The story appears on

Page A15

May 24, 2010

GET this page in PDF

Free for subscribers

View shopping cart

Related News

Home » Sports » Ice Hockey

Flyers win to push Habs to the brink

MICHAEL Leighton shut down and shut out the Montreal Canadiens again, leading the Philadelphia Flyers to within one win of the Stanley Cup finals on Saturday.

Leighton stopped 17 shots for his third blanking of Montreal in four games, Claude Giroux scored twice - including an empty-netter - and Ville Leino added a breakaway goal in a 3-0 win over the Canadiens in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals in Montreal.

Philadelphia, which has won seven of eight since falling behind Boston 0-3 in the second round, leads the series 3-1 and can advance to the National Hockey League finals for the first time since 1997 with a win at home in Game 5 tomorrow.

The Flyers bounced back from a 1-5 loss on Thursday with an efficient and opportunistic performance. They stifled the Canadiens, as they did at home in the first two games of the series. Montreal was held to only one shot in the second period, when Philadelphia scored twice.

Leighton had a relatively easy day after allowing five goals on 38 shots on Thursday. He opened the series by stopping 58 shots in 6-0 and 3-0 wins at Philadelphia. He became the 13th NHL goalie to have three shutouts in one series, and the first since Toronto's Ed Belfour and Tampa Bay's Nikolai Khabibulin did it in the 2004 playoffs first round.

Meanwhile, in Cologne, Germany, Russia overcame Germany 2-1 on Saturday to set up a showdown with the Czech Republic in the ice hockey world championship final.

Pavel Datsyuk scored the winner on a breakaway with 1:50 left in the game.

Russia, the most successful team in worlds history with 25 crowns, has a chance to become the first team to win three straight titles since the Czech Republic from 1999 to 2001.

The Czechs beat Sweden 3-2 in a shootout to return to the final for the first time since 2006. They haven't won the title since 2005.

The Czechs have won five world titles and six more as part of Czechoslovakia.





 

Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.

沪公网安备 31010602000204号

Email this to your friend