Brayden Schenn scores OT winner to lift the Blues over the Bruins

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Brayden Schenn scores OT winner to lift the Blues over the Bruins

2024-11-17 14:08 Last Updated At：14:20

BOSTON (AP) — Brayden Schenn scored 2:53 into overtime and the St. Louis Blues beat the Boston Bruins 3-2 on Saturday to halt a four-game losing streak.

St. Louis native Trent Frederic had both goals for Boston, which is 2-1-2 in its last five games.

With the Bruins clinging to a 2-1 lead, Nathan Walker converted a feed in front to tie it midway in the third period.

The Blues had grabbed a 1-0 edge on Radek Faksa’s goal 6:25 into the game before the 26-year-old Frederic scored twice in under three minutes.

His first came from the top of the crease off a nifty tipped, between-the legs pass from Georgii Merkulov, who was called up from AHL Providence before the game.

Frederic’s second was a tip of Mason Lohrei’s shot from the point. Positioned to goalie Jordan Binnington’s right, he redirected the puck inside the far post.

KRAKEN 3, ISLANDERS 2

SEATTLE (AP) — Jamie Oleksiak scored the tiebreaking goal with 3:13 left, and Seattle beat New York for their fourth straight win.

Yanni Gourde and Jared McCann also scored for Seattle, and Brandon Tanev had two assists. Joey Daccord stopped 22 shots.

Brock Nelson and Pierre Engvall scored for the Islanders, who had earned a point in five straight games (3-0-2). Ilya Sorokin finished with 24 saves.

Gourde put Seattle ahead with his first goal of the season at 8:10 of the first period, but Engvall tied it with 6:22 left.

After a scoreless second period, Nelson tapped gave New York the lead at 4:49 of the third, but McCann tied it again less than a minute later with his team-high ninth goal of the season.

MAPLE LEAFS 4, OILERS 3, OT

TORONTO (AP) — Mitch Marner scored 40 seconds into overtime to give Toronto a victory over Edmonton.

Edmonton lost defenseman Darnell Nurse in the second period after he was bloodied on a hit to the head from Ryan Reaves.

Bobby McMann scored twice, Matthew Knies also scored and Anthony Stolarz made 27 saves to help Toronto improve to 11-6-2. Marner also had an assist.

Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl each had a goal and an assist Edmonton, which had won three in a row. Adam Henrique also scored, and Stuart Skinner stopped 18 shots.

Knies and McMann scored 59 seconds apart in the third period to give Toronto a 3-2 lead before Draisaitl tied it with 1:29 left in regulation and Skinner on the bench for an extra attacker.

CANADIENS 5, BLUE JACKETS 1

MONTREAL (AP) — Nick Suzuki’s second-period goal held up as the winner in Montreals’ victory over Columbus.

Mike Matheson, Lucas Condotta, Jake Evans and Josh Anderson also scored as Montreal won the second of its last three games after a six-game losing skid.

Sam Montembeault made 25 saves in the victory, earning his fifth career win against the Blue Jackets, the most victories he has against a single NHL opponent.

Dante Fabbro was the lone scorer for Columbus. It was his first goal with the Blue Jackets since being claimed off waivers from the Nashville Predators on Sunday. Daniil Tarasov made 25 saves as Columbus dropped its seventh decision in eight games.

Montreal was 1 for 3 on the power play. The Canadiens have scored at least one power-play goal in each of their six wins this season.

LIGHTNING 4, DEVILS 0

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Andrei Vasilevskiy made 29 saves for his 36th career shutout to help Tampa Bay beat New Jersey.

Vasilevskiy, who became the fastest goaltender in NHL to reach 300 wins when he beat Winnipeg 4-1 on Thursday night, had his second shutout of the season. He was at his best midway through the second period, robbing Jesper Bratt and Nico Hischier after each was left alone in front of the net.

Nick Paul put Tampa Bay at 14:27 of the opening period when his long wrist shot went through a screen and past Jacob Markstrom. Darren Raddysh scored 39 seconds into the third period to double the lead, Victor Hedman added a power-play goal at 7:40 and Anthony Cirelli was credited with an empty-net goal with 12 seconds left when Devils defenseman Luke Hughes threw his stick to keep the puck out of the net.

Tampa Bay has won five in a row against New Jersey, including both games this season, and is 9-1-0 in its past 10 meetings with the Devils.

PANTHERS 5, JETS 0

SUNRISE, Fla. (AP) — Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 27 shots for his 45th career shutout, Aleksander Barkov had a short-handed goal and two assists, and Florida beat NHL-leading Winnipeg .

Sam Reinhart had three assists for Florida, which snapped a two-game slide and became the first team to take a five-goal lead on the Jets this season. Mackie Samoskevich,Evan Rodrigues,Nate Schmidt and Dmitry Kulikov also scored for the Atlantic Division leaders.

Winnipeg goalie Connor Hellebuyck came into the night with an NHL-best 1.92 goals-against average. It rose to 2.15 after the Panthers beat him five times on 31 shots, and he took the loss for just the second time in 14 games this season.

Reinhart now has points in 10 straight games, had his fourth three-point game of the season and his first three-assist game in the regular season since he had four against Columbus on Dec. 10, 2023.

FLYERS 5, SABRES 2

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Travis Konecny had two goals and an assist, heralded rookie Matvei Michkov added a pair of assists and Philadelphia defeated Buffalo.

Travis Sanheim and Egor Zamula each had a goal and an assist and Tyson Foerster also scored for Philadelphia, which has won three in a row and four of five. The Flyers opened a four-game homestand.

Rasmus Dahlin had a goal and an assist and Ryan McLeod scored for Buffalo, which lost for the second time in the last six.

Dahlin scored on a slapshot midway through the third to extend his points streak to six consecutive games.

Ivan Fedotov made 23 saves for Philadelphia while Devon Levi had 27 stops.

PENGUINS 4, SHARKS 3, SO

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Evgeni Malkin scored the deciding goal in the shootout and Pittsburgh beat San Jose.

Sidney Crosby and Anthony Beauvillier also scored for Pittsburgh in the shootout.

Alex Nedeljkovic stopped Alexander Wennberg in the fifth round of the shootout to give Pittsburgh the win.

Crosby also scored in the second period and is now one goal from becoming the second active and 21st player in NHL history to reach 600 goals.

Bryan Rust and Jesse Puljujarvi also scored for Pittsburgh.

Erik Karlsson had an assist and surpassed Doug Wilson for 16th place on the NHL’s career points list among defensemen. He also tied Borje Salming for 15th on the NHL’s career assists list among defensemen.

HURRICANES 4, SENATORS 0

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Carolina’s Spencer Martin recorded his first career shutout and made 24 saves as the Hurricanes beat Ottawa.

Martin, in just his second start of the season and his first home appearance, made 11 of his saves in the third period.

Jordan Martinook, Sebastian Aho, rookie Jackson Blake and William Carrier scored goals. Shayne Gostisbehere and Jordan Staal each provided two assists, and Martin Necas notched an assist to push his career-best points streak to 12 games.

Ottawa was blanked for the first time this season, and Senators goaltender Anton Forsberg also stopped 24 shots.

Martinook scored his sixth goal in his last six games eight minutes into the first period. Aho’s first goal in eight games came eight seconds into a power play in the final minute of the second period.

START 2, WILD 1

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Mason Marchment scored twice, Ilya Lyubushkin had two assists, and Dallas continued their recent domination of Minnesota with a win.

Jake Oettinger made 22 saves for the Stars, who are 8-0-3 in their last 11 regular season games against the Wild. In the past seven meetings between the division foes, Dallas is 6-0-1, outscoring Minnesota 30-9.

Oettinger, who grew up about 25 miles from the Xcel Energy Center in Lakeville, Minnesota, is 6-0-1 in nine career games — eight starts — against the Wild.

Kirill Kaprizov scored and Filip Gustavsson stopped a season-high 38 shots for Minnesota. Gustavsson has allowed two or fewer goals in a league-best 10 starts.

KINGS 4, RED WINGS 1

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Mikey Anderson and Tanner Jeannot scored 22 seconds apart in the first period, Adrian Kempe scored twice in the third, and Los Angeles beat Detroit.

Anderson got his third goal of the season with 1:55 left in the first, and Jeannot followed it up by scoring in his return from a three-game suspension for an illegal check to Canucks forward Brock Boeser on Nov. 7.

Kempe had two goals for the second straight game, including an empty-netter, David Rittich made 17 saves, and the Kings avoided their first three-game regulation losing streak of the season.

Dylan Larkin broke up the shutout bid with 1:27 remaining, Cam Talbot made 37 saves, and the Red Wings lost for the fourth time in five games.

CANUCKS 4, BLACKHAWKS 1

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) — Erik Brannstrom scored the go-ahead goal early in the third period and Vancouver added a pair of late empty-netters in a victory over Chicago.

Elias Pettersson scored in the second period and J.T. Miller and Quinn Hughes both put the puck into an empty net. Arturs Silovs made 28 saves.

Former Canuck Ilya Mikheyev scored against his old team to give Chicago an early lead but star forward Connor Bedard was held off the scoresheet in his first NHL game in his hometown.

Arvid Soderblom stopped 29 shots for the Blackhawks.

A board game born in Mexican prisons is bringing together people from all walks of life

2024-12-23 12:10 Last Updated At：12:21

MEXICO CITY (AP) — On a Sunday afternoon in Mexico City’s Roma neighborhood, Rosa María Espinosa joins nearly 80 men under a park pavilion to play poleana, a board game requiring mental dexterity that was born in the city's prisons nearly a century ago.

Espinosa blows smoke rings with her cigarette and laughs with the others. Today she will be the only woman playing.

Though the game's origins still carry a stigma, it is having a moment as people from diverse backgrounds discover its appeal.

“It’s a lot of adrenaline,” said Espinosa. “But sometimes the dice aren’t lucky.”

Poleana is played on a square wooden box with a sunken center for dice rolling. Four players, each with four pieces, race to navigate the board, using specific dice combinations and calculations to move their pieces from their starting positions, around the board, and out through their designated corner, while strategically blocking opponents.

The board symbolizes the confines of prison, and getting out before the others, winning freedom — even if just metaphorically — is the game’s goal.

“People used to say ‘these folks know how to play because they've been to prison,’” said the 62-year-old Espinosa. “Thank God I’ve never been, but I like to play.”

This afternoon’s tournament marks the first time she’s competed against anyone outside her circle of relatives or friends she usually plays with on Tuesdays and Sundays in the small chapel of her apartment complex.

Alejandro Olmos, an archaeologist and anthropologist specializing in Mesoamerican games at the National Anthropology and History School, has studied and played poleana for years.

He traces the game’s origins to the Indian game chaupar (or pachisi), with archaeological evidence dating back to 600 A.D. After British colonization, the game spread to various Western countries under different names, including Ludo, Aggravation and Parcheesi.

In the United States, game maker Parker Brothers marketed a similar game, which was based on the 1913 novel by Eleanor H. Porter “Pollyanna.”

Sometime around 1940, the game spread in the lockups of Mexico City, with Lecumberri—a prison whose very architecture echoed the geometry of the poleana board — likely serving as its initial breeding ground. It was here where it was renamed poleana and received a new set of rules.

“All cultures have a process called adoption-transformation,” Olmos said. In Mexico, “the game reflects the roughness of prison life: mistakes are not pardoned.”

Six years ago, Jonathan Rulleri started a family business promoting poleana with the goal of bringing together people from different walks of life.

One of the early challenges was establishing common rules for the game, "which has been spreading from below, from prison to the street and from the street into neighborhoods,” said the 37-year-old Rulleri, who learned to play while incarcerated in the State of Mexico, outside the capital.

After his release, he struggled to find work, a common problem for those who have been imprisoned.

He launched a taco delivery service alongside his wife, but the business proved unsuccessful, leading him to reluctantly accept a commission to craft a poleana board for an acquaintance. Then came another commission — and he began to post his creations on social media.

“We dumped the taco idea and started making poleanas,” said Rulleri.

The resulting business, Poleana Cana’da Frogs — a name derived from a slang word for prison and a description of the way the pieces hop around the board — has so far organized 55 poleana tournaments in public spaces, emphasizing a family-friendly atmosphere and explicitly excluding betting, a practice common in other poleana events.

“We want to remove the game’s stigma, that it was a game for prisoners or slackers,” Rulleri said.

In the 1980s, the game began to spread beyond the prisons and found purchase in many of Mexico City’s rougher neighborhoods.

Tepito — the capital’s cradle of street commerce and boxing — is one of the neighborhoods where people can almost always be found playing poleana. At a handball court where men of all ages smack a ball against a wall, others on the sidelines play poleana late into the evening.

Fernando Rojas, 57, learned poleana when he was 18, but it was in prison where he honed his talents. The games, which can last for hours, in prison happen back-to-back.

“It really helps you escape the reality of being a prisoner and that’s how it started,” Rojas said. “No one can understand what it’s like to be a prisoner … you don’t see the end of your sentence. There are people who have to do drugs as their way to escape. Poleana is very important in prison.”

Now the game serves as Rojas’ therapy: a way to relieve stress and avoid family conflict. He carries his dice and pieces in a small plastic bag, religiously joining his friends at the handball court to play.

“We all have problems, in prison and in the street,” he said. “So a lot of people come here for a distraction.”

In Poleana, plays and number combinations have names. For example, a roll of six is a “six pack,” because that’s what it looks like when seen from above. Rolling doubles prompts celebratory shouts of “pares y no pares," a play on Spanish words for pairs and not stopping. With luck, you could get a piece three-quarters of the way around the board.

While chance plays a role, mathematical calculation is also key.

That’s why Diego González and Dana López are thrilled that their 7-year-old son Kevin is learning to play poleana. He has fun and he’s getting faster with his calculations.

González, 33, also makes poleana boards through his family business, Poleanas Iztapalapa, finding a creative outlet after serving a three-year sentence a decade ago. He crafts personalized boards with details like strobe lights and Bluetooth speakers.

His boards are popular gifts for weddings, birthdays and Christmas. Some special commissions have included requests to include images of deceased loved ones in the sunken area where dice are tossed. Others want playful characters to decorate boards they give to their children.

Sales surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, when people were shut in their homes and found poleana to be a good way to pass the time.

“Two, three hours counting and tossing, and all that was really nice for them,” he said. “They realized it’s not a bad game, it’s a game of strategy and getting the family together.”

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america