Patric Hornqvist picked up his 200th career goal and the two-time defending Stanley Cup champions clinched their 12th straight playoff berth with a 5-2 victory over the Montreal Canadiens on Saturday night.
Phil Kessel Jerry Hughes Jersey , Riley Sheahan, Conor Sheary and Carl Hagelin also scored for Pittsburgh, which dominated the largely listless Canadiens to improve to 17-1-1 in their last 19 games at PPG Paints Arena. Matt Murray finished with 24 saves for the Penguins, who swept their season series with Montreal for only the second time in franchise history.
Jeff Petry and Jonathan Drouin scored for the Canadiens, who lost for the fifth time in seven games. Antti Niemi made 28 stops but Montreal couldn’t handle the league’s top-ranked power play.
GOLDEN KNIGHTS 3, SHARKS 2
LAS VEGAS (AP) – William Karlsson scored a short-handed goal in the third period, and the expansion Golden Knights clinched the Pacific Division title.
Vegas (50-22-7) reached 50 wins in its inaugural season with its third victory in four games. San Jose (44-25-10) is second in the Pacific, four points ahead of Los Angeles.
Shea Theodore and Oscar Lindberg also scored for the Golden Knights, and Marc-Andre Fleury stopped 29 shots.
San Jose goaltender Martin Jones made 35 saves. Joe Pavelski and Marc-Edouard Vlasic scored for the Sharks.
STARS 4, WILD 1
DALLAS (AP) – John Klingberg scored and added to his NHL-leading assist total for defensemen, helping Dallas to the victory.
Jason Spezza scored for the first time since Jan. 16 as the Stars, playing their home finale, won for just the second time in 11 games – a slide that wiped out any realistic hopes of making the playoffs.
The Wild, still holding the third playoff spot in the Central Division with four games remaining, lost the second of a home-and-home set two nights after beating the Stars 5-2 in Minnesota.
Wild defenseman Ryan Suter departed with a lower-body injury late in the second period. He wasn’t using his right leg as he was helped through the tunnel to the locker room.
Klingberg got his career-best 56th assist on the first-period goal by Spezza.
BRUINS 5 Joe Barksdale Jersey , PANTHERS 1
BOSTON (AP) – Jake DeBrusk scored twice in his first game in more than two weeks, and Tuukka Rask stopped 30 shots to help Boston move back into first place in the Eastern Conference playoff race.
David Krejci had three assists and rookie Ryan Donato had a goal and an assist for Boston, which has won four of its last five games. The Bruins have earned a point in eight straight games and 15 of their last 17.
Jamie McGinn scored for Florida, which remains three points behind New Jersey in the race for the eighth and final playoff spot in the East. James Reimer stopped 17 of the 22 shots he faced before he was replaced by Roberto Luongo with 3:28 left in the second period, trailing 5-1.
Luongo, the losing goalie for Vancouver in the Bruins’ 2011 Stanley Cup run, stopped all 11 shots the rest of the way.
Two days after a physical battle for first place with the Tampa Bay Lighting, which the Bruins won 4-2 to take temporary possession of the top spot, Boston sent the struggling Panthers to their third straight loss and moved back into first. The Lightning had jumped ahead of the Bruins with a win at the New York Rangers on Friday night.
CANUCKS 5, BLUE JACKETS 4, OT
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) – Alex Edler scored 1:21 into overtime to lift Vancouver to its season high-tying fourth straight win.
Jussi Jokinen had a goal and two assists against his former team, and Darren Archibald, Bo Horvat and Nikolay Goldobin also scored for the Canucks, who have won five of six after a seven-game skid. Thatcher Demko stopped 26 shots in his first NHL start.
Seth Jones had a goal and three assists Jack Tatum Jersey , and Pierre-Luc Dubois, Zach Werenski and Cam Atkinson also scored for Columbus. Artemi Panarin had four assists and Joonas Korpisalo finished with 24 saves for the Blue Jackets, who are 12-1-1 in their last 14 games as they try to pass Pittsburgh for second place in the Metropolitan Division.
The Blue Jackets erased a 4-1 deficit by scoring three goals in 2:37 to tie the game.
JETS 3, MAPLE LEAFS 1
TORONTO (AP) – Josh Morrissey and Dustin Byfuglien scored 1:10 apart in the second period as Winnipeg beat Toronto in a matchup of the only two Canadian teams headed to the playoffs.
Andrew Copp had the other goal for Winnipeg, while Connor Hellebuyck stopped 28 shots.
Patrick Marleau scored for Toronto, and Curtis McElhinney had 26 saves.
The Maple Leafs, who won 7-2 in Winnipeg to open the season on Oct. 4, are all but assured of finishing third in the Atlantic Division. The Jets, meanwhile, look just as certain to wind up second in the Central.
Toronto’s only blemish at home in more than two months coming into this game was Monday’s 3-2 loss to last-place Buffalo that snapped a 13-game winning streak at Air Canada Centre.
SABRES 7, PREDATORS 4
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – Sam Reinhart had a hat trick with Jack Eichel adding a career-high five assists as NHL-worst Buffalo stunned league-leading Nashville.
The Sabres outshot Nashville from the start and chased goalie Pekka Rinne after he gave up six goals on 29 shots through two periods.
Kyle Okposo had two goals, and Jason Pominville and Ryan O’Reilly also scored for Buffalo, and Eichel tied a franchise single-game record with his assists.
P.K. Subban, Austin Watson Chris Hogan Jersey , Kyle Turris and Nick Bonino scored for Nashville.
The Sabres took control by scoring three power-play goals – two by R Detroit Lions coach Matt Patricia said Thursday he was "falsely accused" in a 1996 sexual assault allegation that resurfaced this week, and he indicated that the matter has not been an issue as he has climbed from job to job in the years since.
Patricia held a brief news conference one day after a Detroit News report that he and a friend were indicted 22 years ago by a Texas grand jury on one count each of aggravated sexual assault. They were accused of assaulting a woman on South Padre Island. The accuser did not testify and the case was dismissed.
"I was innocent then, and I am innocent now," Patricia said.
The Lions said Wednesday night that a pre-employment background check did not turn up the incident. The team said Patricia was 21 at the time and on spring break in Texas. The Lions said they were standing by Patricia.
An NFL spokesman said Thursday the league "will review the matter with the club to understand the allegations and what the club has learned."
Lions owner Martha Firestone Ford, general manager Bob Quinn and president Rod Wood were at Thursday's news conference but did not speak.
"I'm here to defend my honor and clear my name. Twenty-two years ago, I was falsely accused of something very serious," Patricia said . "There were claims made about me that never happened. While I'm thankful on one level that the process worked, and the case was dismissed, at the same time, I was never given the opportunity to defend myself."
Patricia took a few questions but did not provide details about the day in question.
"I was falsely accused of something that I did not do," he said.
The Detroit News, citing a March 1996 story in the Brownsville (Texas) Herald, said Patricia and a friend were accused of entering the hotel room where the woman was sleeping and sexually assaulting her. The men were arrested later that night and released on bond, according to the story and court records.
The indictment came that August, but the case was eventually dismissed. The Detroit News posted a motion to dismiss from January 1997 Earl Thomas III Jersey , which said the alleged victim did not feel she could "face the pressures or stress of a trial."
Patricia's first NFL coaching job was as an assistant with the New England Patriots in 2004, and he remained with them through last season, when he was the defensive coordinator. He was hired by the Lions in February to replace Jim Caldwell.
Before joining the Patriots, Patricia worked as a graduate assistant in 1996 at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, his alma mater. That was before he spent two years working as an aeronautical engineer. Patricia was an assistant coach at Amherst and a graduate assistant at Syracuse before moving on to the NFL.
"I've interviewed for a lot of jobs," Patricia said. "Interviewing for jobs in engineering right after the situation happened, it was never an issue, it never came up as anything, because it was dismissed, and I was innocent, so it just has never been part of any process that I've been involved with."
Patriots coach Bill Belichick said the team wasn't aware of the legal case and expressed support for Patricia.
"For 14 years in our organization, Matt conducted himself with great integrity and is known to be an outstanding coach, person and family man," Belichick said in a statement. "We have always been confident in Matt's character and recommended him highly to become the head coach of the Detroit Lions."
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