BROSSARD, Quebec -- Sweden found out a few weeks ago that New Jersey Devils goaltender Jacob Markstrom would not be available for the 4 Nations Face-Off because of injury. Around the same time, 2023 Vezina Trophy winner Linus Ullmark was nursing some back problems.

Ullmark, 31, left the Ottawa Senators lineup just before Christmas, but insists now that, within a week or so, he was not worried about making it back in time for the international tournament.

"It's been a long road. It's been different, but it's been very productive," he said Monday. "I learned a lot of things along the way and had good communication throughout the whole process that enabled me to be here today in front of you guys."

Ullmark, in his first season with the Senators, is 12-9-2 with a 2.49 goals-against average. On Saturday, in a 5-1 loss to the Florida Panthers, he made 43 saves.

"It didn't feel like we had to rush through the process to get me to be a part of this team," Ullmark said. "Once we kind of settled that in, and talked it over, and had the communication throughout this whole process, from the beginning, I never felt that I was stressed about it or concerned that I wasn't going to be a part of it."

Sweden also has Filip Gustavsson and Samuel Ersson, Markstrom's replacement, but Ullmark is the most accomplished of the three.

"I played with him a couple years ago, so I know how good he is and how good he makes the defense feel just for him to be out there," Buffalo Sabres captain and countryman Rasmus Dahlin said. "I'm very happy he's healthy and ready to go."

Sweden opens up Wednesday at the Bell Centre in Montreal against Canada.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Cole Hutson was one of four Boston University goal scorers, netting the game winner in the second period of the Terriers' 4-1 victory over rival and top-ranked Boston College in the final of the annual Beanpot college hockey tournament Monday night at TD Garden in Boston.

Brandon Svoboda, Cole Eiserman and Gavin McCarthy also scored for No. 9 BU in front of a raucous crowd of 18,258 fans in the home of the NHL's Boston Bruins. Goaltender Mikhail Yegorov, a prospect for the New Jersey Devils, made it stand up, as he finished with 43 saves in his first Beanpot final.

"I hope this gives us confidence as a team," Terriers coach Jay Pandolfo, a former assistant with the Bruins, said after the win. "With our guys, we're still trying to get the message across to understand that if we play a certain way, we're going to have success."

Yegorov took home the Eberly Award, given to the Beanpot netminder with the highest save percentage across the tournament, which also annually includes Northeastern and Harvard. Yegorov stopped 69 of 71 shots in two starts, registering a .972 percentage.

His teammate, Hutson, 18, a second-round pick of the Washington Capitals last year, was honored as tournament MVP. He finished with three goals and five points as the Terriers raced to their 32nd Beanpot title in program history, and first since 2022.

"We have to stick to it, and I thought we did that from the end of the first period on," Pandolfo said. "It's a pretty good recipe when we do play that way. But we have to get a boost from this moving forward."

Gabe Perreault, a 2023 first-round draft pick of the New York Rangers, scored the lone goal for the Eagles. Ryan Leonard, another one of BC's first-rounders who was selected No. 8 overall by the Capitals in that same draft, assisted on Perreault's tally.

"They were upset in the locker room," Boston College coach Greg Brown, a former assistant with the New York Rangers, said after the loss. "Especially the ones who this was their last shot at it. They wanted it a lot, but BU played a little better than us tonight."

Earlier in the night, in the third-place game, the Crimson outlasted the Huskies 4-3.

What is the most "Tkachuk" thing about Ottawa Senators captain Brady Tkachuk?

"You mean what's the rattiest thing about him?" asked his teammate Shane Pinto.

Is that an official synonym for Brady's surname in hockey circles?

"I guess so," Pinto said with a laugh. "He's just always stirring the pot on the ice against the other team. But off the ice, he's a nice kid. I mean, it's completely different. He's chill."

Being a Tkachuk means having a moniker that has defined a certain kind of NHL player: highly skilled with blunt physicality and a win-at-all-costs attitude. Father Keith Tkachuk personified it for 18 seasons, scoring 538 goals and totaling more than 1,000 penalty minutes. Older brother Matthew, 27, swaggered his way to postseason heroism, leading the Florida Panthers to the Stanley Cup last season.

Is it finally time for Brady Tkachuk, 25, to have his definitive moment?

He captains the Senators, one of the NHL's hottest teams recently and a franchise desperately seeking its first playoff berth since 2017.

"He's everything you'd want in a hockey player," said Travis Green, in his first season as Senators head coach. "He's a bit of a throwback where he can make plays, he can score, he can set up plays, he's tough, he fights. He's ultracompetitive. Hard to play against and loves to win."

Tkachuk will bring those attributes to Team USA in the upcoming 4 Nations Face-Off, as part of a generation of American players getting their first chance to represent their nation in a best-on-best tournament.

"There's just so much room and opportunity for us to grow in here before then, so I'm still focused on that," Tkachuk told ESPN recently, standing in the Ottawa dressing room. "But it's hard not to think about the fact that I'll be playing for Team USA and playing with my brother. It's hard not to get excited for it."

About a month before the tournament, Tkachuk said there hasn't been a ton of discussion among his national teammates -- no Team USA group chat yet. "Everyone's focused on their own teams right now," he said.

That's one of the unique things about the 4 Nations Face-Off, a round-robin tournament in which the U.S. battles NHL stars from Canada, Sweden and Finland. It's a midseason tournament, with players taking a break from intense playoff races to battle for international bragging rights. Tkachuk believes that the 4 Nations players will be able to focus on the task at hand before getting back to the NHL grind.

He also believes that unlike the 2016 World Cup of Hockey -- played before the 2016-17 season, when players were in preseason condition and games at times reflected that -- the level of competition will be high for 4 Nations.

"It's honestly perfect because you're already in the groove of the season," he said. "You're already in the groove of your individual season, and you're not shaking out any rust at the start of the year. You're in your tip-top shape. That's going to be the best quality hockey that you can have in the middle of the season."

The Senators will have 26 games left when the season resumes on Feb. 22. As of Tuesday, Ottawa had a 90% chance of making the playoffs.

"Right now we're in a position that I've never really been in before," Tkachuk said. "It's just so much fun to come to the rink every day. Every game is at the utmost importance."

Pinto credited Tkachuk, who has been captain since the 2021-22 season, with powering Ottawa into the playoff race. Through 56 games, he led the team with 21 goals and was third (behind Tim Stutzle and Drake Batherson) in points. Three of those goals were overtime winners.

"I think every night he drags himself into the battle," Pinto said. "He gets the boys going. We're lucky to have him."

Other teams would be lucky to have him, too. Such as the New York Rangers, for example.

BACK IN DECEMBER, Larry Brooks of the New York Post reported that the Rangers had made Tkachuk their "primary target" in trade discussions, seeking to import the 25-year-old star to change their culture like brother Matthew did with the Panthers. Brooks claimed to have three sources all saying the Rangers were after the Ottawa captain.

Pinto said that Senators players were aware of the report. "With social media now, it's hard to kind of stay away from all that," he said.

Tkachuk was obviously aware of it, too.

"It's just nothing I can control, right? There's always going to be rumors, there's always going to be rumblings," he said. "I think it would be on me if I let that stuff control my emotions and affect me in what I'm trying to do here."

But Senators owner Michael Andlauer couldn't ignore the rumors. In fact, he was absolutely fuming about what Brooks had written.

In an interview with The Athletic, the Ottawa owner said "100 percent there's never actually been an ounce of discussion" about trading Tkachuk, who is signed through 2027-28 ($8,205,714 average annual value).

Andlauer accused Brooks of being a vessel for "soft tampering," which immediately entered the NHL lexicon.

"If indeed he's being fed false information, or people are giving this information from another NHL organization, I don't know -- we just had a big memo about tampering from the NHL. I might consider that soft tampering," Andlauer said.

The Rangers responded in a statement at the time: "This is an irresponsible accusation and we defer to the Commissioner's office."

What was it like for Tkachuk to have his owner step up and basically tell the Rangers, "Stay away from him, he's ours"?

"I was really appreciative for that," Tkachuk said. "Not many people do that. I think it just speaks to the character that we have in this organization and the leadership we have in Mr. Andlauer. It felt really good to have that kind of support."

Tkachuk signed a seven-year contract in October 2021 after a difficult negotiation, not unlike the ones his father and brother had fought through in their careers.

"He's starting to become more of a Tkachuk the later this goes," Matthew Tkachuk joked at the time.

That contract was seen by many as an endorsement of Ottawa management's vision for the future. The following three seasons were good for Brady Tkachuk, who scored more than 30 goals in each of them, but the mediocrity continued for the Senators, who missed the postseason cut and finished no better than sixth in the Atlantic Division.

Over that span, owner Eugene Melnyk passed away, with Andlauer buying the team from the Melnyk family in September 2023. GM Pierre Dorion, who drafted Tkachuk fourth in 2018 and signed him to that extension, was fired in November 2023. Green is the fifth coach Tkachuk has had in seven seasons with Ottawa.

This season, Tkachuk has experienced another change, and it's a positive one: He's captaining a team that's in playoff contention deep into the season.

"I think the key is not looking too far ahead, just focusing on the here and now. As time has gone on this year, I think I've gotten better at that, but still need to improve a little bit more," he said. "Not get too high, not get too low, just focus on what I can do and what I control."

A LOT OF PLAYERS claim to stay in the "here and now" by not focusing on the daily NHL standings. Tkachuk admits that with the Eastern Conference playoff race basically changing by the hour, that's an impossibility. He wants to know where the Senators are around the bubble. He just can't have it weigh on him or his team too much.

"I never want to get consumed in it, where that's all I care about. That's going to be detrimental versus being a positive thing," he said.

That includes imagining potential playoff matchups. There's one of particular interest to Senators fans: the possibility of facing their archrival Toronto Maple Leafs in the Eastern Conference postseason. Ottawa has lost all four "Battle of Ontario" playoff series against the Leafs, the last one occurring in 2004.

"I did see that. I think it'd be fun and awesome. But for us, we can't really look too far ahead yet. That'd be exciting. But I think we got to just put our full sole focus and effort into today," Tkachuk said. "It doesn't really matter who you play; it's just about getting there and it's about the process of getting there."

Tkachuk's profile will get a further boost courtesy of Amazon Prime's "Faceoff: Inside the NHL," which has been renewed for a second season. Tkachuk was featured in the premiere season of the show during some segments featuring Matthew and Keith.

Brady Tkachuk was the only player named as part of the cast when the show's renewal was announced in December.

"It's probably going to be a little weird to start, just with cameras kind of around. When there's a camera or a mic around, sometimes you can just go into a shell. It's important to not really change who I am," he said. "I'm actually really excited to showcase the city of Ottawa and the amazing people that are in that city."

The Amazon show will chronicle the first time Tkachuk will captain the Senators through a playoff race. It's also the first time his own teammates are seeing him in that mode, too.

"Brady's Brady. He's going to wear his heart on his sleeve every day and he has done a great job so far," forward Josh Norris said. "I think sometimes he just gets some momentum during the game where you can tell that he's pissed off or he knows that we need to play better."

Green was impressed with Tkachuk's leadership from the moment the coach arrived in Ottawa.

"He's a great captain now, but he's still a young captain in the league. He's learning as he goes," Green said. "He's going to be even a better captain the longer he plays in the league."

Pinto said being this confident as a young captain is one of the most impressive things about Tkachuk.

"As a young guy, it's never easy to be a leader," he said. "I think he's still a year older than me and he's a captain of a team, so I can't imagine the pressure he gets put on every night. But I thought he's done a great job."

Pinto arrived in the 2020-21 season. He watched as players like Tkachuk and defenseman Thomas Chabot, who started playing for Ottawa in 2016-17, committed to the team contractually and gave it their all through some lean times.

As the Senators push for the playoffs, Pinto said seeing those players get their due is part of the thrill.

"They've been through a lot of tough times. It's made them stronger as people and as players. Obviously there comes a time where you want to start winning. Thankfully, we started to do that, and those guys are probably the happiest out of everyone," he said. "When the team's winning, people will start to realize how good they are. I'm just happy for them."

Liverpool head coach Arne Slot has described his team's shock FA Cup exit at the hands of Plymouth Argyle as "unacceptable" and has urged his players to "show a different side" in the Merseyside derby against Everton on Wednesday.

Liverpool were knocked out of the FA Cup thanks to a Ryan Hardie penalty, with Slot having rested several key players for Sunday's trip to Home Park.

The Premier League leaders also lost defender Joe Gomez to injury early on in the clash, but Slot believes his team should still have had the quality to beat the side who are rock bottom of the Championship.

"To lose against Plymouth is unacceptable," he said in a news conference on Tuesday. "We are disappointed with that result. Now we have to show a different side of us tomorrow. It was not only the result, but the performance was far below Liverpool standards as well."

Slot has been criticised in some quarters for failing to respect the FA Cup, while others have argued that being dumped out of the competition could actually help Liverpool in their pursuit of the Premier League, Champions League and Carabao Cup, having booked their place in the final of the latter competition last week.

"A wise man once said to me nothing good comes from losing a football game and I completely agree," Slot said. "We would definitely prefer to have played more games. Now after losing this game, there is one moment where we have a normal week but that is not what we wanted when we went to Plymouth.

"It was difficult because the plan was to play with Joe [Gomez] for 60 minutes, the plan was to start Curtis [Jones] but he didn't feel well enough to play so then all of a sudden, we missed two important players. Darwin became a dad one or two days before the game, that happened in Spain, so he came in one or two days earlier.

"There were some circumstances that weren't perfect. The idea was to play with a stronger team than we did but still this team should have been able to win that game. The fact we didn't win and that we didn't win against PSV [Eindhoven] as well tells us that these players need these games to get the best out of them. It's so difficult to get the best out of them if you don't play games. It makes it disappointing we don't have these extra games for them."

Starting with the game against Everton, Liverpool face a gruelling run of five Premier League matches in 15 days.

Asked whether this upcoming stretch will define his team's season, Slot said: "No, because this, playing five games in 15 days, is what we've done for seven months now. Every phase of the season is crucial if you play in the Premier League.

"This is the hardest league to win because there are so many teams that can win this league and there are so many teams that are able to win 10 or 15 games in a row. You cannot slow down, you cannot have a few games where you are not on top of your game because all of a sudden other teams catch you up.

"That's why it's such an exciting league. The upcoming five are important but then after that the next nine are important. But the first 23 have been just as important."

The United States Under-17 men's national team dominated their opening match of World Cup qualifying with a resounding 22-0 victory over the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The historic win marks the most goals ever scored by a U.S. team in World Cup qualifying at any level, according to US Soccer.

Forward Chase Adams led the charge with 10 goals, setting a new record for most goals scored by a U.S. player in a World Cup qualifying match.

What a goal by Pedro Guimaraes! pic.twitter.com/lj2eHaUV1d

Concacaf (@Concacaf) February 11, 2025

Captain Maximo Carrizo contributed with four goals, while Chance Cowell and Jude Terry each scored twice. Pedro Guimaraes, Ramiz Hamouda, Jamir Johnson, and Kellan LeBlanc rounded out the scoring.

The previous best result for a U.S. national team at men's World Cup qualifying was 13-0 vs. U.S. Virgin Islands at the 2018 Concacaf U20 Championship and the previous best overall was 20-0 vs. Grenada at the 2022 Concacaf Women's U17 Championship.

Former Spanish football federation boss Luis Rubiales told a court on Tuesday that he asked player Jenni Hermoso if he could kiss her before doing so after the World Cup victory in 2023.

Rubiales and the other three defendants are accused of trying to downplay the kiss on player Hermoso at the 2023 Women's World Cup final presentation ceremony, with the former president testifying before a judge on Tuesday.

Rubiales is also accused of sexual assault while the other defendants -- former women's national team coach Jorge Vilda, the federation's former sports director of the men's national team, Albert Luque, and the former head of marketing, Rubén Rivera -- are accused of coercion for allegedly trying to convince the player to support Rubiales' version of the kiss.

"I am absolutely sure that she gave me her permission," Rubiales told the court in Madrid where he is standing trial. "In that moment it was something completely spontaneous."

Asked whether he normally kissed people on the lips, Rubiales said the occasion and the fact he had known Hermoso for a long time warranted it. He said he would do something similar with a male player or one of his daughters.

"You don't win a World Cup every day," he said. "When I see my daughters I don't give them a peck but on New Year's Eve I give them a peck."

Hermoso says she did not consent to the kiss while Rubiales denies wrongdoing and says it was consensual.

Rubiales resigned under pressure three weeks after the scandal surfaced and was banned by FIFA for three years. He had said he was the victim of a "witch hunt" by "false feminists."

Hermoso testified on the first day of the trial last week and said she "felt disrespected" by Rubiales after winning the World Cup. She said that the kiss "stained one of the happiest days of my life."

The kiss prompted outrage in Spain about the prevalence of sexism in sports and beyond.

Prosecutors, Hermoso and the Spain players' association want Rubiales jailed for two and a half years, fined 50,000 ($51,800) for damages, and banned from working as a sports official. They want the other three defendants sentenced to one and a half years in prison.

Information from the Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

Chelsea and Australia striker Sam Kerr has been found not guilty of the racially aggravated harassment of a police officer in London.

Kerr, 31, was on trial for the abuse of PC Stephen Lovell in south-west London in the early hours of Jan. 30, 2023.

The incident occurred after she had been driven to Twickenham Police Station along with her partner, United States midfielder Kristie Mewis, by a taxi driver who alleged that they had refused to pay clean-up costs after one of them was sick, and that one of them smashed the vehicle's rear window.

Kerr, who has Indian ancestry, called Lovell "stupid and white" after police were called following the drunken dispute with a cab driver.

The 31-year-old, one of the world's top strikers who plays for Chelsea in the Women's Super League, accepted saying those words but denied one count of racially aggravated harassment.

Her lawyer argued she was making a comment about power and privilege, and Kerr gave evidence last week that she felt police treated her differently because of the colour of her skin.

Kerr was acquitted by a jury following a trial at Kingston Crown Court. She showed no emotion in the dock as the verdict was delivered.

She gave a thumbs up to her lawyer Grace Forbes before leaving the dock.

Forbes said she would apply for costs, to which Judge Peter Lodder said: "I take the view that her own behaviour contributed significantly to the bringing of this allegation ... that has a significant bearing on the question of costs."

Kerr's trial focused on the aftermath of a night out which ended with Kerr and Mewis, who plays for West Ham United, hailing a London black cab to Kerr's home.

The driver took them to a police station instead, with Kerr giving evidence that the driver began behaving erratically after she felt ill and spat out of the window.

Both Kerr and Mewis said they believed they were being held hostage, with Mewis kicking in the cab's rear window in a bid to escape shortly before they arrived at the police station.

Towards the end of a long conversation between Kerr, Mewis, Lovell and two other officers, Kerr said: "You guys are f------ stupid and white."

Lovell gave evidence that he was upset by the remark and denied an allegation by Kerr's lawyer Grace Forbes that he had claimed to be upset simply to secure a criminal charge.

Kerr, however, said she had felt "terrified for my life" during the cab journey and that police did not take her concerns seriously.

Information from Reuters contributed to this report.

A Spanish court has rejected an appeal by Real Madrid defender Raúl Asencio to end the investigation into his alleged role in distributing a sexually explicit video of a minor.

Asencio -- who has made 21 appearances for Madrid's first team since making his debut in November -- is alleged to have shared a video recorded by two former Madrid youth players of a sexual encounter with one woman and one minor, in June 2023, while a third former player was also present.

Lawyers for Asencio, 21, had filed an appeal against a ruling by a court in Gran Canaria, which had found that the investigation into whether he distributed the video should continue.

On Tuesday, the press office of the High Court of Justice of the Canary Islands said in a statement that the court had confirmed the decision to continue with the inquiry, rejecting the motion of dismissal requested by Asencio's defense team.

The four players were first arrested in September 2023, and their mobile phones seized by police, with Madrid confirming that they had given evidence over "the sharing of a private video via WhatsApp."

Police said a complaint had been filed by the mother of a 16-year-old girl in the Canary Islands regarding an alleged recording of sexual relations. She did not to consent to being recorded.

Asencio has featured regularly for Madrid's first team this season after the team suffered a series of injuries to their senior defenders and is in the squad for Tuesday's Champions League knockout phase playoff first leg with Manchester City.