HOCKEY
Alex Kile set the team record for points in a season with a second-period goal to lift the Maine Mariners to a 5-2 ECHL win over the Trois-Rivieres Lions Wednesday night at Trois-Rivieres, Quebec.
Gabriel Chicoine and Kile scored 2:11 apart late in the second period to break a 1-1 tie. Kile’s goal was his 74th point of the season, eclipsing Tim Doherty’s mark set last year.
The Mariners have six games left in the regular season.
Xander Lamppa, Cameron Askew and Adam Mechura also scored for Maine.
Tyler Hylland scored twice for Trois-Rivieres.
Brad Arvanitis made 26 saves for Maine, which was outshot 28-11.
NHL: Boston Bruins Coach Jim Montgomery didn’t have much information yet on Justin Brazeau’s status.
Brazeau, the Bruins’ rookie fourth-line forward, left Tuesday’s 3-0 win over Nashville with an upper-body injury.
“We’ll have more in the coming days, lengths and stuff. We don’t really have much more right now,” Montgomery said.
The Bruins didn’t practice on Wednesday as they travel to Raleigh for Thursday’s game at Carolina. Montgomery won’t likely have an update until the morning skate on Thursday.
Brazeau, who played for the Maine Mariners during the 2021-22 ECHL season, left the ice holding what appeared to be either his shoulder or arm late in the first period on Tuesday and didn’t return to the game. Brazeau went to the bench and then down the tunnel to the locker room after a center-ice collision with Luke Schenn with 2:50 remaining in the first period. Schenn was assessed a roughing penalty on the play.
Brazeau, a 6-foot-5, 220-pound forward, who signed as an undrafted free agent has given the Bruins a jolt of energy and physicality since being called up on Feb. 19.
GOLF
LPGA: Sei Young Kim took advantage of ideal playing conditions, shooting a 6-under 66 in the opening round of the T-Mobile Match Play at North Las Vegas, Nevada.
Las Vegas-area residents Danielle Kang and Rose Zhang, making the best use of not having to go on the road, were each just a stroke behind.
Top-ranked Nelly Korda has some work to do to extend her three-tournament winning streak after shooting a 73. Lorena Ochoa, in 2008, was the last LPGA Tour player to win four in a row.
The top 65 players plus ties after the first two days will advance to the third round Friday, and then the top eight players will compete in match play over the weekend. This tournament was entirely a match-play event its first three years, but the format changed this year and attracted easily the strongest field in its short history.
PGA: Two-time PGA champion Justin Thomas has split with caddie Jim “Bones” Mackay one week before the Masters.
Thomas did not give a reason for switching caddies, posting a message on X saying it was “incredibly difficult” to announce and that he would be forever grateful that Mackay worked for him for the last two-plus years.
They won two tournaments together — one at the FedEx St. Jude Classic when Mackay was filling in for his previous caddie, Jimmy Johnson, and the other at the 2022 PGA Championship at Southern Hills when Thomas rallied from seven shots back and won a playoff.
Mackay spent some 25 years working with Phil Mickelson and was working as an on-course analyst for NBC Golf Channel when he began working with Thomas.
Thomas has not won in nearly two years and his world ranking has fallen to No. 28.
HORSE RACING
DEATHS: Horse racing deaths in the United States increased slightly in 2023 from 2022, according to the annual report released by the federally mandated agency that began regulating the sport two years ago.
The Horse Racing Integrity and Safety Authority reported 1.32 deaths per 1,000 starts last year, up from 1.25 tracked by the Equine Injury Database the previous year. The number at the 50 HISA-accredited tracks had a rate of 1.23 per 1,000 compared to 1.63 at others across the country.
Spates of deaths at Churchill Downs in Louisville around the Kentucky Derby and at New York’s Saratoga Race Course last year thrust the sport into the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. Churchill Downs suspended racing in June after 12 horses died there, prompting an emergency summit with industry leaders before resuming in the fall, and a New York Racing Association investigation into 13 racing or training deaths at Saratoga found no definitive cause, though significant rainfall “could not be overlooked” as a contributing factor.
KENTUCKY DERBY: The owner of Arkansas Derby winner Muth has sued Churchill Downs Inc. and is seeking a temporary injunction against what it called the track’s “illegal” ban of Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert that keeps the colt he trained from competing in next month’s 150th Kentucky Derby.
The historic track initially suspended Baffert for two years on June 2 following a failed postrace drug test by deceased colt Medina Spirit, who crossed the finish line first in the 2021 race but was later disqualified. Churchill Downs extended the ban through at least the end of 2024 in July and cited “continued concerns” about the safety and integrity of racing that Baffert posed to CDI-owned tracks.
Zedan Racing Stables filed the suit in Jefferson Circuit Court in Louisville and asserted that the ban of Zedan and other Baffert-trained horses from running in the milestone Derby on May 4 “has no basis in law or in fact.” A release from Zedan’s public relations firm suggested the ban was fueled by CDI CEO Bill Carstanjen’s personal vendetta against the two-time Triple Crown winner.
TENNIS
MADRID OPEN: Simona Halep has received a wild-card entry to the main draw of the Madrid Open, which will be the two-time Grand Slam champion’s second tournament since getting her doping suspension reduced on appeal.
Organizers of the clay-court tournament also handed a wild card to another former No. 1, Caroline Wozniacki, along with veteran Kei Nishikori and 18-year-old Martín Landaluce on the men’s side.
The tournament starts April 23.
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