Serena on top again
The Devils are starting to play their best hockey of the season and it cost Tampa Bay its franchise-record tying 10-game winning streak.
The improved play wasn’t enough to save the job of Devils general manager Ray Shero, though.
Louis Domingue stopped 26 shots against his former team as the Devils handed the Lightning its first loss since Dec. 21 with a 3-1 victory Sunday night.
The Devils’ second win in two days — they beat Washington on Saturday — came with a bizarre twist. Shero was fired by owner
Josh Harris earlier in the afternoon and most of the players didn’t find out until 90 minutes before the opening faceoff.
“You beat two of the best teams in the league back to back nights, prove to yourself you got what it takes in this locker room and that’s a lot of fun,” forward Blake Coleman said. “On the other side of the coin, a great leader isn’t with us anymore and he’s the reason we’re all in this room.”
Travis Zajac, Andy Greene and Miles Wood scored for the disappointing Devils, who made the playoffs once in Shero’s four-plus year tenure. They fired coach John Hynes in early December.
Harris announced Shero’s firing less than 90 minutes before the game.
Speaking at a hastily called news conference outside the locker room, Harris said assistant general manager Tom Fitzgerald would handle Shero’s duties with the help of Devils goaltending great Martin Brodeur.
“It’s never a good time to do this, but once you make the decision, you have to act on them,” Harris said. “We thought this was the right thing to do for the franchise.”
The change comes a little more than a month after Shero fired Hynes in the wake of a horrible start to the season.
The Devils came into the season with high expectations. Former MVP Taylor
Hall, since traded to Arizona, was returning from a knee injury that limited him to 33 games last season. Nico Hischier, the No. 1 overall pick in the 17-18 draft, was entering his third season and he was joined by fellow center Jack Hughes, the No. 1 overall pick in the June draft.
In addition, Shero traded for one-time Norris Trophy winner P.K. Subban, signed Wayne Simmonds as a free agent and acquired the rights to Nikita Gusev, who had been playing in the KHL in Russia.
The season didn’t go as planned. The Devils lost their first six games and the team was 9-13-4 when Hynes, now the Nashville Predators coach, was fired.
Harris said he spoke with Shero on Sunday afternoon and informed him of the decision.
“We don’t do these things lightly. We take a long-term approach,” Harris said. “But the reality is we are now in our fifth season and we’ve made the playoffs once. It was just time for a change.”
Serena Williams ended a three-year title drought when she beat fellow American Jessica Pegula, 6-3, 6-4, on Sunday to win the singles final at the ASB Classic in Auckland, New Zealand.
Williams hadn’t won a title since the Australian Open in January 2017, and not since she became a mother to her daughter, Olympia, who was courtside to see the victory.
“It feels good. It’s been a long time,” Williams said. “I think you can see the relief on my face.”
The 23-time major winner donated her $43,000 winner’s check to the fundraising appeal for victims of Australian wildfires, joining many other tennis stars, such as Ash Barty, Nick Kygrios, Novak Djokovic and Maria Sharapova, who have pledged money to the already months-long fire emergency there.
DJOKOVIC TOPS NADAL
Novak Djokovic beat Rafael Nadal, again, in a must-win match to keep Serbia in contention. Then he went back on court within an hour and combined with long-time friend Viktor Troicki to clinch the very first ATP Cup in Sydney.
IRAN ATHLETE DEFECTS
Iran’s only female Olympic medalist said she defected from the Islamic Republic in a blistering online letter that describes herself as “one of the millions of oppressed women in Iran.”
Taekwondo athlete Kimia Alizadeh posted the letter on Instagram as Iran’s semiofficial ISNA news agency said she had fled to the Netherlands. She criticized wearing the mandatory hijab headscarf and accused officials in Iran of sexism and mistreatment.