Tampa Bay Lightning defeat Vancouver Canucks 5-2
Connect with us

Sports

Stamkos hits major milestone as Tampa Bay Lightning defeat Vancouver Canucks 5-2

Published

 on

Tampa Bay Lightning defeat Vancouver Canucks

VANCOUVER — Another messy defensive performance proved costly for the Vancouver Canucks on Wednesday.

The Canucks tried to claw their way back after surrendering four first-period goals to the Tampa Bay Lightning, but couldn’t make up the deficit and ultimately fell 5-2.

“In our d zone, we made a lot of mistakes right off the bat. And before you knew it, they’ve got four on you,” said Canucks coach Bruce Boudreau. “That’s the kind of team you can’t make mistakes — and they were relatively crazy mistakes or are easy mistakes, you know, giving pucks away — against a team like that. And when you’re down four, it’s pretty difficult to catch up.”

The trouble started with a milestone goal for Lightning captain Steven Stamkos just 4:40 into the game.

Alex Killorn sliced a pass across the low slot and Stamkos tapped it in backdoor for the 500th regular-season goal of his NHL career.

“It’s very special,” Stamkos said. “I’ve had quite a few chances the last couple of games and it was nice to get it out of the way kind of early in the game.”

Tampa’s bench emptied, with players mobbing the veteran centre in the corner as the crowd cheered. It was a reaction Stamkos wasn’t expecting.

“That’s pretty amazing,” he said. “That’s something as a player that sticks with you for a long time when you’re on the road and you get that type of reception. So, just want to say to the fans that were here tonight, ‘Thank you and I appreciate that and very classy move.’”

Stamkos scored twice more Wednesday, completing his hat trick into an empty net with 1:22 left on the game clock.

Brayden Point and Nikita Kucherov each notched a goal and an assist for the Lightning (29-13-1), and Killorn contributed a pair of helpers.

The Canucks (18-23-3) replied with third-period power-play goals from Andrei Kuzmenko and Quinn Hughes. J.T. Miller had two assists.

Brian Elliott stopped 37-of-39 shots for Tampa, who stretched their win streak to five games.

Vancouver goalie Spencer Martin allowed four goals on 10 shots before being pulled in the first period. He was replaced by Collin Delia, who made 14 saves in relief.

The result marked the second time in a week that the Lightning beat the Canucks, following a 5-4 decision in Tampa on Jan. 12.

Tampa coach Jon Cooper wasn’t overly impressed with his team’s performance, however.

“We got that four-goal lead and then we just sat back for two periods,” he said. “We’ll need better out of us than we did tonight for tomorrow because we can’t just sit on these leads like we did. But worked out for us tonight and let’s move on.”

Hughes cut the Lightning’s lead to 4-2 after Stamkos was called for tripping midway through the third.

The defenceman muscled his way to the front of the net and forced a backhanded shot up and over Elliott for his fourth goal of the season at the 9:10 mark.

Hughes is on a five-game point streak with three goals and six assists.

Vancouver’s defensive group has been making a concentrated effort to get on the scoresheet, he said.

“We obviously don’t get enough goals from the back end,” Hughes said. “It is what it is, but we’re trying to push and get shots in and find ourselves in spots where we can score. I think that’s the main thing. … It’s just all about having forwards that back us up and trying to have good reads and not be stupid about it.”

The Canucks finally beat the Tampa goalie on their 32nd shot of the night 6:35 into the final frame.

With Erik Cernak in the box for interference, Hughes unleashed a rocket from inside the blue line. Kuzmenko, stationed in front of the net, tipped it in for his 18th goal of the season.

The home side was 2 for 4 with the man advantage while the Lightning went 0 for 1.

REMEMBERING GINO

Vancouver paid tribute to former Canuck Wayne “Gino” Odjick, who died Sunday at 52. Players wore jerseys with Odjick’s name and No. 29 on the back for warm-up, and nine of the legendary enforcer’s Vancouver teammates joined scout Ron Delorme for a moment of silence and ceremonial puck drop. Cheers of “Gino! Gino! Gino!” echoed through the rink several times and highlights of Odjick’s career played on the big screen throughout the game.

GONE STREAKING

Stamkos extended his point streak to six games. He has four goals and six assists across the stretch. Canucks captain Bo Horvat notched an assist and has 10 points (four goals, six assists) in nine outings.

UP NEXT

Canucks: host the Colorado Avalanche on Friday.

Lightning: continue a season-long, five-game road swing Thursday against the Oilers in Edmonton.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 18, 2023.

 

Gemma Karstens-Smith, The Canadian Press

Sports

Soccer legend Christine Sinclair says goodbye in Vancouver |

Published

 on

 

Christine Sinclair scored one final goal at B.C. Place, helping the Portland Thorns to a 6-0 victory over the Whitecaps Girls Elite team. The soccer legend has announced she’ll retire from professional soccer at the end of the National Women’s Soccer League season. (Oct. 16, 2024)

Source link

Continue Reading

Sports

A German in charge of England? Nationality matters less than it used to in international soccer

Published

 on

 

The question was inevitable.

At his first news conference as England’s newly appointed head coach, Thomas Tuchel – a German – was asked on Wednesday what message he had for fans who would have preferred an Englishman in charge of their beloved national team.

“I’m sorry, I just have a German passport,” he said, laughing, and went on to profess his love for English football and the country itself. “I will do everything to show respect to this role and to this country.”

The soccer rivalry between England and Germany runs deep and it’s likely Tuchel’s passport will be used against him if he doesn’t deliver results for a nation that hasn’t lifted a men’s trophy since 1966. But his appointment as England’s third foreign coach shows that, increasingly, even the top countries in the sport are abandoning the long-held belief that the national team must be led by one of their own.

Four of the top nine teams in the FIFA world rankings now have foreign coaches. Even in Germany, a four-time World Cup winner which has never had a foreign coach, candidates such as Dutchman Louis van Gaal and Austrian Oliver Glasner were considered serious contenders for the top job before the country’s soccer federation last year settled on Julian Nagelsmann, who is German.

“The coaching methods are universal and there for everyone to apply,” said German soccer researcher and author Christoph Wagner, whose recent book “Crossing the Line?” historically addresses Anglo-German rivalry. “It’s more the personality that counts and not the nationality. You could be a great coach, and work with a group of players who aren’t perceptive enough to get your methods.”

Not everyone agrees.

English soccer author and journalist Jonathan Wilson said it was “an admission of failure” for a major soccer nation to have a coach from a different country.

“Personally, I think it should be the best of one country versus the best of another country, and that would probably extend to coaches as well as players,” said Wilson, whose books include “Inverting The Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics.”

“To say we can’t find anyone in our country who is good enough to coach our players,” he said, “I think there is something slightly embarrassing, slightly distasteful about that.”

That sentiment was echoed by British tabloid The Daily Mail, which reported on Tuchel’s appointment with the provocative headline “A Dark Day for England.”

While foreign coaches are often found in smaller countries and those further down the world rankings, they are still a rarity among the traditional powers of the game. Italy, another four-time world champion, has only had Italians in charge. All of Spain’s coaches in its modern-day history have been Spanish nationals. Five-time World Cup winner Brazil has had only Brazilians in charge since 1965, and two-time world champion France only Frenchmen since 1975.

And it remains the case that every World Cup-winning team, since the first tournament in 1930, has been coached by a native of that country. The situation is similar for the women’s World Cup, which has never been won by a team with a foreign coach, though Jill Ellis, who led the U.S. to two trophies, is a naturalized U.S. citizen born in England.

Some coaches have made a career out of jumping from one national team to the next. Lars Lagerbäck, 76, coached his native Sweden between 2000-09 and went on to lead the national teams of Nigeria, Iceland and Norway.

“I couldn’t say I felt any big difference,” Lagerbäck told The Associated Press. “I felt they were my teams and the people’s teams.”

For Lagerbäck, the obvious disadvantages of coaching a foreign country were any language difficulties and having to adapt to a new culture, which he particularly felt during his brief time with Nigeria in 2010 when he led the African country at the World Cup.

Otherwise, he said, “it depends on the results” — and Lagerbäck is remembered with fondness in Iceland, especially, after leading the country to Euro 2016 for its first ever international tournament, where it knocked out England in the round of 16.

Lagerbäck pointed to the strong education and sheer number of coaches available in soccer powers like Spain and Italy to explain why they haven’t needed to turn to an overseas coach. At this year’s European Championship, five of the coaches were from Italy and the winning coach was Luis de la Fuente, who was promoted to Spain’s senior team after being in charge of the youth teams.

Portugal for the first time looked outside its own borders or Brazil, with which it has historical ties, when it appointed Spaniard Roberto Martinez as national team coach last year. Also last year, Brazil tried — and ultimately failed — to court Real Madrid’s Italian coach Carlo Ancelotti, with Brazilian soccer federation president Ednaldo Rodrigues saying: “It doesn’t matter if it’s a foreigner or a Brazilian, there’s no prejudice about the nationality.”

The United States has had a long list of foreign coaches before Mauricio Pochettino, the Argentine former Chelsea manager who took over as the men’s head coach this year.

The English Football Association certainly had no qualms making Tuchel the national team’s third foreign-born coach, after Swede Sven-Goran Eriksson (2001-06) and Italian Fabio Capello (2008-12), simply believing he was the best available coach on the market.

Unlike Eriksson and Capello, Tuchel at least had previous experience of working in English soccer — he won the Champions League in an 18-month spell with Chelsea — and he also speaks better English.

That won’t satisfy all the nay-sayers, though.

“Hopefully I can convince them and show them and prove to them that I’m proud to be the English manager,” Tuchel said.

___

AP Sports Writer Jerome Pugmire in Paris contributed to this story.

___

AP soccer:

Source link

Continue Reading

Sports

Maple Leafs winger Bobby McMann finding game after opening-night scratch

Published

 on

 

TORONTO – Bobby McMann watched from the press box on opening night.

Just over a week later, the Maple Leafs winger took a twirl as the first star.

McMann went from healthy scratch to unlikely offensive focal point in just eight days, putting up two goals in Toronto’s 6-2 victory over the Los Angeles Kings on Wednesday.

The odd man out at the Bell Centre against the Montreal Canadiens, he’s slowly earning the trust of first-year head coach Craig Berube.

“There’s a lot of good players on this team,” McMann said of his reaction to sitting out Game 1. “Maybe some guys fit better in certain scenarios than others … just knowing that my opportunity would come.”

The Wainwright, Alta., product skated on the second line with William Nylander and Max Domi against Los Angeles, finishing with those two goals, three hits and a plus-3 rating in just over 14 minutes of work.

“He’s been unbelievable,” said Nylander, who’s tied with McMann for the team lead with three goals. “It’s great when a player like that comes in.”

The 28-year-old burst onto the scene last February when he went from projected scratch to hat-trick hero in a single day after then-captain John Tavares fell ill.

McMann would finish 2023-24 with 15 goals and 24 points in 56 games before a knee injury ruled him out of Toronto’s first-round playoff loss to the Boston Bruins.

“Any time you have success, it helps the confidence,” he said. “But I always trust the abilities and trust that they’re there whether things are going in or (I’m not) getting points. Just trying to play my game and trust that doing the little things right will pay off.”

McMann was among the Leafs’ best players against the Kings — and not just because of what he did on the scoresheet. The forward got into a scuffle with Phillip Danault in the second period before crushing Mikey Anderson with a clean hit in the third.

“He’s a power forward,” Berube said. “That’s how he should think the game, night in and night out, as being a power forward with his skating and his size. He doesn’t have to complicate the game.”

Leafs goaltender Anthony Stolarz knew nothing about McMann before joining Toronto in free agency over the summer.

“Great two-way player,” said the netminder. “Extremely physical and moves really well, has a good shot. He’s a key player for us in our depth. I was really happy for him to get those two goals.

“Works his butt off.”

ON TARGET

Leafs captain Auston Matthews, who scored 69 times last season, ripped his first goal of 2024-25 after going without a point through the first three games.

“It’s not going to go in every night,” said Matthews, who added two assists against the Kings. “It’s good to see one fall … a little bit of the weight lifted off your shoulders.”

WAKE-UP CALL

Berube was animated on the bench during a third-period timeout after the Kings cut a 5-0 deficit to 5-2.

“Taking care of the puck, being harder in our zone,” Matthews said of the message. “There were times in the game, early in the second, in the third period, where the momentum shifted and we needed to grab it back.”

PATCHES SITS

Toronto winger Max Pacioretty was a healthy scratch after dressing the first three games.

“There’s no message,” Berube said of the 35-year-old’s omission. “We have extra players and not everybody can play every night. That’s the bottom line. He’s been fine when he’s played, but I’ve got to make decisions as a coach, and I’m going to make those decisions — what I think is best for the team.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.

___

Follow @JClipperton_CP on X.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Source link

Continue Reading

Trending

Exit mobile version