Panthers stay hot with road victory over Rangers
Ryan Lomberg scored the tiebreaking goal early in the third period Monday night for the visiting Florida Panthers, who continued surging with a 4-2 win over the New York Rangers in a battle of Eastern Conference division leaders.
Sam Reinhart scored twice — both times off impressive feeds from Aleksander Barkov — for the Panthers, who won their fifth straight game and for the 15th time in 17 games.
Gustav Forsling set up the game-winner by poking a loose puck in the neutral zone to Lomberg, whose shot from the faceoff circle at 6:11 glanced off the skate of Jacob Trouba and fluttered past Igor Shesterkin in net.
Anton Lundell added an empty-netter with 58.2 seconds remaining.
Sergei Bobrovsky made 26 saves for the Panthers.
Will Cuylle and Chris Kreider scored power play goals for the Rangers, who have lost two straight and three of four.
The Panthers played Tuesday night at New Jersey. They return home to play Philadelphia at 7 p.m. Thursday and Calgary at 4 p.m. Saturday.
DEVILS FIRE COACH
The Devils faced the Panthers on Tuesday with interim head coach Travis Green in charge. He had been associate coach until head coach Lindy Ruff was fired Monday.
Ruff, 64, helped guide the Devils to the second round of the playoffs last season. But the team was 9-13-2 in its past 24 games, most recently losing at Anaheim and Los Angeles while being outscored 9-4.
The Devils entered Tuesday in sixth place (30-27-4, 64 points) in the Metropolitan Division and eight points out of the wild-card chase in the Eastern Conference.
Ruff went 128-125-28 as the Devils’ boss with one playoff appearance (5-7 in 2023) over the past threeplus seasons.
Green, 53, was the head coach of the Vancouver Canucks for four-plus seasons before being fired early in the 2021-22 campaign.
TENNIS
Halep wins appeal: Two-time Grand Slam champion Simona Halep can return to pro tennis immediately after the Court of Arbitration for Sport on Tuesday reduced her ban for doping from four years to nine months.
She was suspended Oct. 7, 2022, so she already has served a penalty of nine months.
The suspension came after she tested positive for the banned substance roxadustat, and she was charged with an additional violation when her biological passport was shown to have “established use of a prohibited substance and/ or prohibited method,” according to the International Tennis Integrity Agency.
Halep fought the penalty and denied doping. The original ban would have expired after the Grand
Slam season in 2026.
Now 32, Halep has said her use of roxadustat, a drug used to treat anemia associated with chronic kidney disease that also can increase endurance, was unintentional. The CAS agreed, saying it was probable that the drug likely “entered her body through the consumption of a contaminated supplement.”
NBA
Westbrook return for playoffs? Los Angeles Clippers guard Russell Westbrook is considered week-to-week after he underwent surgery on his fractured left hand. He had appeared in every game for the Clippers this season before suffering the injury Friday against Washington.
The team hopes Westbrook, 35, will return before the playoffs begin next month, ESPN reported. When he sustained a broken right hand in 2014, he missed just 14 games and returned to the court less than a month postsurgery.