NEW YORK (AP) — Edmonton Oilers defenseman Darnell Nurse has been suspended for his team's final game of the regular season, but is eligible to return for the playoffs, after cross-checking Los Angeles Kings forward Quinton Byfield in the back of the head.
The NHL's Department of Player Safety announced the suspension Tuesday following a disciplinary hearing with Nurse, who avoided missing the series opener in the fourth consecutive first round between the Oilers and Kings. He'll forfeit $48,177 in salary.
Byfield left the game Monday night with what the Kings called an upper-body injury and did not return. Coach Jim Hiller had no update on the 22-year-old's condition following a 5-0 victory at Edmonton. Byfield also did not play Tuesday night at Seattle.
In a post-whistle scrum late in the second period, Nurse put Byfield in a head lock, took him down and whacked him with his stick in the back of the helmet. Officials gave Nurse a major penalty, upholding that and ejecting him after video review.
This is Nurse's third suspension for an on-ice incident and fourth overall. He got three games in 2016 for being the aggressor in a fight and one in 2022 for headbutting Kings center Phillip Danault during the first round, as well as one in 2023 for instigating a fight in the final 5 minutes against Vegas during the second round.
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Edmonton Oilers' Evan Bouchard (2) and Darnell Nurse (25) battle with Winnipeg Jets' Vladislav Namestnikov (7) and Cole Perfetti (91) for the puck during the first period NHL action in Winnipeg, Sunday April 13 2025. (Fred Greenslade/The Canadian Press via AP)
MOSCOW (AP) — Zurab Tsereteli, a prominent Georgian-Russian sculptor known for colossal, often controversial, monuments, died early on Tuesday at 92.
His assistant Sergei Shagulashvili told Russia’s state news agency Tass that Tsereteli suffered cardiac arrest.
Tsereteli was born on January 4, 1934, in Georgia, which was part of the Soviet Union at the time, in the capital Tbilisi.
In the 1970s, Tsereteli became an art director with the Soviet Foreign Ministry, traveling the world and decorating Soviet embassies. In between, he worked on Mikhail Gorbachev’s summer house in Abkhazia.
“I don’t know why they chose me,” he said in a 2013 interview. “But I went through a good school - maybe that’s why. A school that synthesised architecture and monumental art! I had good teachers.”
In 1989, a monument designed by Tsereteli was erected in London. In 1990, another one was unveiled in front of the United Nations headquarters in New York.
After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Tsereteli moved to Moscow and built a rapport with then-mayor Yuri Luzhkov. The relationship guaranteed him regular and lucrative commissions. He designed several squares and two metro stations in central Moscow and put up a dozen massive monuments around the city.
Tsereteli’s distinctive style prompted much criticism over the years, both in Russia and abroad. Critics argued his pieces were too colossal and didn’t fit in the city's architecture.
One of his most controversial monuments was in 1997 when a 98-meter-tall Peter the Great standing on a disproportionally small ship was erected a block away from the Kremlin, prompting protests from Muscovites.
Tsereteli tried to put up a similar monument of Christopher Columbus in New York. Russian media reported in 1997 that current U.S. President Donald Trump supported his plans at the time, but city authorities rejected them. After being turned down by Columbus, Ohio and Miami as well, the statue found a taker in Puerto Rico.
Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2003 awarded Tsereteli Russian citizenship “for special services to the Russian Federation.”
In 2010, Luzhkov was dismissed as Moscow mayor. The new city administration preferred Western architects to work on ambitious urban projects, and Tsereteli was shifted to the sidelines.
However, Tsereteli remained president of the Russian Academy of Arts and director of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, which he founded in 1999.
His legacy includes some 5,000 pieces in Russia, Georgia and several other countries.
FILE - A boat floats past a huge monument to Peter the Great, created by Georgian and Russian sculptor Zurab Tsereteli, on the Moscow River in Moscow, on June 26, 2012.(AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)
FILE - Georgian and Russian sculptor Zurab Tsereteli speaks at the opening of a series of busts of Soviet leaders that he created in Moscow, Russia, on Sept. 22, 2017. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)
FILE - Georgian and Russian sculptor Zurab Tsereteli poses during the opening ceremony of the 41st Moscow International Film Festival in Moscow, Russia, on April 18, 2019. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin, File)
