Wild edge Lightning, Red Wings owner Ilitch dies
>> ST PAUL: Mikko Koivu scored the lone goal in the shoot-out for Minnesota as the Wild beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 2-1 on Friday night to avoid losing consecutive home games for the first time this season.
Koivu used a masterful left-right move to flip the puck past Andrei Vasilevskiy, who denied Jason Pominville and Zach Parise before and after Koivu. Brayden Point, who scored for Tampa Bay in regulation, Jonathan Drouin and Nikita Kucherov all went wide right with their shoot-out attempts against Devan Dubnyk.
Nino Niederreiter scored in regulation, and Dubnyk made 26 saves for the Wild. Vasilevskiy stopped 37 shots for the Lightning.
In Winnipeg, Chicago linemates Patrick Kane, Artem Anisimov and Artemi Panarin each scored and combined for seven points to help the Blackhawks beat Winnipeg 5-2.
Duncan Keith’s late goal was the winner, and Marian Hossa also scored.
Bryan Little and Adam Lowry scored for Winnipeg.
The goaltenders were busy in the fifth and final meeting of the season between the Central Division rivals. Chicago’s Corey Crawford made 28 saves in his 22nd victory of the season, and Winnipeg’s Connor Hellebuyck stopped 31 of the 34 shots he faced.
Meanwhile Mike Ilitch, owner of baseball’s Detroit Tigers and the NHL’s Detroit Red Wings, died on Friday at the age of 87, his company Ilitch Holdings said.
Ilitch, the son of Macedonian immigrants, opened his first Little Caesars pizza restaurant with his wife, Marian, in 1959 in the working class Detroit suburb of Garden City.
He built the business into an empire that included restaurants and casinos as well as the two elite sports teams.
The Red Wings were struggling when he bought them for a reported US$8 million in 1982. But under Ilitch’s stewardship they won the Stanley Cup in 1997 and 1998 as well as in 2002 and 2008.
Ilitch was inducted into the NHL Hockey Hall of Fame in 2003 and the US Hockey Hall of Fame and Michigan Sports Hall of Fame in 2009.
In 1992, Ilitch bought the Tigers, the team that had signed him to a minor-league contract in the 1950s.
He moved the team from Tiger Stadium to Comerica Park in 2000, but although they made it to the World Series in 2006 and 2012, Ilitch never saw them capture the crown.
“I’ve never seen a man more dedicated to this community and to baseball than Mr I,” Tigers executive vice-president and general manager Al Avila said.