ST. LOUIS (AP) — Kent Johnson had a goal and assist and the Columbus Blue Jackets beat the St. Louis Blues 5-3 on Saturday night for their season-best fifth straight victory.
The Blue Jackets have won nine of 10, outscoring opponents 38-27 since Jan. 11.
Damon Severson, Isac Lundestrom, Denton Mateychuk and Mason Marchment also scored for Columbus. Jet Greaves made 28 saves.
Tyler Tucker, Jonatan Berggren and Jimmy Snuggerud scored for St. Louis.
Jordan Binnington stopped 18 shots. He has lost has lost six consecutive starts and 10 of the last 11.
Severson broke a 3-3 tie on a power play with 3:59 left in the second period with his fourth goal of the season.
Blues center Robert Thomas had a minor leg procedure performed Friday. He is expected back following the Olympic break.
Karlsson notched his 700th assist on Rickard Rakell's power play goal that made it 4-1 in the third period, becoming the 12th defenseman in NHL history to accomplish that feat. He's also the eighth-fastest defenseman to reach that milestone.
700 assists for EK65 👏
Karlsson becomes the 12th defenseman in NHL history - and eighth fastest (1,132 GP) - to reach the milestone. pic.twitter.com/RWz4nBaiXt
Karlsson is also only the second Swedish defenseman to hit 700 assists, joining Nicklas Lidstrom, who finished is career with 878.
Karlsson only needs 13 more assists to pass Scott Stevens for the 11th most assists among all defensemen in NHL history. He needs 43 more to move into the top 10 all-time.
The Penguins held on to beat the Rangers 6-5 on Saturday and have won six in a row heading into Monday's game against the Ottawa Senators.
Dan Muse and Mike Sullivan have the Penguins and Rangers trending in different directions.
PITTSBURGH — There is something perversely ironic about the current state of the Rangers and Penguins, after the two clubs swapped coaches this past summer.
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Serving as an assistant under Peter Laviolette in New York the previous two seasons, Dan Muse was charged with getting an older Penguins team back on track while general manager Kyle Dubas retools a roster that is bracing for life after the Big Three of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang.
Muse and the Penguins were sitting in second place in the Metropolitan Division entering Saturday’s matchup with the Rangers.
The end of Pittsburgh’s three-season playoff drought is well within reach.
What a way to begin an NHL head coaching career.
Mike Sullivan reacts during the Rangers’ 6-5 road loss to the Penguins on Jan. 31, 2026 in Pittsburgh. AP
Mike Sullivan, who won two Stanley Cups and spent the past decade with the Penguins, was brought to New York to salvage the championship window.
A disagreement on the timeline back to success reportedly led to Sullivan’s departure from Pittsburgh, so joining a Rangers team that expected to be competitive was a preferable landing spot.
On the day the Penguins were celebrating the 10th anniversary of their 2016 Stanley Cup win, however, Sullivan came into PPG Paints Arena with the Rangers sitting in dead last in the Eastern Conference.
The start of his Rangers tenure certainly hasn’t gone the way he imagined, but the progress his former team has made hasn’t come as a shock.
“It doesn’t surprise me, because I think the core guys that have been here as long as they have, they’re a unique group,” Sullivan said Saturday, before the Rangers lost, 6-5, to the Penguins. “And although they are aging, there’s still elite-level play in their game. It’s driven by Sid, their captain. Does it surprise me? No, it doesn’t. I think they’ve done a great job as far as becoming a team, and some of the young guys they added, and some of the pieces they added along the way.
Dan Muse is pictured during the Penguins’ Jan. 29 game. AP
“When you look at the top line, they drive, they’re the heartbeat of the team and have been for a number of years. All the elements are in play. Their special teams have been really good. They’re getting saves. It’s a good recipe.”
The Rangers job now looks a lot different than it did just under four months ago.
It could be some time before the team starts experiencing consistent success again, and that’s not exactly what Sullivan signed up for.
He has already made it clear he is still coaching to win.
Sullivan is not a development coach, but he is a player’s coach.
Perhaps it could be beneficial for Sullivan to have this time to not only shape the organization’s youngsters into his system, but also foster the types of relationships that he has built his reputation on.
Considering the switch-up, there is understandably some doubt surrounding Sullivan’s fit for what’s ahead.
But he is the coach that president and general manager Chris Drury has wanted at the helm of his team.
One of the loudest criticisms of Sullivan’s tenure in Pittsburgh was his management of youth.
Though there really wasn’t much for him to work with back then.
An abundance of rookies have already infiltrated the Rangers lineup, some of whom Sullivan has entrusted more and more.
There is belief that Sullivan’s preexisting relationships with the Wilkes-Barre players who were promoted to the Penguins in 2016 played a major factor in the team’s ascension to Stanley Cup champions.
“We’ll explore our lineup for sure, and we’ll move people around,” Sullivan said when asked if he can experiment in ways he maybe wouldn’t have if the Rangers weren’t in their current situation. “We already have, and we’ll continue to do so based on what we see, and where we think we can put players in positions to be successful and give an opportunity to play to their strengths. That’s what we’re trying to do. Gabe Perreault is a perfect example right now, and the opportunity he’s getting in the position that he’s in. But he’s not the only one. There’s a number of them.
“We’re going to continue to try to get to know this group even more so than we know them now. We’ll continue to assess and we’ll continue to learn and grow together as a group, and that’s what we’re going to try to do.”
Sullivan later added: “I’m going to do my best to meet those challenges to try to help this organization move forward.”
The New York Rangers’ 6-5 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins on Saturday afternoon was emotional for Mike Sullivan.
As part of the ten-year anniversary celebration of the Penguins' 2016 Stanley Cup team, Sullivan attended an event with all of his former players on Friday night.
Ahead of Saturday afternoon’s matchup, the entire team was honored, including Sullivan, who received a standing ovation from the Pittsburgh fans.
“It's a proud moment for me, I was really happy to get a chance to see some of those guys that I was fortunate enough to win a Stanley Cup with,” Sullivan said. “That group of players deserves to be celebrated. They were a great team. We were certainly proud of them. It was a privilege to coach them, and so it was a bit of an emotional moment.”
Sullivan coached the Penguins for 10 seasons, winning two Stanley Cups in the process.
However, over Sullivan’s final three seasons in Pittsburgh, the team failed to reach the playoffs. After the 2024-25 campaign, Sullivan and the Penguins parted ways with a fresh start clearly needed from both sides.
Sullivan left a Penguins team that was seemingly retooling and looking to get younger around its core of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang, while he joined a Rangers team still hoping to remain competitive following a disappointing season.
Ironically, it’s the Penguins, coached by former Rangers assistant coach Dan Muse, that find themselves in a playoff spot with an impressive 28-14-11 record, as they’ve managed to flip the script upon the departure of Sullivan.
“It doesn't surprise me because I think those core guys that have been here as long as they have, they're a unique group,” Sullivan said of the Penguins' success. “Although they are aging, they're still elite-level play in their game. It's driven by Sid, their captain.
“And so does it surprise me? No, it doesn't. I think they've done a great job as far as becoming a team, and some of the young guys they added, and some of the pieces they added along the way. When you look at the top line, they are the heartbeat of the team, and have been for a number of years. All the elements are in play. Their special teams have been really good. They're getting saves. It's a good recipe.”
On the other side of the coin, the Rangers currently sit in last place in the Eastern Conference standings with a 22-28-6 record. Instead of competing, Sullivan is now forced to navigate through yet another retooling situation with little to no hope of making the playoffs.
“I’m fine, it's a different challenge,” Sullivan said about how he is navigating through the Rangers’ struggles. “We're going to keep digging in here. We're going to try to rally around one another and control what we can, and we're going to try to win the game right in front of us. It's a different situation. I'd be lying if I didn't tell you otherwise, but I think our guys have done a good job in just trying to compartmentalize their emotions. When the puck drops, they try to do their best to compete and play the game the right way.”
The contrast between the two teams was on full display on Saturday afternoon.
The Rangers dug themselves into a 2-0 deficit less than 10 minutes into the game and were down 5-1 heading into the final period.
Through the first 40 minutes of the contest, the game was controlled by the Penguins, specifically indicative of their 10-2 edge in shots in the second period.
Despite a strong and valiant push by the Rangers in the final frame that saw them cut Pittsburgh’s lead to 6-5, it was simply too little too late, and the Blueshirts were unable to overcome their early woes.
This loss was yet another reality check for Sullivan, watching the Penguins thrive in his absence, as it certainly couldn’t have been easy for him.
Jan 19, 2026; Seattle, Washington, USA; Pittsburgh Penguins defenseman Kris Letang (58) during the third period against the Seattle Kraken at Climate Pledge Arena. Mandatory Credit: Steven Bisig-Imagn Images
Steven Bisig-Imagn Images
PITTSBURGH (AP) — Pittsburgh Penguins defenseman Kris Letang will miss at least four weeks with a fractured foot.
The club announced the extent of the injury on Saturday before the surging Penguins faced the New York Rangers. Pittsburgh coach Dan Muse said Letang, who is in his 20th season, injured the foot during a 6-2 victory over Chicago on Thursday.
Letang’s absence comes with the Penguins surging into the Olympic break. Pittsburgh is 6-0-2 in its last eight games to move into second place in the Metropolitan Division.
The 38-year-old Letang has three goals and 22 assists in 50 games this season for the Penguins. He is currently three points shy of 800 for his career.
Letang’s injury comes at a potentially fortuitous time for Pittsburgh with the NHL set to take an extended break for the 2026 Winter Games in Milan Cortina, which start next week. The Penguins not participating in the Olympics will be off from Feb. 6 to Feb. 25.
The San Jose Sharks are enduring a tough five-game road swing, finishing the Tour de Canada with back-to-back losses.
After falling to the Edmonton Oilers in overtime on Thursday, San Jose jumped out to two early leads against the Calgary Flames, only to have a late shorthanded goal by Joel Farabee swing the game in Calgary’s favor, giving the Flames a 3–2 victory at the Scotiabank Saddledome.
San Jose’s road trip continues with stops in Chicago and Colorado before the NHL takes an extended break for the Winter Olympics in Italy, marking the first time NHL players will participate since 2014.
The Sharks struck first when Will Smith converted a power-play tap-in at 3:11 of the first period, finishing a precise backdoor pass from Alexander Wennberg. Calgary responded later in the period when Morgan Frost jammed a loose puck past a scrambling San Jose defense while the Sharks were down two men.
San Jose regained the equalizer shortly after a power play that carried over from the first period expired. William Eklund drove to the net and poked a loose puck into the crease, where Adam Gaudette was waiting for a simple tap-in on the right side.
Calgary countered when Matvei Gridin, set up by a slick cross-ice feed from Frost, executed a fluid one-timer, beating Alex Nedeljkovic to his left.
The decisive moment came at 6:53 of the third period, when Farabee, shorthanded, swiped a backhand past Nedeljkovic to give the Flames their first lead and ultimately the win.
Nedeljkovic, who played very well and finished the night with 39 saves, briefly left the game with 3:15 remaining after taking a hard lower-body shot but returned following the injury scare. Despite his efforts between the pipes, the Sharks were a bit short.
Next Game
The Sharks have two games left on this road trip with the next one taking place on Monday against the Chicago Blackhawks. Coverage begins at 7:30 p.m. local time.
PITTSBURGH (AP) — Sidney Crosby raised his eyes to the videoboard, and all the memories came flooding back, accompanied by tears that the Pittsburgh Penguins captain made no effort to wipe away.
Spend your life doing something, and things get blurry. It wasn't until Crosby watched a tribute to the 2016 Penguins team that won the franchise's fourth Stanley Cup before Saturday's 6-5 win over the New York Rangers that some of the moments he'd thought were lost to time recrystallized in high definition.
Nick Bonino's overtime winner over Washington in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals. Bryan Rust's go-ahead goal in Game 7 of the conference finals against Tampa Bay. Kris Letang's Cup-clinching marker — off a feed from Crosby — in Game 6 against San Jose.
Standing near center ice next to Letang (in a boot to protect the fractured left foot he sustained on Thursday against Chicago) and Evgeni Malkin, with so many familiar faces stretched 10 deep in both directions, the usually reserved 38-year-old Crosby felt a twinge he figured might come and leaned into it.
“I love the experiences and the memories that I have,” Crosby said. "That’s how it comes out. You don’t see those moments all the time. It’s not like I watch those on YouTube. So when you see them, they tend to hit you a little harder the older you get.”
Many of those Crosby skated alongside a decade ago have moved on to the next chapter of their lives. Bonino is now on staff for first-year Penguins coach Dan Muse. Defenseman Trevor Daley is a special assistant to general manager Kyle Dubas. Goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury recently retired. Kunitz is a player development advisor with the Chicago Blackhawks.
The group as a whole was going nowhere in late 2015 when then-head coach Mike Johnston was fired and replaced by Mike Sullivan. Over the next six months, Sullivan and then-general manager Jim Rutherford (now the president of the Vancouver Canucks) turned an underachieving group into champions. They did it again the following year, becoming the first franchise in nearly two decades to go back-to-back.
In Crosby's head, it doesn't seem like a long time ago. As a professional athlete, it's an eternity. The 2016 and 2017 teams cemented Crosby's status as the greatest player of his generation.
That kind of success has been hard to come by of late. The Penguins, a postseason fixture from 2007-22, haven't won a playoff series since 2018. And while Crosby remains a force — he recently surpassed franchise icon, Hall of Famer and minority owner Mario Lemieux as the team's all-time scoring leader and is on his way to extending his NHL record of averaging at least a point a game to 21 years and counting — he's also become keenly aware of just how fleeting the kind of chemistry the 2016 club can be.
“I love that group,” Crosby said. “I love playing.”
He loves winning even more, something the current crop of Penguins is doing at a rate that has them among the biggest surprises in the league as the Olympic break looms.
Pittsburgh's ‘harder-than-it-had-to-be’ win over the Rangers — now coached by Sullivan, who received one of the loudest ovations seven months after trading Pittsburgh for New York — moved the Penguins into second place alone in the Metropolitan Division.
Their 13th victory in 17 games since Dec. 27 came the way a lot of them have come over the last three-plus months: with contributions from up and down the lineup. Anthony Mantha, working on the third line, scored twice. Noel Acciari, a fourth-line fixture, scored a pair too. Rookie Ben Kindel — all of 18 — added a late empty netter to avoid what might have been a stunning collapse after the Penguins flirted with letting a four-goal lead in the third period slip away.
The team that has struggled to defend during their three-year playoff absence held the Rangers without a shot on goal for 21 minutes at one point. And when New York drew within one with 10 seconds to go and then managed to get a faceoff in the Pittsburgh zone with 3.6 seconds left, Acciari won the draw and steered the puck out of danger.
The heady play let goaltender Stuart Skinner and the rest of the Penguins exhale on a night Skinner — a Stanley Cup runner-up with Edmonton each of the last two seasons before being acquired by the Penguins in December — is well-versed on the thin line between a great season and a historic one.
“Every time you go to the Stanley Cup finals, especially for the teams that win, the stories that you have, the camaraderie, you know you bled for each other throughout that year,” Skinner said as he watched Lemieux and Crosby share a quiet moment a few stalls away. "So I’m sure it’s really cool for these guys to get back together and it’s really cool that I’m in the same dressing room as some of the Stanley Cup champions.”
There's a long way to go before the current Penguins can start thinking of joining that kind of company. Yet Crosby is encouraged. He knows better than most the DNA required for a team to raise the Cup in late spring. Pittsburgh is hardly there yet, but for the first time in what seems like a long time, it doesn't feel completely out of reach.
“I think everyone’s contributing, that’s what you need to win,” he said. “And you have to win different ways and you look all through our lineup, everybody’s been chipping in big ways ... I think if you go through those things and you have consistency in all those areas, you give yourself a chance.”
CALGARY, Alberta (AP) — Joel Farabee’s short-handed goal at 6:53 of the third period broke a tie and sent the Calgary Flames to a 3-2 victory over the San Jose Sharks on Saturday.
Morgan Frost and Matvei Gridin each scored his 12th goal of the season for the Flames (22-26-6), who overcame a pair of one-goal deficits and snapped a five-game losing streak.
Will Smith and Adam Gaudette scored for the Sharks (27-22-4), who have lost two in a row and four of seven.
Alex Nedeljkovic stopped 39 shots for the Sharks, while Dustin Wolf made 23 saves for the Flames.
Wolf’s best stop came against Macklin Celebrini with 21 seconds remaining when he stuck out a pad to deny the star forward after he was set up all by himself in front of the net.
Celebrini’s three-game point streak was snapped (three goals, four assists).
Just 15 seconds after teammate Nazem Kadri was penalized for slashing, Farabee broke a 2-all tie with Calgary's NHL-leading eighth short-handed goal. Mikael Backlund’s slap shot missed the net, but the rebound caromed right back out front where Farbee knocked a backhand through Nedeljkovic’s pads.
It was Calgary’s first victory since trading defenseman Rasmus Andersson. The Flames had gone 0-3-2 and scored only seven goals since the deal.
Wolf, who is from Gilroy, California, improved to 16-2-2 against teams from his home state — the Sharks, Los Angeles Kings and Anaheim Ducks. He is 9-2-0 against San Jose.
While recently acquired left wing Kiefer Sherwood (upper body) remains out, San Jose did welcome back left wing Philipp Kurashev (upper body, 19 games) and defenseman Shakir Mukhamadullin (undisclosed, 10 games).
Sherwood, acquired from Vancouver on Jan. 19, hasn’t played since Jan. 10, but he’s back skating with the team.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Justin Sourdif scored off a rebound at 1:42 of overtime and the Washington Capitals overcame a three-goal deficit to beat the Carolina Hurricanes 4-3 on Saturday night.
Down 3-0 early in second period, the Capitals tied it on defenseman Jakob Chychrun's goal with 6:42 left in regulation — his 19th of the season.
Hendrix Lapierre and Dylan Strome scored in the second period to start the rally and help give Clay Stevenson his first NHL victory. Stevenson won in his second career start and first of the season, stopping 19 shots.
Washington has won two in a row. It beat beat Detroit 4-3 in a shootout Thursday night to end a six-game trip.
Mark Jankowski, Sebastian Aho and Shayne Gostisbehere scored for Carolina, and Frederik Andersen made 38 saves. The Hurricanes had won two in a row and five of six.
Jankowski opened the scoring for Carolina with 6:33 left in the first. Aho made it 2-0 with 2:09 to go in the period, and Gostisbehere struck at 4:16 of the second.
Lapierre got one back for Washington at 7:52 of the second, and Strome made it a one-goal game with 5:02 left in the period.
Up next
Hurricanes: Host Los Angeles on Sunday.
Capitals: Host New York Islanders on Monday night,
