Sabres clinch 31st following loss to Senators

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Matt Duchene scored his team-leading 27th goal in the Ottawa Senators’ 4-2 victory over Buffalo on Wednesday night, and assured the Sabres of finishing last in the NHL standings.

Max McCormick, Ryan Dzingel and Alexander Burrows, with an emptynetter, also scored for the Senators in a matchup between two of the NHL’s worst teams in the final week of the season. Craig Anderson stopped 32 shots, and Ottawa improved to 2-8 in its past 10.

The win upped the 30th-place Senators’ total to 67 points, five ahead of the Sabres, who have just two games left.

The Sabres became the NHL’s first team to finish 31st, following this season’s addition of the Buffalo Sabres forward Kyle Okposo screens Ottawa Senators goalie Craig Anderson during the third period Wednesday in Buffalo, N.Y. expansion Vegas Golden Knights.

BLACKHAWKS 4, BLUES 3: Duncan Keith scored a power-play goal with 8.5 seconds left and the Chicago Blackhawks beat St. Louis to hurt the Blues’ playoff hopes. Andreas Martinsen, Blake Hillman and Alex DeBrincat also scored, and JeanFrancois Berube made 30

saves. The Blackhawks beat the Blues for the first time in three meetings this season. STANLEY CUP SAYING GOODBYE TO NAMES LIKE RICHARD, HULL, HOWE: So long, Gordon Howe. Byebye, Robert Hull. Au revoir, M. Richard. Those Hockey Hall of Famers and the rest of the players who won an NHL championship from 1954-65 are being stripped off the Stanley Cup this spring to create room for a new layer of names without making the trophy too big to be skated around the ice by the winning captain or checked on an airplane for its next journey. “People in Saskatchewan are a little upset Gordie’s name is coming off, but that’s the tradition,” said Mike Bolt, one of the Hall of Fame staffers assigned to escort the Cup around the world. “It can’t get any bigger. ... We wouldn’t be able to do what we do.” Perhaps the most iconic trophy in sports, the Stanley Cup is unique among major prizes because the NHL passes it from team to team instead of producing a new one for every champion. It’s also the only one that includes the name of every player to win it in each season — though the names come and go.