Reliever Davis, Rockies agree to 3-year deal
DENVER — The Colorado Rockies added a significant piece to what is becoming a formidable and high-priced bullpen by agreeing to a three-year, $52 million contract with All-Star reliever Wade Davis.
His deal includes a fourth-year player option that would become guaranteed should Davis finish 30 games in 2020, a person familiar with the negotiations told the Associated Press.
Davis, a 32-year-old righthander, will be in line to close out games for a Colorado team that returned to the playoffs last season for the first time since 2009.
General manager Jeff Bridich is sticking to his blueprint of fortifying the bullpen. A few weeks ago, the Rockies finalized $27 million, three-year contracts with righthander Bryan Shaw and lefty Jake McGee, who has been with Colorado the last two seasons. The team also is set to return righty Adam Ottavino and lefty Mike Dunn.
U.S. juniors top Canada at worlds
Brady Tkachuk and Kieffer Bellows found enough traction in the snow to score shootout goals and cap the United States’ 4-3 victory over Canada at Orchard Park, N.Y., in international hockey’s first outdoor game.
Tkachuk and Ron Perunovich scored 34 seconds apart in the third period to rally the United States from a 3-1 deficit in the world junior championship game played in a steady snowfall at the NFL Buffalo Bills’ New Era Field. Casey Mittlestadt set up all three goals for the Americans (1-1-1), who rebounded from a 3-2 loss to Slovakia less than 24 hours earlier.
And it happened in front of a world junior tournament record crowd of 44,592 — some going shirtless in celebrating the bitter elements — at New Era Field, home of the NFL Buffalo Bills.
The Americans (1-1-1) showed resolve in not only beating their cross-border rivals but overcoming the disappointment of a 3-2 loss to Slovakia on Thursday.
Bellows also scored in regulation, and goalie Jake Oettinger stopped 19 shots through overtime and all four he faced in the shootout.
Boris Katchouk, Cale Makar and Dillon Dube scored for Canada (2-0-1), which has lost four consecutive games to the U.S. and blown two-goal leads in three straight meetings. That includes a 5-4 shootout loss to the Americans in the gold-medal game played at Montreal in January.
Carter Hart stopped 32 shots through overtime for the Canadians.
In the only other tournament game, St. Louis Blues draft pick Klim Kostin scored twice in leading Russia (2-1) to a 5-2 victory over Belarus (0-3).
Lowly Sabres cool off Devils
Rasmus Ristolainen scored at 2:37 of overtime to give Buffalo a 4-3 victory over New Jersey at Newark, N.J., snapping the Devils’ winning streak at five games.
Ristolainen bulled his way out of the corner in the New Jersey zone to beat Cory Schneider for his first goal of the season.
Last in the Eastern Conference, the Sabres improved to 2-3-2 in their last seven games. They will head outdoors to face the New York Rangers on Monday at Citi Field, the home of baseball’s New York Mets, in the Winter Classic. In other action: • Mikael Granlund had the second three-goal game of his career, and Devan Dubnyk made 41 saves in his first start since Dec. 12 to help Minnesota beat Nashville 4-2 at St. Paul, Minn.
• Patrick Kane scored 50 seconds into overtime to give 32-year-old goaltender Jeff Glass a victory in his NHL debut and lift visiting Chicago over Edmonton 4-3. After scoring, Kane pointed toward the other end of the ice at Glass, and teammates quickly enveloped the journeyman. The Calgary native made 42 saves in his debut, which came 12 seasons after his first minor league game.
Brignone records women’s GS win
Federica Brignone captured women’s World Cup giant slalom at Lienz, Austria, to give the Italian team its first win of the season.
Ranked fourth after the opening leg, Brignone posted the fourth-fastest time and edged first-run leader Viktoria Rebensburg of Germany by 0.04 seconds.
Overall champion Mikaela Shiffrin of the United States was 0.08 behind in third, and French world champion Tessa Worley trailed by 0.26 in fourth.
Rebensburg overtook Shiffrin atop the discipline standings, while the American remained in the overall World Cup lead. In other news: • Alexis Pinturault of France secured another World Cup Alpine combined victory when first-run leader Dominik Paris straddled a gate toward the end of his slalom run at Bormio, Italy. For his seventh victory in the discipline, Pinturault won with a 0.42-second advantage over Peter Fill of Italy. Kjetil Jansrud of Norway finished third, 0.45 back. Pinturault stood 19th after the downhill run but had the fastest slalom leg to post his 21st career win across all disciplines. Paris was positioned to duplicate his victory in the downhill a day earlier when he held an advantage of 0.46 ahead of Pinturault at the last checkpoint of the slalom leg, but the Italian lost control about 10 gates from the finish.
Djokovic suffers setback in elbow
The comeback plans for Novak Djokovic stalled when a recurrence of pain in his right elbow forced him to withdraw from an exhibition tournament in the United Arab Emirates.
Djokovic has not played competitively since he retired in the Wimbledon quarterfinals because of the elbow injury. He was scheduled to play Roberto Bautista Agut of Spain in the exhibition semifinals Friday — his first match in nearly five months.
Djokovic is entered in the Qatar Open starting Monday in Doha, where he is the defending two-time champion. That is supposed to be his lead-in tournament for the Australian Open, which starts in just over two weeks.