Kane, Sabres beat Flyers

BUFFALO,N.Y.» Evander Kane scored to cap a three-goal second-period surge in leading the Buffalo Sabres to a 4-1 win over the Philadelphia Flyers on Tuesday night.

Sam Reinhart had a goal and two assists in extending Buffalo’s point-streak to 3-0-1 — the team’s best run of the season. William Carrier and Marcus Foligno, with an empty-net goal, also scored for the Sabres.

Goalie Anders Nilsson stopped 39 shots and had his shutout bid foiled by Brayden Schenn’s power-play goal with 2:07 left.

Nilsson started in place of Robin Lehner, who was sidelined by an illness.

The Flyers dropped to 2-6-3 in their past 11. It’s a stretch during which they’ve been outscored 33-18. The slump immediately followed 10-game winning streak that ended with a 3-1 loss at Dallas on Dec. 17.

The Flyers also extended their road losing streak to 0-5-2.

*** The rosters for the NHL All-Star Game are brimming with top-shelf talent, though they lack an unusual fan-picked favorite like John Scott.

Rookies Auston Matthews and Patrik Laine were among the 40 players selected Tuesday for the NHL’s 62nd midseason showcase at Staples Center. The Chicago Blackhawks led the league with four players selected for the All-Star weekend, which will be held Jan. 2729 in Los Angeles.

Wayne Simmonds, who leads the Flyers with 17 goals, was selected to this first AllStar game.

“It’s kind of surreal,” Simmonds said after a morning skate in Buffalo Tuesday. “It makes me think when I was a young kid watching the AllStar games, and watching all the great players who played in it. To even be mentioned in the same breath as All-Stars in the NHL is pretty special, and it’s a great accomplishment.”

The game format will again be a 3-on-3 tournament featuring a team from each of the NHL’s four divisions. The players also will compete in a skills competition on Saturday, Jan. 28.

The Pacific Division won the tournament last year, but the weekend was dominated by the unlikely story of Scott. The journeyman enforcer scored two goals and was voted the MVP after an equally improbable grassroots online campaign by fans to vote him into the game as a captain — even after he was traded from Arizona to Montreal and sent to the minors.

The NHL changed its fan voting rules this season to reduce the chances of a similar situation, adding stipulations that players had to be on their team’s roster on Nov. 1 and hadn’t been sent to the minors before Jan. 26. The fans’ eminently logical choices for captains this time around were Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby, Edmonton’s Connor McDavid, Nashville’s P.K. Subban — who has been out with an injury since Dec. 15 — and Montreal goalie Carey Price.

Although some fans were angered by the rule change, major sports leagues are searching for balance between encouraging fan participation in All-Star events and trivializing those showcases with vote manipulation and organized silliness.

Millions of fake accounts on social media could potentially warp fan vote totals for events like the NBA’s upcoming All-Star showcase. Major League Baseball canceled more than 60 million ballots for the 2015 All-Star Game after an elaborate campaign to manipulate the results to favor the Kansas City Royals, among other teams.

The NHL rosters include many veteran stars, including Alex Ovechkin, Evgeni Malkin, John Tavares, Erik Karlsson and Chicago teammates Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews, Duncan Keith and Corey Crawford.

McDavid, the NHL’s 19-year-old leading scorer with 48 points, is headed to his first All-Star Game after missing out on last season with a broken collarbone. Crosby, right behind McDavid with 44 points, incredibly hasn’t played in an AllStar Game since his second NHL season in 2007, missing out on four subsequent selections due to injuries.

The coaches will be Columbus’ John Tortorella, Minnesota’s Bruce Boudreau, San Jose’s Peter DeBoer and Montreal’s Michel Therrien.

The Los Angeles Kings will be represented by former Flyers forward Jeff Carter and defenseman Drew Doughty in their home rink, while the nearby Anaheim Ducks are sending center Ryan Kesler and defenseman Cam Fowler.

Columbus, which has roared to the top of the overall NHL standings with its recent 16-game winning streak, will send only defenseman Seth Jones and goalie Sergei Bobrovsky to the AllStar Game. Forward Cam Atkinson, tied for eighth in the league with 39 points heading into Tuesday’s games, was not selected.

The top two picks in last summer’s draft also made the game after scoring 21 goals apiece this season. The 19-year-old Matthews is Toronto’s sole representative, becoming the Maple Leafs’ youngest All-Star since Wendel Clark made it 31 years ago.

The Winnipeg Jets are represented solely by Laine, the Finnish teenager with 37 points in his torrid rookie season. Laine is out indefinitely with a concussion, however.

“Patrik Laine is kind of an All-Star kind of player,” Winnipeg’s Mathieu Perreault said. “He makes a difference. He’s that threat to score at all times, which is something we didn’t really have in the past here.”

Although the rosters frequently change due to injury, every team currently has a player representative at the midseason extravaganza, which changed format last season to a four-team tournament of 20-minute games. Each team consists of six forwards, three defensemen and two goalies.