Capitals are 1st NHL team to clinch a playoff spot this season after being last to get in last year

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Capitals are 1st NHL team to clinch a playoff spot this season after being last to get in last year

2025-03-22 01:46 Last Updated At：01:51

WASHINGTON (AP) — Alex Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals became the first NHL team to clinch a playoff spot this season, doing so after winning in their 69th game and getting the help they needed elsewhere around the league.

They are the only team since the playoffs expanded to 16 teams in 1979-80 to be the first to clinch after being the last to get in the previous season.

“Our goal was to make the playoffs this year," Ovechkin said after scoring his 888th career goal to help beat Philadelphia 3-2 on Thursday night. "It’s hard. Every game, it’s hard, especially at the end because every team is fighting. That’s why in the beginning of the year and the middle of the year it’s very important to (be) collecting the points and feel comfortable at the end. Last year it took us 82 games to clinch it and since 20 games left last year, it was playoffs for us already. We take it and move on.”

Ovechkin, Tom Wilson, John Carlson and the core of the roster is still intact. Offseason acquisitions of center Pierre-Luc Dubois, wingers Andrew Mangiapane, Taylor Raddysh and Brandon Duhaime, defensemen Jakob Chychrun and Matt Roy and goaltender Logan Thompson have all worked as well as could be expected.

The Capitals are atop the NHL with 100 points, leading the Eastern Conference by 13 and cruising toward the playoffs.

“It’s been great," Mangiapane said. "Obviously I think we have a really deep team: All four lines are great hockey players, the D pairings, all of them all make plays and our two goalies in net have been awesome. It’s a really deep team, and that’s why I think we’ve been consistent throughout the whole year. Any given day any player could step up and make great plays to help us win games.”

Now seven years removed from hoisting the Stanley Cup for the first time in franchise history, Ovechkin, Wilson and Carlson — and Lars Eller, who was traded and reacquired since — are the only players left from that 2018 championship team. Center Nicklas Backstrom and winger T.J. Oshie have been sidelined by career-ending injuries but have watched closely and marveled at what the Capitals have done this season.

“This team has just been playing outstanding the whole year,” Backstrom said Friday. “I just feel like they have some sort of calmness back there, which you can see every game. There’s never any panic. They’re working for each other, and they’re playing for each other, which is a nice thing to have going into the playoffs.”

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Prosecutors request formal arrest of Istanbul mayor and top challenger to Turkey's Erdogan

2025-03-23 08:34 Last Updated At：08:40

ISTANBUL (AP) — Prosecutors early Sunday requested that detained Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, the top challenger to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, be formally arrested over allegations of corruption and terror links.

A court is now set to decide whether the popular opposition figure will be charged and jailed pending a trial.

The arrest this week of Imamoglu has intensified political tensions and sparked widespread protests across Turkey, with demonstrators rallying in multiple cities to voice their opposition.

Many view his arrest as a politically driven attempt to remove Imamoglu from the next presidential race, currently scheduled for 2028. Government officials reject the accusation and say Turkey’s courts are independent.

Police questioned Imamoglu for around five hours on Saturday as part of an investigation into allegations of aiding the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, the Cumhuriyet newspaper reported. A day earlier he was questioned for four hours over the corruption accusations. The mayor rejected all charges during both interrogations.

He was later transferred to a courthouse for questioning by prosecutors along with some 90 other people who were also detained with him.

Authorities barred access to the courthouse using barricades on local roads and closing nearby metro stations. Hundreds of police officers and over a dozen water cannon trucks were deployed. Still, hundreds gathered in front of the building shouting: “Rights, law, justice!”

Others gathered outside the Istanbul city hall or took to the streets to denounce the mayor’s resignation for a fourth night of nationwide protests, in the largest wave of street demonstrations in Turkey in more than a decade.

The demonstrations were largely peaceful but a group of protesters, trying to break through barricades to reach Istanbul’s main square, threw flares, stones and other objects at police, which responded with pepper spray. Some demonstrators said rubber bullets were fired.

Police used water cannons and tear gas to scatter demonstrators in Ankara.

Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said 323 people were detained following protests Saturday night. Earlier, he said: “There will be no tolerance for those who seek to violate societal order, threaten the people’s peace and security, and pursue chaos and provocation.”

Imamoglu was detained on Wednesday following a dawn raid on his residence over allegations of financial crimes and links to Kurdish militants. Dozens of other prominent figures, including two district mayors, were also detained.

On Friday, police in Istanbul used pepper spray, tear gas and rubber bullets to push back hundreds of protesters who tried to break through a barricade in front of the city’s historic aqueduct while hurling flares, stones and other objects at officers. Police also dispersed groups that had rallied outside of the city hall for a third night running, after the opposition Republican People’s Party leader, Ozgur Ozel, delivered a speech in support of the mayor.

Simultaneously, police broke up demonstrations in Ankara, the capital, as well as in the Aegean coastal city of Izmir, resorting to forceful measures at times, according to television images. Thousands marched in several other cities calling on the government to resign.

Earlier, Erdogan said the government would not tolerate street protests and accused the opposition party of links to corruption and terror organizations.

The Istanbul governor's office announced it was expanding a ban on demonstrations until March 26 and imposed restrictions on the entry and exit of vehicles deemed to be transporting people “likely to participate in unlawful activities.”

Erdogan on Saturday accused the CHP’s leadership of turning the party “into an apparatus to absolve a handful of municipal robbers who have become blinded by money.”

He also accused it of “doing everything to disturb the public peace, to polarize the nation.”

Imamoglu’s arrest came just days before he was expected to be nominated as the opposition Republican People’s Party’s presidential candidate in a primary on Sunday. Ozel has said that the primary, where around 1.5 million delegates can vote, will go ahead as planned.

The opposition party has also urged citizens to participate in a symbolic election on Sunday — through improvised ballot boxes to be set up across Turkey — to show solidarity with Imamoglu.

In a tweet posted shortly before his arrival at the courthouse, Imamoglu urged the public to safeguard the ballot boxes for Sunday’s primary, “Don’t forget: they are very afraid of you and your democratic right to vote.”

In an earlier message, Imamoglu described his arrest as a “coup" and accused the government of exploiting the judiciary and worsening the country’s troubled economy.