Browsing: saves

NEWARK, N.J. — Nico Daws made 29 saves, Paul Cotter, Brenden Dillon and rookie Arseny Gritsyuk scored and the New Jersey Devils beat the Minnesota Wild 4-1 on Wednesday night for their sixth straight victory.

New Jersey began the streak after an opening loss at Carolina, winning three each at home and on the road. The winning streak is the Devils’ longest since a 13-game run early in the 2022-23 season.

Jesper Bratt had an empty-net goal, and Dawson Mercer added two assists.

Cotter opened the scoring with 3:39 left in the first, jamming a loose puck past goalie Filip Gustavsson for his first of the season.

Dillon made it 2-0 with his second goal this season — and second in two nights — at 6:08 of the middle period.

The 24-year-old Gritsyuk, a fifth-round draft in 2019, scored his first NHL goal on the power play at 4:53 of the third.

Minnesotaâ€s Matt Boldy ruined Daws†shutout bid with his fifth goal midway through the third.

Daws made his season debut after Jake Allen won New Jerseyâ€s three previous contests. Starter Jacob Markstrom was injured in a victory at Columbus on Oct. 13.

New Jersey denied three Wild power plays to extend its streak of penalty kills to 21. The Devils have allowed just one power-play goal in seven games.

The Wild finished a five-game trip with one win, 3-1 over the Rangers at Madison Square Garden on Monday.

Devils: Host San Jose on Friday night.

Wild: Host Utah on Saturday night to start a six-game homestand.

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NEW YORK — Anthony Beauvillier scored in the second period, Charlie Lindgren stopped 35 shots, and the Washington Capitals beat the New York Rangers 1-0 on Sunday night.

Beauvillierâ€s tip-in of a shot by Alex Ovechkin with 6:13 left in the middle period beat Rangers goalie Jonathan Quick and held up as the Capitals won for the second time in two nights. Washington defeated the Islanders 4-2 on Saturday at UBS Arena.

The goal was the first this season for the 28-year-old Beauvillier, who is playing for his sixth NHL team. Defenseman Declan Chisholm also had an assist, his first point with Washington in his 100th career game.

It was the 10th career shutout for Lindgren, making his first start this season.

The assist was the 728th of Ovechkinâ€s career. The 40-year-old forward entered his 21st NHL campaign with 897 goals, most in NHL history. Ovechkin.is six games shy of becoming the eighth player to play 1,500 games with one franchise.

Lindgren made a sprawling glove save on Mika Zibanejad early in the second period, then stopped Sam Carrick with his stick from in close nine minutes into the period. He made 13 saves in each of the first two periods and nine more in the thir,d including a point-blank chance by Will Cuylle with 1:16 left.

The 39-year-old Quick was also making his season debut after Igor Shesterkin won two of the Rangers’ first three games. He made 20 saves.

The Rangers had two power-play chances in the second period. Washington had one in the third.

The Rangers were coming off two road wins, 4-0 at Buffalo and 6-1 at Pittsburgh, after losing their home opener 3-0 to the Penguins.

Washington lost its season opener at home, 3-1, to Boston.

The Rangers were missing forward Vincent Trocheck (out week-to-week with an upper body injury) and defenseman Carson Soucy, who was hurt in Saturdayâ€s win against the Penguins when he fell awkwardly into the boards after a collision with Pittsburghâ€s Rickard Rakell.

Capitals: Host Tampa Bay on Tuesday.

Rangers: Host Edmonton on Tuesday.

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The New York Yankees live to fight another day. History will record that it’s because the Judge ruled they should live.

It was not Aaron Judge who completed the Yankees’ 9-6 comeback win over the Toronto Blue Jays in Game 3 of the American League Division Series on Tuesday. Yet he was the one who flipped the “on” switch with a game-tying three-run home run off the left field foul pole at Yankee Stadium in the fourth inning.

It would be impossible to overstate just how badly the Yankees needed that after what happened in Toronto in the first two games of the ALDS. To quickly recap, the Yankees:

• Lost 10-1 in Game 1 and 13-7 in Game 2
• Allowed Toronto to set a record with 23 runs in the first two games of a postseason
• Allowed Toronto to become the first team to score 20 unanswered runs in a playoff series

It looked early in Game 3 like the Yankees were in for more of the unsparing same. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. kept up the “There goes that man again!” energy with a two-run homer (his third of the series) in the first inning, and the Blue Jays took a 6-1 lead into the bottom of the third. Their probability to winwas at 80 percent.

Visions of the future surely crept into the minds of Yankees fans everywhere, and it must have looked like a great big ball of uncertainty. If it really was going to be 1, 2, 3 and all she wrote for the 2025 team, that would be one more wasted year of Judge’s prime and possibly the end of the line for general manager Brian Cashman and manager Aaron Boone. What then?

Yet all that had to go on hold as soon as the Yankees pushed two runs across in the third, and the focus was entirely at the plate when Judge strode to the plate with two runners aboard in the subsequent inning.

Though he may not have been thinking it, the rest of us were: He needs this one.

Yeah, yeah. The two-time AL MVP had entered the game with a .444 average to show for five playoff games. But even that wasn’t allowing him to wave away the stink of his poor defense and no-shows in clutch spots, not to mention the weight of his postseason history.

Entering Game 3, Judge was one of 106 players with at least 3,000 plate appearances in the regular season and 200 plate appearances in the postseason. And of the bunch, the 241-point gap between his regular season OPS (1.028) and playoff OPS (.787) was the biggest of them all:

1. Aaron Judge:-241
2. Reggie Sanders:-222
3. Joe DiMaggio:-217
4. Josh Reddick:-212
5. Kyle Tucker:-197

The absolute nadir for Judge’s bat in October came just last year. The Yankees made it to the World Series for the first time in 15 years, but his .184 average throughout is part of the reason why they’re now 16 years removed from World Series championship No. 27.

So when Judge went down 0-2 against Louis Varland, you could practically hear the articles writing themselves. But then he did something no batter had done all season: turn on a 100 mph fastball and hit it out of the ballpark.

Like that, the game was tied and the win probability had swung 22 points in favor of the Yankees. It is technically Judge’s second-biggest playoff knock after his game-tying homer off Emmanuel Clase in Game 3 of last year’s ALCS, but that ended in a loss for the Yankees. This time, Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s go-ahead homer in the fifth was all they needed to avoid that fate.

The Yankees still trail the series 2-1, but it genuinely feels like a whole new ballgame. On the hill for the home team in Game 4 on Wednesday will be Cam Schlittler, who was last seen making an instant star of himself. The Blue Jays are countering with a bullpen game…just one day after Shane Bieber could give them only 2.2 innings in Game 3.

“It ain’t over ’til it’s over,” as possibly the wisest man ever once said. But at least the Yankees are pointed in a happier direction, while Judge himself can look back on his playoff story and finally see a signature moment.

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  Jorge CastilloOct 1, 2025, 09:15 PM ET

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  ESPN baseball reporter. Covered the Washington Wizards from 2014 to 2016 and the Washington Nationals from 2016 to 2018 for The Washington Post before covering the Los Angeles Dodgers and MLB for the Los Angeles Times from 2018 to 2024.

NEW YORK — Back in the starting lineup one night after he was benched for matchup purposes, Jazz Chisholm Jr. put together a season-saving performance for the New York Yankees on Wednesday night with dynamic displays of athleticism on both sides of the ball that fueled a 4-3 win over the Boston Red Sox in Game 2 of the American League Wild Card Series.

Chisholm made a crucial run-saving play with his glove in the seventh inning and hustled all the way from first base on Austin Wells’ single to score the tiebreaking run in the eighth inning to help the Red Sox force a decisive Game 3 on Thursday.

It will be the fourth winner-take-all postseason game between the Yankees and Red Sox, and the first since the 2021 AL wild card, a one-game format won by Boston.

“Anything to help us win,” Chisholm said. “All that was clear before I came to the field today. After I left the field yesterday, it is win the next game. It is win or go home for us. It is all about winning.”

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A mainstay in the lineup all season at second base, Chisholm was left off their starting nine in Game 1 against left-hander Garrett Crochet before entering the loss late as a defensive replacement.

Afterward, Chisholm took questions about manager Aaron Boone’s decision to bench him with his back turned to reporters. It was a poor attempt to conceal his disdain, one that Boone was asked about before Wednesday’s do-or-die Game 2.

“Wasn’t necessarily how I [would’ve] handled it, but I don’t need him to put a happy face on,” Boone said before the game. “I need him to go out and play his butt off for us tonight. That’s what I expect to happen.”

What happened was a clutch effort that kept the Yankees’ season alive.

In the seventh inning, with the score tied and runners on first and second for the Red Sox, Masataka Yoshida hit a ground ball to Chisholm’s right side off Yankees reliever Fernando Cruz that appeared headed to right field to give Boston the lead. Instead, Chisholm made a diving stop. His throw to first base was late and bounced away from first baseman Ben Rice, but Red Sox third base coach Kyle Hudson held Nate Eaton and Chisholm’s effort prevented the run from scoring.

“That was the game right there,” Cruz said. “I think that was the play of the game. There’s some stuff that goes unnoticed sometimes, but I want to make sure it’s mentioned. Jazz saved us the game. Completely.”

Jazz Chisholm scored the tiebreaking run from first on Austin Wells’ single in the eighth, helping to force the fourth winner-take-all postseason game between the Yankees and Red Sox. Photo by Ishika Samant/Getty Images

An inning later, after Cruz escaped the bases-loaded jam and erupted with a rousing display of emotions, Chisholm worked a seven-pitch, two-out walk against Garrett Whitlock. The plate appearance changed the game.

Wells followed by getting to another full count to give Chisholm the green light at first base. With Chisholm running on the pitch, Wells lined a changeup from Whitlock that landed just inside the right-field line. Chisholm, boosted with his running start, darted around the bases to score with a headfirst slide, just beating the throw to incite a previously anxious crowd.

“Any ball that an outfielder moves to his left or right, I have to score, in my head,” Chisholm said. “That’s all I was thinking.”

The Yankees’ first two runs required less exertion. Ben Rice, another left-handed hitter not included in the starting lineup in Game 1, crushed the first pitch he saw in his postseason debut for a two-run home run off Brayan Bello in the first inning.

The Red Sox matched the blast with a two-run single from Trevor Story in the third inning before manager Alex Cora made a surprising decision in the bottom half of the frame to pull Bello with one out after throwing just 28 pitches. To win, Boston’s bullpen would need to cover at least 20 outs. The aggressive tactic proved effective until Whitlock, the fifth reliever Cora summoned, surrendered Wells’ single on his season-high 48th and final pitch, unleashing Chisholm around the bases.

“What do you expect?” Yankees right fielder Aaron Judge said. “He’s a game changer. But it just shows you the maturity of not taking what happened before and bringing it into today’s game. He showed up ready to play today and ended up having the plays for us throughout the night.”

With a win Thursday, the Yankees could become the first team to take a wild-card series after losing Game 1 since the best-of-three format was implemented for the 2022 season. The Toronto Blue Jays, the AL’s top seed, await in the Division Series. Game 1 is scheduled for Saturday.

If the Yankees get there, they could have a video game to thank. Chisholm credited a late-night video game session after Game 1 in helping turn the page from his disappointment. Playing “MLB The Show” as the New York Aliens — a team he created that features himself, Ken Griffey Jr. and Jimmy Rollins — he drubbed an online opponent by a score of 12-1 and reported for work on Wednesday ready.

“I mercy-ruled someone,” Chisholm said. “That’s how I get my stress off.”

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