NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — Evgeni Malkin scored as part of his two-point game, Sidney Crosby set up two goals and Kris Letang had an assist as the Pittsburgh Penguins clinched a playoff spot by defeating the New Jersey Devils 5-2 on Thursday night.
The Penguins are playoff-bound for the first time since 2022, ending a three-year drought that followed a streak of qualifying 16 seasons in a row. Crosby, Malkin and Letang have been around for all of it, including Stanley Cup runs in 2009, ’16 and ’17.
Bryan Rust, who was part of the back-to-back championships, scored his 29th goal of the season on Pittsburgh’s first shot of the game.
Newcomers helped make the latest bid possible, including winger Egor Chinakov, who had a goal and two assists, and netminder Stuart Skinner, who made 19 saves and was serenated by “STUUUU” chants from visiting fans in attendance. Each player was acquired by trade in December.
Skinner stopped all seven shots he faced and got a fortunate break with a puck off the post before Rust gave the Penguins the lead. He turned aside former Edmonton teammate Connor Brown later in the first, before allowing a pair of goals in the second.
Tommy Novak also had a goal for the Penguins, and Erik Karlsson sealed it with an empty-netter.
ISLANDERS 5, MAPLE LEAFS 3
NEW YORK (AP) — Matthew Schaefer tied the NHL record for goals by a rookie defenseman, and the Islanders defeated Toronto in Peter DeBoer’s first game as New York’s coach.
Cal Ritchie had a goal and an assist, and Ilya Sorokin finished with 13 saves as the Islanders snapped a four-game skid. Brayden Schenn, Jean-Gabriel Pageau and Emil Heineman also scored, and Tony DeAngelo added two assists.
DeBoer was hired Sunday after the Islanders fired Patrick Roy amid a late-season slide that saw the team lose seven of 10 games. New York remains in contention for a wild-card playoff spot, trailing Ottawa by three points with three games left.
Steven Lorentz, Easton Cowan and Morgan Rielly scored for Toronto. Artur Akhtyamov made 39 saves for the Maple Leafs, who lost their fifth straight.
SENATORS 5, PANTHERS 1
OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) — Fabian Zetterlund scored a pair of goals and Ottawa moved closer to securing a playoff berth with a win over Florida.
The Senators hold the second and final wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference, leading the New York Islanders by three points with three games remaining. Ottawa plays at New York on Saturday. The Senators are two points back of Boston for the first East wild card.
With their third straight win, the Senators wrapped up their five-game homestand with a 4-1-0 record, with the lone loss coming against Minnesota.
Drake Batherson, Artem Zub and Claude Girot also scored for Ottawa, and Linus Ullmark made 21 saves. Jesper Boqvist scored for the defending Stanley Cup champion Panthers, who have been eliminated from playoff contention.
RED WINGS 6, FLYERS 2
DETROIT (AP) — Dylan Larkin had three goals and an assist as Detroit kept its playoff chances alive with a win over Philadelphia.
Moritz Seider had a career-high five points with a goal and four assists while Patrick Kane had a goal and two assists.
The win gives the Red Wings 91 points with three games left. They trail the Ottawa Senators by three points for the second Eastern Conference wildcard, and the Senators hold the regulation-wins tiebreaker.
The Flyers, who had won three straight, are still on 92 points, one ahead of the New York Islanders for third place in the Metro.
Porter Martone had a goal and an assist for Philadelphia and has six points, including four assists, in his first six NHL games.
CANADIENS 2, LIGHTNING 1
MONTREAL (AP) — Cole Caufield became the first Montreal player to score 50 goals in a season in more than three decades and Juraj Slafkovsky scored a tiebreaker with just over a minute remaining as it beat Tampa Bay in a fight-filled game.
Slafkovsky scored his 30th at 18:56 of the third period and Nick Suzuki had two assists to raise his season total to 70 for Montreal (47-22-10). Jakub Dobes made 17 saves for his seventh consecutive win.
Darren Raddysh scored for Tampa Bay, which lost its third straight game. Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 19 shots.
Caufield beat Vasilevskiy with a wrist shot at 6:29 of the second period for the milestone goal in front of a frenzied crowd at the Bell Centre that included Prime Minister Mark Carney.
Caufield became the seventh Canadiens player to hit the 50-goal mark, and the first since Stéphane Richer in 1989-90.
SABRES 5, BLUE JACKETS 0
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Rookie Colten Ellis stopped 37 shots for his first NHL career shutout, and Buffalo beat Columbus to dent its playoff chances.
Josh Doan broke the game open with two third-period goals, while Peyton Krebs, Jack Quinn and Rasmus Dahlin also scored.
Buffalo reached the 49-win mark for just the fourth time in team history, and maintained the Atlantic Division lead with a week left in the regular season.
Ellis improved to 8-4-1 while making his first start in more than two months. He got the start with Alex Lyon expected to miss at least a week with a strained lower-body muscle sustained in practice a day earlier.
Jet Greaves stopped 19 shots in dropping to 2-5-1 in his past eight starts.
JETS 3, BLUES 2
ST. LOUIS, Mo. (AP) — Alex Iafallo, Josh Morrissey and Jonathan Toews scored as Winnipeg beat St. Louis, keeping its playoff hopes alive.
Mark Scheifele had two assists and Connor Hellebuyck made 20 saves for Winnipeg, which has 82 points. The Jets went into the game four points behind Nashville (84 points) for the second Western Conference wild card.
Dylan Holloway and Colton Parayko scored for St. Louis and Jordan Binnington had 31 saves. The Blues, who have 78 points, took a hit to their playoff hopes with four games remaining in the regular season.
Morrissey slammed home the rebound of a shot by Jacob Bryson to give the Jets their first lead of the game with 5:49 left in the second period and Toews made it 3-1 just 1:40 later.
Robert Thomas flicked a pass backward between his legs to Holloway for a goal from the right circle that opened the scoring at the 4:56 mark of the first period. Thomas has 325 assists for the Blues, tied with Al MacInnis for fifth-most in franchise history.
Iafollo poked home a feed from Scheifele from point-blank range near the midway point in the first period.
HURRICANES 7, BLACKHAWKS 2
CHICAGO (AP) — Logan Stankoven had two goals and an assist, helping depleted Carolina beat Chicago.
Taylor Hall added a goal and an assist as Carolina improved to 9-3-0 in its last 12 games. Mark Jankowski scored twice and Sean Walker and K’Andre Miller also added goals in the opener of a four-game trip, and Frederik Andersen made 23 saves.
Playing without several regulars in their first game since clinching the Metropolitan Division title, the Hurricanes (51-22-6) stayed two points ahead of Buffalo for the top spot in the Eastern Conference. The Sabres cruised to a 5-0 victory over Columbus.
Anton Frondell had two goals for Chicago in his ninth career game. Spencer Knight stopped 15 shots.
The last-place Blackhawks lost for the seventh time in eight games.
AVALANCHE 3, FLAMES 1
DENVER (AP) — Nathan MacKinnon scored his career-high 52nd goal of the season into an empty net and had two assists to help Colorado clinch the NHL’s top seed for the postseason with a win over Calgary.
It’s the fourth time Colorado has won the Presidents’ Trophy for the best record in hockey. With 114 points and four games left, the Avalanche have a shot to earn 120 in a season for the first time in franchise history. There have only been 12 NHL teams to reach at least 120 points, the most recent being the Boston Bruins in 2022-23 with 135.
Martin Necas and Gabriel Landeskog also scored for the Avalanche, who were without forward Nazem Kadri (finger) and defenseman Cale Makar (upper body). Mackenzie Blackwood stopped 28 shots.
Tyson Gross scored his first career NHL goal with 2:52 remaining to cut the lead to 2-1. Gross scored again moments later but the Avalanche successfully challenged for offsides to negate the tying goal. MacKinnon sealed it with an empty-net score with 55 seconds left.
MAMMOTH 4, PREDATORS 1
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Dylan Guenther scored his 39th goal of the season, Clayton Keller had three assists to reach 56 and Utah beat Nashville for its fifth straight victory.
Less than an hour after the game, Utah clinched a playoff berth in its second season when the Anaheim Ducks beat the San Jose Sharks 6-1. The Mammoth sit in the first Western Conference wild card spot with 90 points and have a six-point lead over Nashville.
Kailer Yamamoto, Nick Schmaltz and captain Lawson Crouse also scored for Utah, and Karel Vejmelka stopped 29 shots.
Erik Haula had Carolina’s goal and Juuse Saros made 23 saves.
Yamamoto, who only played 12 NHL games last season, scored his 12th goal to open the scoring with 5:33 to go in the first period. He deflected in a puck off a cross-crease pass from Guenther for his second goal in the last three games.
Schmaltz scored his 31st goal — and fifth in his last five games — on a power play 5:35 into the second for a 2-0 lead. Keller slid the puck across the crease to Schmaltz at the back door.
Crouse, who had 20 points all of last season, scored his 22nd goal early in the third for a 3-0 lead.
STARS 5, WILD 4
DALLAS (AP) — Jason Robertson scored his 42nd goal with 9:25 left and Dallas held on for a win over Minnesota in a physical and entertaining preview of the upcoming playoff series between the Central Division foes.
Wyatt Johnston, Mikko Rantanen and Colin Blackwell each had a goal and an assist for the Stars, who now at 106 points are four ahead of Minnesota. They were already locked in as first-round opponents, but both still have three regular-season games left to determine home-ice advantage.
Kirill Kaprizov had two of Minnesota’s three power-play goals, giving him 45 goals overall and matching his single-season franchise record at 19 power-play goals. Mats Zuccarello had three assists.
But the Wild had their four-game winning streak snapped in an uncharacteristic way. It was their first regulation loss since March 2024 when leading going into the third period — 61-0-4 in that span.
Minnesota had another power-play chance after Rantanen’s slashing penalty with 2 1/2 minutes left, but failed to score even with an extra skater after pulling Filip Gustavsson out of the net.
Stars goalie Jake Oettinger had 27 saves. Gustavsson stopped 15 shots.
DUCKS 6, SHARKS 1
ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — John Carlson scored three goals for the first hat trick of his 17-year NHL career, and Anaheim snapped its six-game losing streak with an emphatic victory over San Jose.
Leo Carlsson, Alex Killorn and Frank Vatrano also scored and Beckett Sennecke had two assists for the Ducks, who jumped to a 4-0 lead and dominated their Pacific Division rivals for their first win since March 26.
Carlson scored two power-play goals in the third period, connecting with 5:57 left to secure the first hat trick of his 1,156-game career. The veteran defenseman has been exactly what the Ducks needed when they acquired him at the trade deadline, scoring 12 points in 13 games while steadying the back end for one of the NHL’s worst defensive teams.
Lukas Dostal made 16 saves, but the Ducks fell 7:20 short of their first shutout in 160 games since last season’s opener on Oct. 12, 2024 — also against San Jose.
Shakir Mukhamadullin scored and Yaroslav Askarov stopped 27 shots for the Sharks, who had won five of seven to surge into playoff contention.
Ron Francis To Step Down At End Of SeasonThe Kraken seek a new leader as Ron Francis departs, leaving a legacy of team building and a future in flux. 
