offtopic » WASHINGTON (AP) — Logan Couture needed

a new stick for overtime.So convinced the San Jose Sharks were heading toward another loss Nick Foligno Jersey , Couture went to the bench and broke his stick over the boards. Then he looked up and saw Evander Kane score the tying goal with one second left. Minutes later, Tomas Hertl completed his hat trick in overtime to beat the Washington Capitals 7-6 Tuesday night.Hertl went hat trick-for-hat trick with Alex Ovechkin, scoring 1:48 into the extra period to snap the Sharks’ losing streak at three and send them into a 10-day break on a high note.“All the guys in here could’ve easily looked forward to tomorrow and our break, but we decided to play hard for the third and found a way to tie it up and win it,” Couture said after the Sharks erased a two-goal deficit in the third period. “Pretty wild to be able to tie that up there. Just a big-time goal and Herts to complete the hat trick was awesome there.”San Jose has allowed six goals in each of its past four games, and goaltender Martin Jones wasn’t at his best in giving up six on 39 shots this time. But he made two big saves in overtime to keep the game going.The defending Stanley Cup champion Capitals have lost six in a row for the first time since the 2013-14 season, the last time they missed the playoffs. All-Star goalie Braden Holtby fought the puck at times in allowing seven goals on 43 shots.“That’s not the way we need to play to win hockey games,” Holtby said. “We obviously haven’t been winning much lately. The solution isn’t to open up the game and go chance-for-chance. It’s a reality check. This is not good enough to win. From me, from all of us.”Ovechkin, who scored goal Nos. 34, 35 and 36 to pad his NHL-leading total, took the blame for the loss for failing to make the right play with 20 seconds left and the Sharks’ net empty. Ovechkin’s shot attempt went off defenseman Brent Burns, and San Jose went the other way.“Tough loss,” Ovechkin said. “It was my mistake at the end of the game. I tried to make a rush play. Have to be better in this situation.”Ovechkin’s hat trick was his third this season and 23rd of his career, and he has sole possession of 14th on the career list with 643 goals. That bit of history was not enough to get Washington out of its funk.Although Joe Pavelski scored 12 seconds in Authentic Oliver Bjorkstrand Jersey , the Capitals took the lead midway through the first period and the Sharks were at their best playing from behind. Hertl scored twice on the power play, and his second goal kept San Jose in it with Jones pulled for an extra skater.After Couture went to the bench for a line change, his teammates got the puck into the zone and Kane managed to tap it in past Holtby with a second left on the clock. Kane had no doubt the puck was in before the buzzer, even though it showed 0.0 on the scoreboard.“Just wanted to forecheck the puck hard and try to get it to the front of the net somehow,” Kane said. “We got in there, Pavs was able to pick it up, threw it at the end. Just desperate attempt, and it found its way to the backdoor.”Pavelski and Hertl each had four points in what coach Peter DeBoer likened to an East Coast All-Star Game five days early. It wasn’t an effort the Sharks were proud of, but after a rough road trip, they’ll take it.“We get it done, and the biggest thing is we get two big points before the bye week because it’s nice, a better feeling to fly back home before the break,” said Hertl, who has 22 goals this season. “I’m happy for the whole team because everybody put their everything.”NOTES: Couture scored his 19th goal on a 3-on-0 rush. … Pavelski’s goal matched the third-fastest to start a game in Sharks history. … Andre Burakovsky, T.J. Oshie and Evgeny Kuznetsov also scored for Washington. Kuznetsov’s goal was just his second at 5-on-5 this season. …Two-time Norris Trophy-winning Sharks D Erik Karlsson returned to California for further tests on his lower-body injury. Karlsson missed the past three games but is still a candidate to take part in All-Star Weekend in San Jose. … Sharks D Marc-Edouard Vlasic missed his ninth consecutive game with a wrist injury.UP NEXTSharks: Get a long layoff with the All-Star break and bye week before hosting the Arizona Coyotes on Feb. 2.Capitals: Face a short turnaround in visiting the Toronto Maple Leafs on Wednesday. As Patrik Laine climbed the ranks of youth hockey in Finland Ryan Murray Jersey , he learned about the NHL from video games.”I learned probably just about the players,” the Winnipeg Jets star said. ”Nowadays it’s super realistic, and you can just pretty much see how everybody is playing and how good they are.”It’s about to get even more real with the NHL following the lead of the NBA, NFL, FIFA and other leagues in establishing a presence in a burgeoning esports market. The 2018 NHL Gaming World Championship, launched Friday, is a first step toward a potential version of the season-long NBA 2K League that’s set to begin in May or perhaps eMLS on FIFA 18.”You’re really both tapping into and expanding the existing fan base of the game,” said NBC Sports executive Rob Simmelkjaer, who got his introduction to hockey from playing ”NHL 94” on Sega Genesis. ”I think that’s something that the NHL can benefit from by putting esports front and center in the way that they market their sport.”Players will be able to match up 1-on-1 in EA Sports NHL 18 qualification rounds. That will be followed by regional finals in the United States, Canada and Europe on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and then the June 19 championship at Esports Arena Las Vegas during the NHL Awards with a prize pool of $100,000.The hope is to land new fans and connect with current fans in a different way.”This is really at its embryonic stage,” NHL executive vice president and chief revenue officer Keith Wachtel said. ”This is the most basic way for our fans to play. We’re also going to explore in the future the opportunity, and we’re going to test this with some of the guys at the regional tournaments and the final, maybe a two-versus-two or a three-versus-three.”WorldGaming and Collegiate StarLeague are already experimenting with gaming at movie theaters in Canada and are in the midst of the Snider Hockey Cup tournament on EA Sports NHL 18 with the finals taking place March 22 in Philadelphia http://www.bluejacketsshoponline.com/authentic-sergei-bobrovsky-jersey , next to the Flyers‘ arena.”After the response we got to this tournament, we worked closely with the NHL and Electronic Arts for this program,” WorldGaming and Collegiate StarLeague CEO Wim Stocks said. ”They’re going to be in the marketplace with really cool esports programming in the very near future.”Sports-based esports have a long way to go to catch up to fighting games like ”Dota,” ”League of Legends” and ”Counter-Strike,” but National Amusements programming and corporate development executive Kevin Mitchell doesn’t believe the NHL needs to worry.”Console gaming is just now starting to take off,” said Mitchell, who also teaches esports at Emerson College in Boston. ”I think it’s really just coming up with an ambidextrous strategy on finding ways to integrate with their traditional fan base and finding ways to create cross-over engagement for this new generation that has been primarily consuming content online.”Mitchell thinks esports ventures are ways for leagues to make fans of young people who get their sports largely through their smartphones or computers. According to Newzoo’s 2016 Esports Consumer Insights, 28 percent of hockey fans are 21-35, while 49 percent of esports enthusiasts are in that age bracket.”We have a very attractive fan base,” Wachtel said. ”It’s young, it’s very tech-savvy, and millennials these days, which is really the gamer, are consuming sports in a much different way.”For a sport grappling with challenges of getting kids interested in hockey in places where ice time and equipment can be expensive and difficult to come by, this is another possible route. Mitchell said about 50 U.S. colleges now offer esports scholarships and expects more development at youth levels as they become more popular.NBC Sports in the U.S. Womens Seth Jones Jersey , Rogers Sportsnet in Canada and Viasat in Europe will promote the event, airing regional finals and the championship and putting highlights on TV around playoff games.How it goes will help determine the NHL’s next steps.”We don’t really have a statement on what the future holds other than we’re going to be active in one way, shape or form,” said Chris Golier, NHL vice president of business development. ”We’re going to have a lot of involvement and conversation with a lot of the top gamers, as well, make sure that it’s fun, engaging, the content works and we’ll revise as we see fit going forward.”Esports might be a way for the NHL to grow its audience in China, where it is already broadcasting regular-season games and hosting exhibitions ahead of the 2022 Olympics.”China is a huge gaming population,” Stocks said. ”What better way to help bring the game of hockey to China than through video gaming? I think the NHL has a great opportunity.”—