MONTREAL — For J.T. Miller and the Vancouver Canucks, sometimes it’s better to be a little lucky than good.
Miller scored 2:01 into overtime as Vancouver defeated Montreal 3-2 for its fourth straight victory Friday night. Miller notched his ninth of the season unassisted moments after Canadiens forward Josh Anderson failed to convert a breakaway attempt.
Miller drove down the left side, cut across the front of the net and put a backhand shot past Montreal goaltender Jake Allen to give Vancouver its seventh win in eight contests.
“It was not really textbook,” Miller said. “I was on the ice for a really long time but I wasn’t really doing a whole lot . . . I still felt fresh.
“It’s one of those things I knew I was going against a forward, then when I got by the first guy it’s a heat-of-the-moment move that doesn’t happen very often. I was pretty lucky to get it by and obviously it was a big goal for us but that’s not going to happen too often.”
Nick Suzuki forced overtime with a power-play goal at 19:03 of the third, his sixth. He scored with Montreal on a two-man advantage as Allen, who stopped 25 shots, was on the bench.
“It wasn’t like a deflating goal,” Miller said. “They had a six-on-four with some of the best shooters in the league up top.
“We weren’t deflated by it obviously. It takes more than 60 (minutes) sometimes and we knew we had to have a good start. It was kind of a weird start to overtime, they had the puck and were swinging around a lot so you just had to stay with it and bear down when you get an opportunity.”
Adam Gaudette and Nils Hoglander scored in regulation for Vancouver (16-16-2). Thatcher Demko stopped 29 shots for his eighth win in nine starts.
“It was a good team effort right from the drop of the puck,” Canucks head coach Travis Green said. “The team checked well, we just played a good road game.
“That’s the type of hockey we need to play to have success and we’ve been talking about it for a long time now. It’s nice to get the win.”
Corey Perry had the other goal for Montreal (13-8-9), which fell to 0-6 this season in overtime and has lost four-of-five contests overall. The Canadiens were coming off 4-3 overtime loss to Winnipeg on Wednesday to cap a six-game road trip (2-2-2).
Dominique Ducharme, Montreal’s interim head coach, feels his team’s overtime woes are mental.
“Obviously at one point it’s mental but what we need is to bury one and get that over with,” he said. “We do that tonight, probably everyone’s talking about what a character team we are coming back and tying the game.
“Our guys, for sure they think about it when the time comes. I’m sure a guy like Andy going on a breakaway, he’s probably putting more pressure on himself thinking, ‘I’m going to end it this time.’ Yeah, that’s apart of it but we have to stick with it and next time we’ll get it.”
Montreal opened a six-game homestand with its first contest at the Bell Centre since a 7-1 victory over the Winnipeg Jets on March 6. The Canadiens will host Vancouver again Saturday night.
“It’s a really fine line between winning and losing,” Miller said. “We’re playing the right way and if we believe in our game and have faith in our system and play the right way, most nights we’re going to get the results.
“It’s easy to get impatient but I think we’ve done a good job of staying with it and putting a good game in front of us more nights than not.”
Prior to the contest, the Canadiens honoured long-time equipment manager Pierre Gervais, who recently appeared in his 3,000th NHL game.
Allen and Perry combined to stake Montreal to a 1-0 first-period lead.
Perry opened the scoring on the power play at 4:15. After Jeff Petry’s shot from the point hit the post, Perry knocked the rebound past Demko for his sixth of the season.
Allen, appearing in his 300th career NHL game, was solid throughout the frame as Vancouver outshot Montreal 11-8.
But Gaudette pulled Vancouver even at 2:25 of the second. He redirected Antoine Roussel’s centring attempt past Allen for his fourth of the year,
Hoglander gave Vancouver its first lead of the game, deflecting the puck past Allen at 6:37, his sixth of the season.
Vancouver was minus forward Tanner Pearson (lower-body injury). He was hurt in the third period Wednesday against Ottawa and is expected to be out at least four weeks.
Pearson has 11 points (six goals, five assists) in 33 games this season. Forward Jimmy Vesey made his debut with Vancouver after being claimed off waivers from Toronto on Wednesday.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 19, 2021.
PARIS (AP) — French judicial authorities are investigating the disappearance of two Paralympic athletes from Congo who recently competed in the Paris Games, the prosecutor’s office in the Paris suburb of Bobigny confirmed on Thursday.
Prosecutors opened the investigation on Sept. 7, after members of the athletes’ delegation warned authorities of their disappearance two days before.
Le Parisien newspaper reported that shot putter Mireille Nganga and Emmanuel Grace Mouambako, a visually impaired sprinter who was accompanied by a guide, went missing on Sept. 5, along with a third person.
The athletes’ suitcases were also gone but their passports remained with the Congolese delegation, according to an official with knowledge of the investigation, who asked to remain anonymous as they were not allowed to speak publicly about the case.
The Paralympic Committee of the Democratic Republic of Congo did not respond to requests for information from The Associated Press.
Nganga — who recorded no mark in the seated javelin and shot put competitions — and Mouambako were Congo’s flag bearers at the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games, organizers said.
An investigator gave the World Anti-Doping Agency a pass on its handling of the inflammatory case involving Chinese swimmers, but not without hammering away at the “curious” nature of WADA’s “silence” after examining Chinese actions that did not follow rules designed to safeguard global sports.
WADA on Thursday released the full decision from Eric Cottier, the Swiss investigator it appointed to analyze its handling of the case involving the 23 Chinese swimmers who remained eligible despite testing positive for performance enhancers in 2021.
In echoing wording from an interim report issued earlier this summer, Cottier said it was “reasonable” that WADA chose not to appeal the Chinese anti-doping agency’s explanation that the positives came from contamination.
“Taking into consideration the particularities of the case, (WADA) appears … to have acted in accordance with the rules it has itself laid out for anti-doping organizations,” Cottier wrote.
But peppered throughout his granular, 56-page analysis of the case was evidence and reminders of how WADA disregarded some of China’s violations of anti-doping protocols. Cottier concluded this happened more for the sake of expediency than to show favoritism toward the Chinese.
“In retrospect at least, the Agency’s silence is curious, in the face of a procedure that does not respect the fundamental rules, and its lack of reaction is surprising,” Cottier wrote of WADA’s lack of fealty to the world anti-doping code.
Travis Tygart, the CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and one of WADA’s fiercest critics, latched onto this dynamic, saying Cottier’s information “clearly shows that China did not follow the rules, and that WADA management did nothing about it.”
One of the chief complaints over the handling of this case was that neither WADA nor the Chinese gave any public notice upon learning of the positive tests for the banned heart medication Temozolomide, known as TMZ.
The athletes also were largely kept in the dark and the burden to prove their innocence was taken up by Chinese authorities, not the athletes themselves, which runs counter to what the rulebook demands.
Despite the criticisms, WADA generally welcomed the report.
“Above all, (Cottier) reiterated that WADA showed no bias towards China and that its decision not to appeal the cases was reasonable based on the evidence,” WADA director general Olivier Niggli said. “There are however certainly lessons to be learned by WADA and others from this situation.”
Tygart said “this report validates our concerns and only raises new questions that must be answered.”
Cottier expanded on doubts WADA’s own chief scientist, Olivier Rabin, had expressed over the Chinese contamination theory — snippets of which were introduced in the interim report. Rabin was wary of the idea that “a few micrograms” of TMZ found in the kitchen at the hotel where the swimmers stayed could be enough to cause the group contamination.
“Since he was not in a position to exclude the scenario of contamination with solid evidence, he saw no other solution than to accept it, even if he continued to have doubts about the reality of contamination as described by the Chinese authorities,” Cottier wrote.
Though recommendations for changes had been expected in the report, Cottier made none, instead referring to several comments he’d made earlier in the report.
Key among them were his misgivings that a case this big was largely handled in private — a breach of custom, if not the rules themselves — both while China was investigating and after the file had been forwarded to WADA. Not until the New York Times and German broadcaster ARD reported on the positives were any details revealed.
“At the very least, the extraordinary nature of the case (23 swimmers, including top-class athletes, 28 positive tests out of 60 for a banned substance of therapeutic origin, etc.), could have led to coordinated and concerted reflection within the Agency, culminating in a formal and clearly expressed decision to take no action,” the report said.
WADA’s executive committee established a working group to address two more of Cottier’s criticisms — the first involving what he said was essentially WADA’s sloppy recordkeeping and lack of formal protocol, especially in cases this complex; and the second a need to better flesh out rules for complex cases involving group contamination.
The French league’s legal commission has ordered Paris Saint-Germain to pay Kylian Mbappé the 55 million euros ($61 million) in unpaid wages that he claims he’s entitled to, the league said Thursday.
The league confirmed the decision to The Associated Press without more details, a day after the France superstar rejected a mediation offer by the commission in his dispute with his former club.
