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officialsbaseball  
#1 Posted : Saturday, December 29, 2018 9:40:37 AM(UTC)
officialsbaseball

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TAMPA Adidas Conor Timmins Jersey , Fla. — An early season battle of league titans takes place on Thursday when the Tampa Bay Lightning host the Nashville Predators.Tampa Bay and Nashville each enter the season with Stanley Cup aspirations. Both sit atop their divisions through the first month of action.The Lightning ended October with a record of 8-2-1 and hold a plus-11 goal differential while sitting on top of the Atlantic. The Predators start November with a 9-3 record, plus-13 goal differential and a perfect 5-0 record on the road while leading the Central.Article continues below ...Nashville received a boost on Wednesday when reigning Vezina Trophy winning goaltender Pekka Rinne was activated off injured reserve and joined the team for the trip to Tampa. Rinne has missed five games since colliding with teammate Kevin Fiala during a game on Oct. 15. The Predators did not practice before leaving town, so there was no indication whether Rinne would start the game against the Lightning.Backup Juuse Saros has been handling the load in Rinne’s absence, posting a 3-2 record with a 2.62 goal against average and .917 save percentage while starting all five games, including Tuesday’s 4-1 victory against Vegas.“He’s carrying this team,” Rinne recently told The Tennessean. “He’s playing great hockey. He’s been doing an amazing job. First of all, we have a good tandem and a good relationship. It starts from there.“At the same time, I feel really good when there’s bumps and bruises, you can take your time to heal.”The Lightning, meanwhile, have picked up points in eight of the past nine games and come off an 8-3 trouncing of the New Jersey Devils as five different players recorded at least three points, led by Brayden Point who had a goal and four assists.“Pointer just controls the game with his speed. He’s all over the ice,” defenseman Braydon Coburn said. “He’s got the puck. He supports the puck. He’s on top of guys. He’s so tight defensively Adidas Ian Cole Jersey , and I think it frustrates offensive guys. When he gets the puck, he’s gone. He’s gone. He takes advantage offensively. He uses his speed to make space and chances for himself and his teammates.”Tampa Bay continues to be without the services of Norris Trophy defenseman Victor Hedman, who will miss his third consecutive game with an undisclosed upper-body injury suffered on Oct. 26. But in his absence, the Lightning defense have chipped in on the offense. In Tuesday’s victory against New Jersey, Ryan McDonagh and Coburn combined for three goals and six points, with Coburn adding his second career multi-goal game and first since Oct. 31, 2009.“We see his skill in practice and in the games all the time, so I don’t think we are too surprised to see him put the puck in the net,” Point said of Coburn. CRANBERRY TOWNSHIP, Pa. (AP) Sidney Crosby has faced the Washington Capitals three times in the playoffs. All three times the Pittsburgh captain has led his team to victory. And all three times the Penguins used the win as the springboard to a raucous mid-June parade with the Stanley Cup in tow.Still, Crosby sounded like a cautious investor on Tuesday when asked if Pittsburgh has a mental advantage over rival Alexander Ovechkin and the Capitals heading into yet another postseason showdown in the Eastern Conference semifinals starting later this week.Past performance, the two-time MVP stressed, does not guarantee future results.”I think it depends on what you do in the series and how you play Adidas Philipp Grubauer Jersey ,” Crosby said. ”I don’t think it plays a huge role. I guess to answer your question, no.”A mantra Crosby’s teammates repeated over and over they prepared for yet another showdown in a rivalry that somehow manages to be both compelling and one-sided. Pittsburgh is 9-1 all-time in the postseason against Washington regardless of who is in the black-and-gold sweaters and who is in red, white and blue.Not that Ovechkin is intimidated. The Capitals star said he “can’t wait” to get another shot at the Penguins after spearheading Washington’s first-round win over Columbus in six games. That’s fine by Pittsburgh, which has played Lucy to Washington’s Charlie Brown for more than a quarter century, dangling a potentially deep playoff run in front of the Capitals only to pull it back at the last minute.The Penguins, however, remain wary. Just because they always beat Washington doesn’t mean they’re going to always beat Washington. The teams split their four meetings during the regular season, with the Capitals wrapping up their third straight Metropolitan Division title with a 3-1 win in Pittsburgh on April Fool’s Day.Of course, none of it matters once the puck drops in Game 1.”It’s a new year,” Pittsburgh defenseman Kris Letang said. ”The series is going to play out differently. The game is going to be won differently. You don’t know how it is going to go. The only thing I know is it’s a good rivalry, two really good teams, two teams that have a lot of punch offensively. It’s going to be fun to be a part of.”Particularly for Letang. He missed all of Pittsburgh’s run to a second straight Stanley Cup last spring while recovering from neck surgery, though he was able to make his way to the arena for Game 7 of the conference semifinals Adidas Cale Makar Jersey , when Marc-Andre Fleury stopped all 29 shots he faced and the Penguins escaped with a 2-0 victory to finish a series in which both teams scored 20 goals and won on opposing ice at least twice.Though there are a handful of new faces on both sides, the principals remain the same. Ovechkin and Crosby. Evgeni Malkin and Nicklas Backstrom. Letang and Braden Holtby. Two weeks of taut, tense hockey in the offing.”I think it’s the same old dangerous team,” Letang said. ”Like, don’t get me wrong, those series went the distance, they went to overtime. It was a tough matchup that could have gone either way. They cause the same problems to our team. They cause problems on the power play. They have a lot of skill. They make a lot of plays.”Yet the Penguins have always found a way to make at least one more, though they may be at less than 100 percent when things get going. Malkin and forward Carl Hagelin both missed practice on Tuesday. Malkin is dealing with a lower-body injury while Hagelin has an upper-body issue after colliding with Philadelphia’s Claude Giroux in Pittsburgh’s clinching victory over the Flyers in Game 6.That could provide more playing time for players like Riley Sheahan – who filled in capably on the second line for Malkin in Game 6 – and rookie Zach Aston-Reese. The 23-year-old was in high school the first time Crosby and Ovechkin met in the playoffs in 2009 – when the Penguins blitzed the Capitals in Game 7 of the conference semifinals on their way to the Cup.This time, Aston-Reese’s view will be markedly different. He noticed an uptick in intensity from the regular season when the Penguins fended off the Flyers. Now, the dial goes up to 11 and stays there.”I expect every game to be almost like a Game 7,” Aston-Reese said.That’s because it almost always is.—
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