Canes win series opener vs. Rangers in overtime
The Ian Cole beat Igor Shesterkin at 3:12 of overtime to help the Carolina Hurricanes beat the New York Rangers 2-1 Wednesday night and take Game 1 of their second-round playoff series.
The defenseman’s second career playoff goal capped a late comeback by the Hurricanes after they trailed most of the night. Sebastian Aho finally pushed one past Shesterkin in the final minutes of the third period to send the game into OT.
Then came Cole’s rebound shot, which clipped the stick of Rangers defenseman Ryan Lindgren to change direction on the way toward the net before slipping past Shesterkin to end this one.
Carolina also got a key effort from Antti Raanta, who had 27 saves and helped the Hurricanes hang around as the Rangers controlled play through the first two periods.
Filip Chytil scored a first-period goal for the Rangers, while Shesterkin finished with 24 saves.
As defenseman Tony DeAngelo tried to send the puck back to teammate Jaccob Slavin for a reset, Rangers forward Alexis Lafrenière stole the pass to lead a 3-on-2 rush. Lafrenière passed to Chytil, who one-timed the puck from the right side past the extended stick of Slavin and Raanta at 7:07 of the first.
That score held up for the Rangers nearly the rest of the night until the Hurricanes finally showed an urgent third-period edge to build momentum. They even twice got pucks past Shesterkin only to ping the crossbar, first on a breakaway by Nino Niederreiter and later from Aho.
But Aho responded less than 30 seconds later to finally find the net, taking a feed from rookie Seth Jarvis and then going to his backhand side. Shesterkin made the initial stop, but Aho knocked the rebound across for the tying score with 2:23 left in the third
US Soccer reaches equal pay agreement
The U.S. Soccer Federation reached milestone agreements to pay its men’s and women’s teams equally, making the American national governing body the first in the sport to promise both sexes matching money.
The federation on Wednesday announced separate collective bargaining agreements through December 2028 with the unions for both national teams, ending years of often acrimonious negotiations.
The men have been playing under the terms of a CBA that expired in December 2018. The women’s CBA expired at the end of March, but talks continued after the federation and the players agreed to settle a gender discrimination lawsuit brought by some of the players in 2019. The settlement was contingent on the federation reaching labor contracts that equalized pay and bonuses between the two teams.
Perhaps the biggest sticking point was World Cup prize money, which is based on how far a team advances in the tournament. While the U.S. women have been successful on the international stage with back-to-back World Cup titles, differences in FIFA prize money meant they took home far less than the men’s winners. American women received a $110,000 bonus for winning the 2019 World Cup; the U.S. men would have received $407,000 had they won in 2018.
The unions agreed to pool FIFA’s payments for the men’s World Cup later this year and next year’s Women’s World Cup, as well as for the 2026 and 2027 tournaments.
The federation previously based bonuses on payments from FIFA, which earmarked $400 million for the 2018 men’s tournament, including $38 million to champion France, and $30 million for the 2019 women’s tournament, including $4 million to the champion United States.