed working out with a trainer to leave the house at 6:15 for an 8 a.m. television appearance.”I don’t get a lot of sleep and I don’t need a lot of sleep,” Bettman said in his office overlooking Sixth Avenue that has a table-top hockey game, books of the sport’s history and plenty of family photos. ”There are probably certain days where people in my family will think I have narcolepsy, because if I sit down I might fall asleep for five or 10 minutes. But what I do is energizing, so that keeps me going. And I eat a lot of candy.”Bettman and Daly spent two hours earlier this week poring over a draft of the 2018-19 schedule while having Chinese food for lunch – a less glamorous part of the job than handing out the Stanley Cup each June but part of the gig.So is planning for the future, even though Bettman is under contract through 2022 and shows no signs of slowing down. Daly, who’s 54, thinks Bettman will work long enough that owners should look to someone younger as the next commissioner, but his boss is more than comfortable handing him the reins if anything went wrong.”What if God forbid I get hit by a bus?” Bettman said. ”Well, I’ve built an organization that, if need be, I’d hope they’d miss me somewhat, but if need be could carry on.”—