his 21st hat trick and first this season to lift the Washington Capitals over the Detroit Red Wings 6-2 on Tuesday night.Ovechkin entered the night as the NHL’s goal leader and stretched his total to 25 through 30 games Alex Killorn Jersey Kids , halfway to a potential eighth 50-goal season.Nicklas Backstrom had four assists to help Washington get its third straight victory and 10th in 12 games. T.J. Oshie added a goal in his return from an 11-game layoff due to a concussion, and Travis Boyd and Brett Connolly also scored early.Braden Holtby made 35 stops for Washington, which had scored 12 straight goals over a stretch of more than six periods before Dylan Larkin and Gustav Nyquist broke through in the third.Detroit coach Jeff Blashill pulled goaltender Jonathan Bernier midway through the second period after he saved 10 of Washington’s first 15 shots. Jimmy Howard came in to finish off the Red Wings’ first road loss since their previous trip here on Nov. 23, a night after making a season-high 42 stops in a win over Los Angeles.BRUINS 4, COYOTES 3BOSTON (AP) — Brad Marchand scored two goals and assisted on another during a four-goal, second-period flurry to lead Boston over Arizona.Arizona led 2-0 before Boston scored four times in five minutes, starting when Danton Heinen and David Pastrnak delivered 33 seconds apart. Marchand gave the Bruins the lead two minutes later, and then added another two minutes after that to make it 4-2.Tuukka Rask stopped 30 shots for Boston, which won its third straight game and beat the Coyotes for the 14th time in a row. Pastrnak also had two assists, and David Krejci had three for the Bruins.Nick Schmaltz and Nick Cousins scored 40 seconds apart for Arizona in the first period, and Darcy Kuemper made 22 saves for the Coyotes.CANUCKS 3, BLUE JACKETS 2COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Jake Virtanen scored the tiebreaking goal with less than two minutes remaining and Jacob Markstrom stopped 34 shots as Vancouver rallied to beat Columbus.Elias Pettersson got credit for a goal that went in off his skate to tie it with about 3:04 left, and Virtanen’s goal put the Canucks ahead 78 seconds later.Josh Leivo also scored in the third period for the Canucks, who have won three straight after losing 12 of 13.Seth Jones and Oliver Bjorkstrand scored, and Joonas Korpisalo had 22 saves for the Blue Jackets, who have lost four of their last five and dropped their last three at home as they entered a stretch of five home games in nine days.WILD 7, CANADIENS 1ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Matt Dumba scored twice, Devan Dubnyk made 29 saves and Minnesota took out some recent frustrations on Montreal.The Wild scored four times in the second period to recover from a lousy swing through Western Canada, when Minnesota dropped two of three and lost captain Mikko Koivu to injury.Nino Niederreiter, Charlie Coyle, Eric Staal Andrei Vasilevskiy Jersey , Jared Spurgeon and Zach Parise also scored for Minnesota (16-12-2), which went 4 for 4 on the power play.Jeff Petry scored for Montreal (15-11-5), which ended a three-game winning streak.JETS 6, BLACKHAWKS 3WINNIPEG, Manitoba (AP) — Kyle Connor scored twice and Winnipeg gave Chicago its eighth straight loss.Mark Scheifele and Tyler Myers each had a goal and assist, Mathieu Perreault scored and Brandon Tanev added an empty-net goal for Winnipeg (19-9-2). Dustin Byfuglien had three assists.Laurent Brossoit played his eighth game (seventh start) for the Jets and made 32 saves.Dylan Strome, Dominik Kahun and Alex DeBrincat scored for Chicago. Patrick Kane added a pair of assists.Cam Ward stopped 28 shots for the Blackhawks (9-18-5), who also lost eight straight earlier this season, although two were in overtime. The current slump is all in regulation time.BLUES 4, PANTHERS 3ST. LOUIS (AP) — Brayden Schenn capped St. Louis’ four-goal third period as the Blues beat Florida.David Perron had two goals, and Ivan Barbashev also scored for St. Louis, which had lost three of four and eight of their last 11. Jake Allen made stopped 22 shots to improve to 2-4-0 in his career against Florida.Evgenii Dadonov, MacKenzie Weegar and Mike Hoffman scored for the Panthers, who have lost four of five. Roberto Luongo had 29 saves.Schenn’s tiebreaking goal came off a rebound as he backhanded it past Luongo with 3:55 remaining.PREDATORS 3, SENATORS 1NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Ryan Ellis scored his first game-winning goal of the season, Pekka Rinne made 25 saves and Nashville defeated Ottawa.Austin Watson and Craig Smith also scored for the Predators, who halted a two-game skid.Zack Smith scored for the Senators, who have lost four of five.Nashville improved its record against Eastern Conference opponents to 9-0-0 this season.MAPLE LEAFS 4, HURRICANES 1RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — William Nylander had two assists and Morgan Rielly scored the go-ahead goal to lift Toronto over Carolina.The assists were the first points of the season for Nylander, who missed the first 28 games before signing a six-year deal worth $41.7 million.Tyler Ennis, Patrick Marleau and John Tavares also scored for the Maple Leafs http://www.officiallightningprostore.com/authentic-adidas-anton-stralman-jersey , who won for the third time in four road games. Frederik Andersen made 29 saves.The Hurricanes got a goal from captain Justin Williams.SABRES 4, KINGS 3, OTBUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Jeff Skinner scored a power-play goal 1:49 into overtime and Buffalo overcame a 3-1 deficit in the third period to beat Los Angeles.Jack Eichel had a goal and an assist, and the Sabres snapped an 0-3-2 skid that immediately followed their franchise record-tying 10-game winning streak.Johan Larsson and Zemgus Girgensons also scored for Buffalo, which improved to 6-7-2 when trailing through two periods. Linus Ullmark stopped 26 shots.Jake Muzzin had a goal and an assist and Adrian Kempe and Matt Luff also scored for the Kings, who dropped to 2-5-1 in their past eight games.OILERS 6, AVALANCHE 4DENVER (AP) — Ryan Nugent-Hopkins scored twice as part of Edmonton’s four-goal second period, Mikko Koskinen stopped 39 shots and the Oilers extended their winning streak to four games with a victory over Colorado.Connor McDavid added a goal and an assist as the Oilers improved to 8-2-1 since coach Ken Hitchcock took over the struggling team on Nov. 20.Kyle Brodziak scored his first goal in more than a month, Leon Draisaitl added another in his 300th NHL game and defenseman Darnell Nurse got into the scoring act with a slap shot early in the third.Mikko Rantanen, the league’s leading scorer, had a goal and three assists to give him at least a point in 12 straight games. It’s tied for the longest active streak in the NHL with Alex Ovechkin.Gabriel Landeskog had two goals and Colin Wilson added another for the Avalanche. The NHL will soon have 32 teams if Seattle is approved as expected next week. An even balance between conferences. A cross-border rival for the Vancouver Canucks in the Pacific Northwest.Surely the league is done growing for a while?Maybe not. Two and a half years after voting to add a team in Las Vegas in what has been a rousing success, the NHL has plenty of options when it comes to what’s next. No North American professional sports league has stretched past the number of 32, but no one is ruling it out for the NHL to get there on this continent or beyond.“The leagues adapt, they look around and they make judgments: Are there markets we would like to go into? Can they support the teams at the revenue levels that we need? If we expand too much too fast, do we dilute the talent such that the product suffers? And those are all judgment calls in the end,” NHL Players’ Association executive director Don Fehr said. “Some leagues and owners are more cautious than others. But sooner or later I would like to believe that in the kind of economy we have, all potential avenues will be explored.”Considering the success of the expansion Vegas Golden Knights, Seattle has seemed a no-brainer from the beginning and no one expects anything but approval from the Board of Governors on Tuesday. Seattle would begin play in either 2020 or 2021.“Hockey needs to be and wants to be in those really fast-paced cities that are growing and setting the mark,” Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan said. “Because if we do well here, it’ll raise all the boats for all the teams.”Vegas already raised the bar for Seattle, which will pay an expansion fee of $650 million — a 30 percent increase over the $500 million that cleared the way for Vegas to begin play last season and far beyond the $45 million the San Jose Sharks paid to enter the league in 1991 to begin a new era of expansion.As soon as the NHL went to 31, getting to 32 was inevitable. As balanced as it might seem Womens Brayden Point Jersey , it’s not the end.“Not sure there is any magic about 32,” deputy NHL Commissioner Bill Daly said. “Expansion is appropriate when a convincing case can be made that it will be beneficial and add value to the league as a whole.”While Daly was reluctant to address what might be next with the Seattle vote pending, Houston, Quebec City and Toronto have all been touted as possible new homes for an NHL team. Communications company Quebecor applied for an expansion team for Quebec City at the same time as Las Vegas. Billionaire businessman and new Houston Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta has already met with Commissioner Gary Bettman.“Houston’s a big city,” Fehr said. “It’s got a long history with professional sports in North America. You would like to think that sooner or later the NHL will have a team there. When and under what circumstances I’m not going to try and predict.”Andrew Zimbalist, a Smith College economic professor who has written extensively on sports and business, said professional leagues operate much differently from other entities when demand increases. Instead of making more of a product, like a sneaker or beer company might, leagues and teams raise ticket prices or seek new arenas.Expansion, of course, is another way to feed the beast and Zimbalist said a league could get to 40 teams if it is popular enough and the revenue is spread around correctly.Any dream of a 40-team NHL would almost certainly involve European expansion, which Bettman said no one has come up with a viable plan for yet. Amid speculation about basing a single NFL team in London, the NHL would likely need to put a full division in Europe to make any sense. And even that has its obstacles, with New Jersey Devils captain Andy Greene pointing to the drastic time changes and coach John Hynes unsure about the long-distance travel as part of an 82-game season.“When you look at the NHL schedule without going to Europe, it’s a monster,” said Hynes, whose team ended training camp in Switzerland, played an exhibition game there and opened the season in Sweden. “Then you add in European travel and time changes and NHLPA days off for recovery time and it takes its toll.”For now, the NHL will continue to play games in Europe, explore China and increase its regular season to 1,312 games — once Seattle joins the fray.