TORONTO — The New York Islanders knew they were boarding a plane Sunday.
Getting back to a stifling defensive structure and goals from a couple unlikely sources ensured they’ll be flying west instead of heading home.
Brock Nelson had a goal and two assists as the Islanders defeated the Philadelphia Flyers 4-0 in Game 7 on Saturday to win their second-round playoff series and advance to the NHL’s Eastern Conference final.
New York defencemen Scott Mayfield and Andy Greene — with four goals in a combined 89 post-season games coming into the winner-take-all encounter — also scored for the Islanders, who secured a spot in the conference final for the first time since 1993. Josh Bailey added two assists, while Anthony Beauvillier added an empty netter.
Thomas Greiss had to make just 16 saves to record his first-career playoff shutout.
“Game 7, you never know what you’re gonna get,” Nelson said of Mayfield and Greene. “Everyone wants to be on their game and be a difference maker.
“You never know who it’s going to be or who’s going to have the opportunity.”
The Islanders will now meet the Tampa Bay Lightning in the final four of the league’s restart to its pandemic-delayed season, with Game 1 set for Monday in Edmonton. The Western Conference final is set to feature the Vegas Golden Knights and Dallas Stars in the Alberta capital after both clubs won Game 7s of their own Friday.
“You have to go through adversity to grow as a group,” said New York head coach Barry Trotz, whose team lost Games 5 and 6 in overtime before a suffocating Game 7 victory. “This is part of the growing aspect. I thought last game we deserved to win, and that laid a good foundation for our game tonight.”
Carter Hart stopped 22 shots in defeat for the Flyers, who won three OT games in a series for the first time in franchise history.
“It’s a race to four,” Philadelphia head coach Alain Vigneault said. “We were down, gave ourselves a chance.
“On a night we needed to be good, we weren’t good enough.”
Saturday marked the last action in the Toronto bubble as part of the league’s resumption of play that kicked off Aug. 1 after the schedule was suspended in March because of COVID-19. The Stanley Cup final will also be played in Edmonton.
The third of three Game 7s in the second round — the Golden Knights and Stars both avoided blowing 3-1 leads in their respective series thanks to decisive victories against the Vancouver Canucks and Colorado Avalanche — the Islanders opened the scoring midway through Saturday’s first period.
After the Flyers had a couple of chances at the other end, including Jakub Voracek’s redirection off the post less than a minute in, Mayfield scored his first-career playoff goal at 9:27 when he came down off the point and beat Hart over the blocker on only New York’s second shot.
“We know how we want to play,” Mayfield said. “When we’re moving north, getting the puck in being physical on the forecheck, playing fast, we have our identity.
“It’s nice that we got to that identity pretty much right off the bat.”
There was also a sense of relief for Mayfield, whose stick broke on the sequence that led to Ivan Provorov’s winner in Philadelphia’s 5-4 double overtime victory in Game 6.
“I was kind of down past couple days,” the blue-liner added. “Game 7, game winner Eastern Conference final, I don’t think anyone would think I’d be scoring it.”
The only team from the qualifying round to make the conference finals, the Islanders then had a couple of great chances in front of Hart as they found their legs, and made it 2-0 at 13:12 when Derick Brassard wheeled in the offensive zone before firing a cross-ice pass to a pinching Greene, who had Hart at his mercy. The 37-year-old’s second of the post-season came after he opened the scoring in his team’s Game 1 triumph.
“Last game we thought we were the better team,” Green said. “But all of a sudden it’s Game 7.
“You never know what’s gonna happen in a Game 7.”
Flyers captain Claude Giroux tipped a shot off the post early in the second, but New York carried the majority of play as the period wore on. Hart stopped Nelson on a partial break and Nick Leddy in quick succession before Beauvillier rattled iron with another shot.
But 22-year-old goaltender, who made 49 saves in Game 6, could do nothing on New York’s third after Provorov lost an edge in the offensive zone. The Islanders broke the other way on a 2-on-1, with Bailey feeding Nelson at the last possible moment to bury his seventh at 11:26 and put the game out of reach.
Pressed into action after the shaky Semyon Varlamov allowed a combined nine goals in Games 5 and 6, Greiss didn’t have a lot to do, but denied Kevin Hayes on a break later in the period.
“It was an unreal game,” said Greiss, the first Islanders goalie to pitch a Game 7 shutout since Glenn Resch in 1975. “That was the best defensive game I’ve ever seen this team play.”
Sean Couturier returned to the Philadelphia lineup after missing Game 6 with a sprained knee ligament, while Oskar Lindblom dressed for the second consecutive contest. The 24-year-old Lindblom was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer back in December, but completed radiation treatments in early July.
Trotz and Vigneault battled in a Game 7 for the second time in their careers. Back in 2015, Vigneault’s New York Rangers came back from a 3-1 deficit to beat Trotz’s Washington Capitals to reach the conference final.
Philadelphia got a power play midway through the third desperately looking for a spark with its season on the line, but Greiss, who made 36 saves in New York’s Game 4 victory before watching the next two, was there to shut the door.
The Flyers had another surge before Beauvillier scored his eighth into an empty net with 6:18 left in regulation as the Islanders secured their first conference final berth in 27 years.
“We’re excited. We’ve earned it,” said Green, a trade deadline acquisition from the New Jersey Devils. “Not too long to bathe in it.
“We’ve gotta get focused again get ready for Monday.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 5, 2020.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — DeMar DeRozan scored 27 points in a record-setting performance and the Sacramento Kings beat the Toronto Raptors 122-107 on Wednesday night.
Domantas Sabonis added 17 points, 13 assists and 11 rebounds for his third triple-double of the season for Sacramento. He shot 6 for 6 from the field and 5 for 5 at the free-throw line.
Keegan Murray chipped in with 22 points and 12 rebounds, and De’Aaron Fox scored 21.
The 35-year-old DeRozan has scored at least 20 points in each of his first eight games with the Kings, breaking a franchise mark established by Chris Webber when he reached 20 in his first seven games with Sacramento in 1999.
DeRozan spent the past three seasons with the Chicago Bulls. The six-time All-Star also has played for Toronto and San Antonio during his 16-year NBA career.
RJ Barrett had 23 points to lead the Raptors. Davion Mitchell scored 20 in his first game in Sacramento since being traded to Toronto last summer.
Takeaways
Raptors: Toronto led for most of the first three quarters before wilting in the fourth. The Raptors were outscored 33-14 in the final period.
Kings: Fox played strong defense but struggled again shooting from the floor as he is dealing with a finger injury. Fox went 5 for 17 and just 2 of 8 on 3-pointers. He is 5 for 25 from beyond the arc in his last three games.
Key moment
The Kings trailed 95-89 early in the fourth before going on a 9-0 run that gave them the lead for good. DeRozan started the spurt with a jumper, and Malik Monk scored the final seven points.
Key stat
Sabonis had the eighth game in the NBA since at least 1982-83 with a triple-double while missing no shots from the field or foul line. The previous player to do it was Josh Giddey for Oklahoma City against Portland on Jan. 11.
Up next
Raptors: At the Los Angeles Clippers on Saturday night, the third stop on a five-game trip.
VANCOUVER – The Vancouver Whitecaps are one win away from moving on to the next round of the Major League Soccer playoffs.
To get there, however, the Whitecaps will need to pull off the improbable by defeating the powerhouse Los Angeles FC for a second straight game.
Vancouver blanked the visitors 3-0 on Sunday to level their best-of-three first-round playoff series at a game apiece. As the matchup shifts back to California for a decisive Game 3 on Friday, the Whitecaps are looking for a repeat performance, said striker Brian White.
“We take the good and the bad from last game, learn from what we could have done better and go to LAFC with confidence and, obviously, with a whole lot of respect,” he said.
“We know that we can go there and give them a very good fight and hopefully come away with a win.”
The winner of Friday’s game will face the No. 4-seed Seattle Sounders in a one-game Western Conference semifinal on Nov. 23 or 24.
The ‘Caps finished the regular season eighth in the west with a 13-13-8 record and have since surprised many with their post-season play.
First, Vancouver trounced its regional rivals, the Portland Timbers, 5-0 in a wild-card game. Then, the squad dropped a tightly contested 2-1 decision to the top-seeded L.A. before posting a decisive home victory on Sunday.
Vancouver has scored seven goals this post-season, second only to the L.A. Galaxy (nine). Vancouver also leads the league in expected goals (6.84) through the playoffs.
No one outside of the club expected the Whitecaps to win when the Vancouver-L. A. series began, said defender Ranko Veselinovic.
“We’ve shown to ourselves that we can compete with them,” he said.
Now in his fifth season with the ‘Caps, Veselinovic said Friday’s game will be the biggest he’s played for the team.
“We haven’t had much success in the playoffs so, definitely, this is the one that can put our season on another level,” he said.
This is the second year in a row the Whitecaps have faced LAFC in the first round of the playoffs and last year, Vancouver was ousted in two straight games.
The team isn’t thinking about revenge as it prepares for Game 3, White said.
“More importantly than (beating LAFC), we want to get to the next round,” he said. “LAFC’s a very good team. We’ve come up against them a number of times in different competitions and they always seem to get the better of us. So it’d be huge for us to get the better of them this time.”
Earning a win last weekend required slowing L.A.’s transition game and limiting offensive opportunities for the team’s big stars, including Denis Bouanga.
Those factors will be important again on Friday, said Whitecaps head coach Vanni Sartini, who warned that his team could face a different style of game.
“I think the most important thing is going to be to match their intensity at the beginning of the game,” he said. “Because I think they’re going to come at us a million miles per hour.”
The ‘Caps will once again look to captain Ryan Gauld for some offensive firepower. The Scottish attacking midfielder leads MLS in playoff goals with five and has scored in all three of Vancouver’s post-season appearances this year.
Gearing up for another do-or-die matchup is exciting, Gauld said.
“Knowing it’s a winner-takes-all kind of game, being in that kind of environment is nice,” he said. “It’s when you see the best in players.”
LAFC faces the bulk of the pressure heading into the matchup, Sartini said, given the club’s appearances in the last two MLS Cup finals and its 2022 championship title.
“They’re supposed to win and we are not,” the coach said. “But it’s beautiful to have a little bit of pressure on us, too.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.
Each PWHL team operated under its city name, with players wearing jerseys featuring the league’s logo in its inaugural season before names and logos were announced last month.
The Toronto Sceptres, Montreal Victoire, Ottawa Charge, Boston Fleet, Minnesota Frost and New York Sirens will start the PWHL’s second season on Nov. 30 with jerseys designed to reflect each team’s identity and to be sold to the public as replicas.
Led by PWHL vice-president of brand and marketing Kanan Bhatt-Shah, the league consulted Creative Agency Flower Shop to design the jerseys manufactured by Bauer, the PWHL said Thursday in a statement.
“Players and fans alike have been waiting for this moment and we couldn’t be happier with the six unique looks each team will don moving forward,” said PWHL senior vice president of business operations Amy Scheer.
“These jerseys mark the latest evolution in our league’s history, and we can’t wait to see them showcased both on the ice and in the stands.”
Training camps open Tuesday with teams allowed to carry 32 players.
Each team’s 23-player roster, plus three reserves, will be announced Nov. 27.
Each team will play 30 regular-season games, which is six more than the first season.
Minnesota won the first Walter Cup on May 29 by beating Boston three games to two in the championship series.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
