KANSAS CITY, Kan. – Kevin Harvick got his quest to reach victory lane at one of his favorite tracks off to a fast start Friday evening by capturing the Busch Pole Award for the Digital Ally 400 at Kansas Speedway.

Harvick, a three-time Kansas winner, led a Stewart-Haas Racing sweep of the top four starting spots with a lap of 30.131 seconds (179.217 mph) around the 1.5-mile oval in his No. 4 Busch Beer Ford Mustang.

It marked the second time in team history that Stewart-Haas cars have locked out the first two rows of the starting grid, following a similar occurrence at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway in October of 2018.

Friday’s qualifying effort marked Harvick’s record-extending fifth pole at Kansas, third of the season and the 28th of his Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series career.

Harvick has sat on the front row in his last four Kansas Cup races, but admits he wants to erase his goose egg in the wins column with a victory on Saturday night under the lights.

“The car definitely told me it was fast on that run,” noted Harvick. “I really want to start off by thanking everyone at Stewart-Haas Racing and Roush-Yates Engines because the mile-and-a-half tracks have really been a handful for us, as we’ve gone through the beginning of the season … from new cars and different engines to different headers and body builds. They’ve done a great job, though. Everyone knew we were a little bit behind, but we saw some light at Texas and that’s carried over to here today.

“Our Busch Beer Ford is really fast and drives well in traffic, so hopefully when we get to the race tomorrow we can have another good night here at Kansas and finally get that monkey off our back this year,” Harvick added. “Poles are nice, but wins are what we really want here.”

Aric Almirola will join his Stewart-Haas teammate on the front row after turning a lap of 30.214 seconds (178.725 mph) with the No. 10 Smithfield Ford Mustang during his qualifying run.

Though it was his fourth front-row start of the season, Almirola wasn’t satisfied with starting second to his teammate after climbing from his race car.

“Four front row starts is a positive, but when you show up here on qualifying day, you want to be first,” Almirola said. “Wow, though. We’ve felt like we’ve been a little bit behind and playing catch up at Stewart-Haas Racing, so I’m really proud of the effort by everyone at the shop and it’s paying off, as everyone can see today.

“I felt like our car was good in practice. Kevin was first on average, and I was second. Now he’s first in qualifying, and I’m second again,” he continued. “I’m tired of being second to him. Hopefully we can change that tomorrow night.”

The remaining Stewart-Haas Fords of Clint Bowyer and Daniel Suarez will line up on the second row in third and fourth, respectively, with Chase Elliott’s Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 completing the top five.

Martin Truex Jr. was the fastest Toyota driver in sixth, followed by William Byron, Kyle Larson, Brad Keselowski and Alex Bowman.

Notable drivers starting deeper in the field include Bubba Wallace (12th), Kyle Busch (13th), three-time Kansas winner and seven-time Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson (18th) and defending Cup Series titlist Joey Logano (20th).

To view complete qualifying results, advance to the next page.

ST. LOUIS, Mo. – Mike Mittler, a veteran team owner in the NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series, has died after a battle with cancer. He was 67 years old.

Mittler and his MB Motorsports team served as starting point for many of NASCAR’s biggest stars. Among those who have driven for Mittler included Carl Edwards, Brad Keselowski and Jamie McMurray.

Despite 301 starts as an owner in the Truck Series, Mittler never found victory lane. He came close in 2015 at Ohio’s Eldora Speedway as dirt late model driver Bobby Pierce nearly put the team in victory lane with a runner-up finish. Pierce won two-straight poles at Eldora in Mittler’s No. 63 truck.

Besides owning a team in the NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series, Mittler also owned Mittler Brothers, a metal working tools and metal fabrication equipment business.

“It is with heavy heart that we say goodbye to Mike Mittler,” said Curtis Francois, owner and CEO of World Wide Technology Raceway. “In the earliest days of my ownership of Gateway, Mike was there, offering to help however he could. He was selfless, loyal, honest and as fine of a man as I’ve ever met. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family. I will miss him; the racetrack will miss him – but our lives are all the better for knowing him.”

KANSAS CITY, Kan. – After a NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series win at Dover (Del.) Int’l Speedway a week ago, all was right in Johnny Sauter’s world.

Fast forward to Friday night at Kansas Speedway, and Sauter had little to smile about in regards to his run in the Digital Ally 250.

Sauter was running inside the top 10 and appeared to be a threat during the first stage of the race when he suddenly slowed to a crawl down the backstretch on the 21st of 167 laps.

The 2016 Truck Series champion, in his first season back with ThorSport Racing after a three-year stint with GMS Racing, limped to the garage area in frustration, the victim of a major mechanical failure.

With parts and pieces spread across their garage stall, Sauter’s crew was eventually able to repair the No. 13 Tenda Heal Ford F-150 and get him back on track, but the damage was done at that point.

Sauter finished 22nd, 70 laps down, after thinking early he might have a race-winning truck under him.

“I don’t know if the input shaft broke off the front of the transmission or the clutch went out, but this was definitely not what we needed with our Tenda Ford F-150 tonight,” said Sauter. “We had decent speed and I figured we were going to be alright. I felt like if we came in and made one or two adjustments, we were going to have something that we could race with, but we didn’t get that far.

“We’ll just dig harder (next time). … I can’t thank everyone at ThorSport enough for all they do.”

With Friday night’s disappointment, Sauter plummeted from second in driver points and just four behind leader Grant Enfinger to fifth in the rankings, 35 points adrift.

The good news? He’s already locked into the playoffs by virtue of his Dover win from seven days earlier.

“That’s where winning comes in handy (with this system),” Sauter noted.

MALTA, N.Y. – Peter Britten, the 2017 Albany-Saratoga DIRTcar modified champion, was absent from the New York track last season because of back problems.

He returned to the speedway with a vengeance Friday night, winning the thrice-delayed season opener over fifth-starting Anthony Perrego by a razor thin margin.  Keith Flach, who traded the lead with polesitter Britten early on, was third.

Britten and Flach started on the front row by virtue of their heat wins, with Brett Hearn and Marc Johnson right behind them.  Britten got a good jump on the green, but Flach ran him down to lead lap two, setting the stage for a back and forth battle that would last for most of the 35-lap feature.

By lap 10 the popular Australian hit lapped traffic and promptly got squeezed into the frontstretch wall, though apparently it had no effect on his fleet Troyer modified.

At halfway the lead duo had a healthy lead over Hearn and Perrego, with Flach repeatedly getting a nose under the leader in turn two but never quite putting him away.

By lap 30 Perrego had caught fire, dispatching Hearn and running down the leaders.  He shot to second with three to go when a scramble with a lapped car slowed Flach and got even with Britten in the final corner but didn’t have the steam off the turn and had to settle for second.

“I always have trouble drawing here but we finally got a good draw to start up front in our heat,” offered Britten. “That really helped. Flach gave me a real battle there and starting further back would have been tough. After missing last year, I’m really enjoying this.”

Marc Johnson was fifth ahead of Kenny Tremont Jr., Ronnie Johnson, Bobby Hackel, Matt DeLorenzo and Jack Lehner.

Josh Coonradt won the crowd pleasing pro stock feature after swapping the lead with Brandon Emigh a few times. Chuckie Dumblewski was third.

KANSAS CITY, Kan. – Less than a year after shocking the NASCAR world with his maiden Xfinity Series victory at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Ross Chastain broke through in the NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series on Friday night with a thrilling win in the Digital Ally 250 at Kansas Speedway.

Chastain appeared to be out of the running with 21 to go, after a huge slide off turn two while running second, but fought back from fifth to second and found himself in the right place at the right time when Stewart Friesen ran out of fuel with three laps to go.

That moment of heartbreak for Friesen allowed Chastain to shoot past into the race lead, a position the Florida watermelon farmer wouldn’t relinquish en route to another memorable and emotional moment in his NASCAR career.

Chastain appeared to be on top of the world last fall, after his Las Vegas win led to a full-time Xfinity Series ride with Chip Ganassi Racing. However, that deal fell through during the winter when sponsor DC Solar pulled out following an FBI raid and investigation into the company, leaving Chastain scrambling just to stay in the sport.

Friday night, after scratching and clawing to stay afloat and landing with United States veteran Al Niece in the Truck Series, Chastain found himself back on top again.

“This is what sports is all about!” Chastain exclaimed in victory lane. “Comebacks, man, comebacks.

“We had the world by the tail last fall and everything got taken away from us. We didn’t quit though,” added Chastain, whose win was the first for Niece’s organization. “Let me just say, I’m going to celebrate this one more than I did the last one. I thought they were going to come easier, but they just don’t. And for Niece Motorsports … this is such a small group. We get a lot of stuff from GMS and they were our biggest competition tonight.

“I hate to see Stewie (Stewart Friesen) lose one like that. I know he’s been trying to win, but we got it.”

Friesen dominated the majority of Friday night’s event, leading eight times for a race-high 87 laps, but the turning point in his race came with 41 laps left, when miscommunication between Friesen and crew chief Trip Bruce led Friesen to leave his pit stall with only two tires instead of a planned four-tire stop.

While the tire differential didn’t ultimately come back to haunt Friesen, who moved from a tight battle for the lead out to a five-second advantage after the stops cycled out the lack of fuel in his gas tank did.

Cautions with 29 and 20 laps to go – for a spinning Brett Moffitt and a stalled Josh Reaume, respectively – allowed Friesen to conserve some precious gas, but it wasn’t enough to keep him on-track in the end.

As the field crossed the line to take three laps to go, Friesen suddenly dropped to the apron, his No. 52 Chevrolet Silverado sputtering as Chastain rocketed past on the banking.

In that moment, the die was cast, as Chastain held off Ben Rhodes to notch his first Truck Series victory and second in one of NASCAR’s three national series.

Todd Gilliland finally had a trouble-free race and came home third, with two more Toyota Tundras in Austin Hill and Brandon Jones – who rallied back from a lap-26 spin – completing the top five.

Meanwhile, Friesen faded back to 15th in the final results, one lap down and ruing yet another near-miss in his pursuit of an elusive Truck Series victory.

“I don’t know what more we could have done,” Friesen lamented. “There was just a lot of miscommunication between me and Trip (Bruce) and it goes back a couple of weeks. We’ll work on it and get better. We had a fast hot rod tonight. … We just have to keep working at it.”

To view complete race results, advance to the next page.

KOSICE, Slovakia -- Matus Sukel scored early in the first period and Slovakia went on to beat the United States 4-1 on home ice Friday night, a stunning result on the opening day of the world hockey championship.

Alex DeBrincat had a goal off assists from Patrick Kane and Jack Eichel to pull the Americans into a tie midway through the period in the Group A game, but they couldn't score again against Patrik Rybar.

Erik Cernak and Tomas Tatar put the Slovaks up 3-1 in the second period and Michal Kristof gave them a three-goal cushion in the third.

Corey Schneider made 32 saves for the Americans. They will face France on Sunday.

In Group B play in Bratislava, the Czech Republic beat Sweden 5-2. Jakub Vrana scored twice for the Czechs against the two-time defending champion Swedes.

Patric Hornqvist and Oskar Lindblom scored in the second period to give Sweden a 2-1 lead. The Czech Republic responded with four straight goals, including one into an empty net after Henrik Lundqvist was pulled to add an extra skater.

Czech goaltender Patrik Bartosak kept the Swedes scoreless in two of three periods in his world championship debut.

Earlier in Group A in Kosice, Kaapo Kakko scored twice, including an empty-net goal with 34 seconds left, to lift Finland to a 3-1 victory over Canada. Arttu Ilomaki had a tiebreaking goal early in the third period, and Kevin Lankinen finished with 20 saves for the Finns.

Canada's Jonathan Marchessault tied the game midway through the first period and Matt Murray stopped 24 shots. The Canadians, who won the world championship in 2016 and 2015, opened the tournament a day after Hockey Canada and the Toronto Maple Leafs agreed to hold John Tavares out because of his oblique injury.

In the Group B opener in Bratislava, The Russians got off to a strong start with Evgenii Dadonov scoring twice and Nikita Kucherov adding one in a 5-2 victory over Norway.

Who would have thought back in January that the St. Louis Blues would be here?

The team was a major disappointment, at one point hitting the conference basement and firing head coach Mike Yeo. Craig Berube was installed behind the bench. Rookie goalie Jordan Binnington was given an opportunity to play. That all seems like a century ago now, as Berube unlocked their potential, Binnington earned a Calder Trophy nomination, the Blues rolled up the standings into a playoff spot, and they eliminated the Winnipeg Jets (six games) and Dallas Stars (seven games) to reach the Western Conference final for the first time since 2016 -- when they lost to the San Jose Sharks.

Come to think of it, who would have thought the Sharks would have been here midway through their first-round series with the Vegas Golden Knights?

They were down 3-1 in the series. Goalie Martin Jones had been pulled twice. They looked like they were done ... until they rallied with three straight wins, including a double-overtime victory on the road in Game 6 and that infamous overtime win in Game 7 in which they were gifted a major penalty when Joe Pavelski was injured.

Pavelski missed all of their series against the Colorado Avalanche until Game 7, when he made an emotional return and an immediate impact, scoring a goal and assisting on another. More officiating randomness happened in the form of an offside review that took away a Colorado goal, and the Sharks outlasted the Avs to advance.

In some ways, these teams are similar, such as the fact that they've had almost a different hero every night in reaching this point of the playoffs. But the most similar thing is that while both organizations have played for the Stanley Cup, neither has ever captured one. The Western Conference final is all that stands in the way of one of them getting another shot.

So who has the advantage here?

First line: Lately, the Blues have been using Brayden Schenn, Jaden Schwartz and Vladimir Tarasenko as their top line. With eight goals in 13 games, Schwartz has been the Blues' top goal scorer. Tarasenko has five goals and no assists, with one goal in his past six games. The Sharks have two lines that could be considered their top unit, but for the purposes of this preview, we'll go with Logan Couture, Timo Meier and Gustav Nyquist, a trio that was put together when Pavelski was injured and that outplayed the Nathan MacKinnon unit in the previous round. It has generated six goals and given up just two at even strength. Advantage: Even

Depth: Ryan O'Reilly, the Blues' MVP (skater division) in the regular season, has been skating with David Perron (three goals, three assists) and 22-year-old Sammy Blais, who made quite an impression in just two games. Speaking of young players, Robert Thomas (one goal, four assists) has been one of the team's most effective forwards at just 19 years old, skating with Tyler Bozak and Game 7 standout Patrick Maroon. Oskar Sundqvist, Ivan Barbashev, Robby Fabbri and Alexander Steen are also in the mix. Pavelski's return to the Sharks bolstered their depth at forward, skating with Tomas Hertl (nine goals) and Evander Kane (two goals, five assists). The ageless Joe Thornton centers Kevin Labanc and Marcus Sorensen on an effective third line. Barclay Goodrow, Melker Karlsson and the recently returned Joonas Donskoi have their moments. Advantage: Sharks

Defense: The Blues have two outstanding defensemen in Alex Pietrangelo (11 points in 13 games, 25:43 per game), who is paired with Joel Edmundson; and Colton Parayko (seven points, 23:51), who is paired with Jay Bouwmeester (a minus-21 in shot attempts at 5-on-5). The Sharks have three of them: Brent Burns (14 points in 14 games, 29:13), who skates with another blue-line titan in Marc-Edouard Vlasic (six points in 12 games, 24:01); and Erik Karlsson (12 points in 14 games, 25:23), who looks increasingly like Erik Karlsson again, and skates with Brenden Dillon. The Blues have an advantage with Vince Dunn and Carl Gunnarsson on the bottom pairing, but the trinity of superior Sharks gives San Jose the edge. Advantage: Sharks

Goaltending: It's clear the Blues have an advantage in Binnington, who has a .915 save percentage and a 2.39 goals-against average in the postseason. He is the backbone of the team -- and in a few cases, its best player. According to Charting Hockey, he is demonstrably ahead of Jones in goals saved above average. But they're nearly identical on low-danger chances, and Jones has been a bit better on high-danger chances. The Sharks have played better in front of Jones, but Jones also has been rock-solid in critical moments, such as in the third period of Game 7 against Colorado. Jones hasn't been the liability he appeared to be earlier in the playoffs, but Binnington has been outstanding. Advantage: Blues

Health: Both teams are as healthy as can be expected right now. Caveat: Pavelski returned from that head injury but curiously did not take a faceoff in Game 7. Advantage: Even

Special teams: The Sharks are at 18.5 percent on the power play, with St. Louis right behind them at 17.1 percent. San Jose is tied for the postseason lead with 10 power-play goals, although four of them came on the same five-minute major against the Knights. The Sharks had only two power-play goals in seven games against the Avalanche. The Sharks are at 80.8 percent on the penalty kill, having done an effective job against Colorado, while the Blues are at 75.0 percent, having given up four power-play goals to Dallas in seven games. Advantage: Even

Coaching: Berube has given the Blues a lot of things, like a tenacious forecheck, more defensive responsibility and a straightforward approach that is less about psychology than it is about function. (What the Blues haven't given him yet: a contract extension.) Pete DeBoer, meanwhile, understands the psychology of his veteran locker room, including when to take the foot off the pedal. Tactically, his adjustments in the early part of the Vegas series -- including a bigger emphasis on cutting down offense off the rush from opponents -- has paid big dividends. Advantage: Sharks

Prediction: Sharks in seven