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RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Colton Sissons smiled widely and raved about how much fun it was to play in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final on Tuesday night.

He and the Vegas Golden Knights traded chances, goals, saves and counterpunches with the Carolina Hurricanes, getting the championship series off to a terrific start. Vegas won a high-scoring, entertaining 5-4 affair that usually would drive an old-school coach like John Tortorella crazy.

“I think he enjoyed it,” Sissons said. “Obviously the result.”

It was a game so good even Torts enjoyed it.

Game 1 had a little bit of everything, from Nikolaj Ehlers scoring 25 seconds in for the Hurricanes and lifting an already riled-up crowd to its feet to each goaltender making big saves to keep the puck out of the net. The only thing missing was the lockdown defense that got these teams to this point, but that only made for a more exciting opener.

“Both teams played good defense for certain minutes, other times not,” Tortorella said. “You just never know what’s going to happen.”
The goals

What happened was a lot of scoring from two of the best defensive teams in the playoffs. It was the first Cup final game in history with a goal in the first 30 seconds of each of the first two periods.

Ehlers scored his first off the rush and second on a breakaway. The two-goal lead lasted all of 80 seconds before Shea Theodore scored, and Ivan Barbashev and William Karlsson put Vegas ahead, rallying from another deficit.

“It was great from our group to kind of battle back,” Theodore said.

Jordan Staal scoring his first goal at this stage of the playoffs since 2009 and breaking older brother Eric’s record for the longest gap between Cup final goals brought the crowd back to life. So did Shayne Gostisbehere tying it with under nine minutes left in regulation.

With time ticking closer to overtime, the Golden Knights made one more highlight-reel play in a night full of them. Colton Sissons’ backhand pass set up Tomas Hertl — who also had a rough go the first couple of rounds — for the go-ahead goal with 3:34 left in regulation.

Long before Sissons and Hertl teamed up on the winner, each guy was denied on a Grade-A scoring chance by Carolina’s Frederik Andersen. At the other end of the rink, Carter Hart made some 10-bell saves of his own.

Logan Stankoven got in all alone on a breakaway in the first with a chance to break the game open.

“That could’ve been a dagger,” Sissons said.

Instead, Hart made that save and kept Vegas in the game throughout. His best came with under four minutes left and the score tied, flashing his glove to rob Seth Jarvis, Carolina’s top-line right wing whose snakebit struggle of a run continued.

“He gives us so much confidence,” Sissons said. “When we needed him most, he was there.”
The drama

The start of the Cup final quickly got the NHL past a lackluster third round, when Vegas swept Colorado in the West and Carolina bounced back from a rough start against Montreal, winning four in a row to blow through the East final roadblock that had been an issue for so long.

Fans were buzzing from pregame warmups, and the two teams put on a show worth the hefty price of admission.

“I thought it was a great game from both sides,” Theodore said. “That’s a loud building to play in front of.”

After a ton of excitement between two hockey powerhouses, viewers can only hope for six more six more games just like this one.

PARIS (AP) — After letting another big lead slip with an error-strewn performance at the French Open, top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka felt like getting as far away from the courts as possible.

“Just want to quit tennis right now,” Sabalenka said after wasting a lead of a set and two breaks in a 3-6, 7-5, 6-0 loss to Diana Shnaider in the quarterfinals on Wednesday. “We’ll see in few days. Hopefully I’ll get back on track mentally.”

Sabalenka’s wait for a first French Open title continues despite the four-time major winner leading 4-1 in the second set and being two points from victory when serving for the match at 5-4. What followed was a complete collapse as as she lost 12 of the last 13 games against a player appearing in her first Grand Slam quarterfinal, looking increasingly frustrated and forlorn in the windy conditions.

Just like her loss to Coco Gauff in last year’s final, when she also won the first set before becoming undone with a slew of unforced errors, this one will take some time to get over.

“You know those rooms where you just go in and you smash everything,” Sabalenka said. “Probably I will spend a whole day tomorrow over there destroying stuff. Maybe it will help, maybe not.”

Sabalenka stood still and screamed loudly after losing a point to fall 0-30 down in the sixth game of the decider and, although she saved two match points at 0-40 down, she lost when she sent a shot into the net.

“I just think it’s combination of everything,” Sabalenka lamented. “You overthink, then you make easy mistakes, then you miss opportunities.”

Shnaider next faces Maja Chwalinska, who extended her remarkable Roland Garros run by beating No. 22-seeded Anna Kalinskaya 7-6 (3), 6-3.

But for Sabalenka, her struggles were reminiscent of the match against Gauff, when she remonstrated loudly, shouting to herself and glaring at her team box.

“I just have to sit back and openly think about what’s going on in my head in those tough moments,” Sabalenka said, recalling that match. “Because I’m quite an experienced player. I have been through so many things, and I overcome so many things.”

Sabalenka had already looked agitated when serving for the first set but still looked in control as she served for the match in the second, holding a 30-15 lead.

But Shnaider, who was already on her best run at a major, broke Sabelenka before taking complete control.

“Well, honestly I am speechless. Super happy,” Shnaider said. “I feel like I was trying to focus point by point. Not thinking about the score. She is the world No. 1, so I just trying to do my best. I just had to fight for every point.”

Sabalenka looked increasingly frustrated as the third set wore on, and when she missed a volley at the net in the fourth game of the decider she crouched and rested her head on her racket.
Another upset

It was another big upset in a tournament where defending champion Gauff (third round) and four-time winner Iga Swiatek (fourth round) already tumbled out.

Defending men’s champion Jannik Sinner served for the match in a second round defeat, and 24-time major winner Novak Djokovic wasted a two-set lead in a third round loss.

That opened things up for lesser-known players. According to Opta, this is the first major without a former champion in either the men’s and women’s semifinals since the French Open in 1977.
From qualifier to contender

The unseeded Chwalinska came through three qualifying rounds to become only the second Polish woman to reach the semifinals at Roland Garros, along with Swiatek.

Chwalinska said British player Emma Raducanu’s run to the 2021 U.S. Open title as an 18-year-old qualifier had inspired her.

“It was such an impressive run, you know,” Chwalinska recalled. “Also, she was so young.”

When Kalinskaya’s big forehand from the back of the court went out, the 24-year-old Chwalinska had her biggest win, having never been beyond the second round at any major before this tournament.

Chwalinska’s total prize money heading into Roland Garros was $864,030 and reaching the last four here earns her 750,000 euros (about $872,000).
Windy conditions

After they traded early breaks of serve amid blustery conditions with the roof open on Court Philippe-Chatrier.

“I don’t know why would they keep the roof open when it was crazy windy,” Sabalenka said. “It was very dirty tennis. I don’t know how people could actually just sit there and watch me play.”

Kalinskaya also struggled.

“I feel like I was fighting against the wind,” she said. “It was cold today, so the ball was going slower. I couldn’t use my speed, my power.”
Men’s matches

In remaining men’s quarterfinals, No. 4 Felix Auger-Aliassime took on No. 10 Flavio Cobolli before unseeded Italians Matteo Berrettini and Matteo Arnaldi faced off.

All of Wednesday’s matches were held on Chatrier.

Second-seeded Alexander Zverev and No. 26 Jakub Mensik won their quarterfinals Tuesday and will meet in the semifinals.

SAN ANTONIO (AP) — For the San Antonio Spurs and New York Knicks, Game 1 of the NBA Finals might feel like old times.

It’s the Knicks’ ninth time in the title series, and the eighth time they’ve played Game 1 on the road. It’s the Spurs’ seventh time in the title series, and the sixth time they’ve played Game 1 at home.

Granted, a good amount of time has passed for both teams since they’ve been on this stage: The Knicks haven’t played in the finals since losing to the Spurs in 1999, and the Spurs haven’t been there since beating the Miami Heat in 2014.

“I think we’re just locked in and focused on the task at hand,” Knicks forward Josh Hart said. “Then we can look back when everything is all said and done and really embrace this process and this run. It’s an honor, but can’t focus too much on the outside world and the run so far.”

The run the Knicks are on coming into this series is without compare: 11 straight wins by a total of 262 points, the most lopsided 11-game run — regular season or playoffs — in NBA history.

The Spurs have a different kind of streak going into Wednesday night. They’ve never lost Game 1 of the NBA Finals, going 6-0 in openers when they make the title round.

Most players on both teams are making their finals debuts in this series. Spurs guard De’Aaron Fox said it’s still going to be important for his team to remember how they got to the finals in the first place.

“This is a hard thing to do. It’s hard to get back to these places,” Fox said. “Don’t change anything that we’re doing. There’s a reason that we’re in the finals. There’s a reason that we won (62) games. There’s a reason we didn’t lose three games in a row the whole year. So, we don’t want to get to this place and then start changing the way we play.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Alabama football coach Nick Saban and other college sports figures testified Wednesday in support of a bipartisan bill aimed at overhauling a system where players can increasingly earn millions of dollars while moving freely between schools.

The leaders of the Senate Commerce Committee held the hearing as they push legislation unveiled last week that supporters hope can break the congressional gridlock over how to regulate college athletics.

The bill, introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., would regulate payments to athletes, limit them to one “free” transfer during their careers and create a “Lane Kiffin Rule” restricting coaches from leaving programs during the season. Cruz touted the proposal as “the last, best hope we have to save college sports.”

“If you had the biggest, baddest Ferrari that you could ever have and it was going 150 miles an hour toward the Grand Canyon, somebody needs to tap the brakes. And I think that’s what we all need to do here,” Saban said in his opening remarks.

Notably absent from the the witness list, which included Notre Dame’s athletic director and the commissioner of the PAC-12 conference, was any representative from the Southeastern Conference, where Saban won seven national championships between Alabama and Louisiana State University

The SEC and the Big Ten, the two most powerful conferences in college sports, oppose the bill, arguing it “leaves critical issues unresolved.”

Cantwell said the legislation is intended to restore competition to college athletics by ensuring success is determined by how universities “build a team, and not because they have a billionaire in their back pocket.”

She also addressed the conferences’ opposition directly, suggesting they fear “that somebody’s going to come in and rearrange the deck chairs of those conferences, steal the eyeball schools, and then basically leave everybody with everything else.”