Feb 17, 2018 4 min read

In the NHL

Derick Brassard had a goal and two assists and the Ottawa Senators defeated the New York Rangers 6-3 Saturday.

Matt Duchene and Mark Stone both added a goal and an assist for Ottawa. Craig Anderson also stopped 35 shots and Johnny Oduya, Magnus Paajarvi and Thomas Chabot also scored.

Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist allowed five goals on 27 shots and was replaced by Brandon Halverson with 13 minutes to play. Halverson stopped five of six shots in his NHL debut.

• Antti Raanta made 39 saves for his first shutout of the season and the Arizona Coyotes won their fourth straight, scoring on their first shot in a 1-0 victory over the Edmonton Oilers.

Raanta had his ninth career shutout, helping the Coyotes earn points for the fifth time in six games.

Cam Talbot made 31 saves for Edmonton. The Oilers have lost six in a row.

• Nick Ritchie scored in the 11th round of the shootout and John Gibson stopped seven straight shots in the Anaheim Ducks’ 3-2 victory over the Minnesota Wild.
• Anze Kopitar and rookie Michael Amadio scored two goals each, and the Los Angeles Kings snapped a three-game skid with a 4-2 win over the Buffalo Sabres.

Jonathan Quick stopped 33 shots and Dustin Brown had two assists in a game where the Kings scored on three consecutive shots to build a 4-0 lead in the second period.

Reddick wins

at Daytona

Tyler Reddick took Dale Earnhardt Jr. to victory lane in a nail-biting opener to NASCAR’s second-tier Xfinity Series.

Reddick won Saturday at Daytona International Speedway in his debut race for JR Motorsports, the team in part owned by Earnhardt Jr. In his first season in retirement from full-time racing, Earnhardt’s presence is still strong through his race team.

JR Motorsports has won five of the last nine Xfinity Series races at Daytona.

This one took five overtimes and a photo finish to decide.

Reddick nabbed teammate Elliott Sadler at the finish line.

Ryan Reed was third, and Kaz Grala fourth, in Fords, and Daniel Suarez was the highest finishing Toyota driver in eighth.

Nets’ Dinwiddie wins

NBA skills challenge

Spencer Dinwiddie of the Brooklyn Nets won the skills challenge to kick off NBA All-Star Saturday.

Dinwiddie, who played at Taft High in the Woodland Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, beat Lauri Markkanen of the Chicago Bulls in the final round.

The skills competition consisted of two players going head to head. They dribbled around pylons, passed the ball into a net, dribbled to the other end of the floor for a layup and then dribbled back to the other end to take a pull-up 3-pointer.

Eight players started the competition, with Dinwiddie and Markkanen advancing to the final.

College football attendance down

Buoyed by turnaround season, Purdue bucked a trend in college football by increasing attendance by more 13,000 fans per game in 2017 – and, in the process, banked an extra $2.5 million in revenue compared to 2016.

Attendance at the FBS level was down overall last season by 1,409 fans per game, according to NCAA stats . CBS Sports reported it was the largest year-to-year decrease since 1983.

Penn State had the fifth-largest gain and second best among Power Five schools, averaging 106,707 last season after being at 100,257 in 2016.