BOSTON -- The Bruins were able to sweep Carolina in the Eastern Conference final without captain Zdeno Chara.

Now they're hoping 10 days off before the start of the Stanley Cup Final will be enough time for the defenseman to return.

The title round begins May 27 when Boston will face San Jose or St. Louis, with that conference final 2-2. The Bruins completed their sweep Thursday with Chara out with an undisclosed injury.

"We have a lot of time to make the absolute right decision to give him the proper time to get over something that's been nagging him," Bruins general manager Don Sweeney said Saturday. "And we'll cross our fingers that will be the case. But we're confident it will be."

Sweeney stopped short of guaranteeing Chara's return for Game 1.

"I'm not living in how or where Zee feels. I expect he'll be fine," Sweeney said. "But I'm not going to sit here and make a proclamation in terms of promises. I do believe that time will be used effectively and he'll be fine. But sometimes those are out of your control."

Defenseman Kevan Miller and forward Chris Wagner are doubtful for Game 1 of the Final. Miller hasn't played since April 4 because of a lower-body injury. Wagner injured his right arm blocking a shot in Game 3 against Carolina.

Hey, good news: We're going to talk more about the players than the referees in this edition, which is really all we can ask for in this postseason. It was a 2-1 win for the St. Louis Blues over the San Jose Sharks, without any major controversy!

Here's what happened in the NHL last night (check out replays of every playoff game on ESPN+) and what to watch for Sunday night, in today's edition of ESPN Stanley Cup Playoffs Daily:

Jump ahead: Last night's game | Three stars
Play of the night | Next game | Social post of the day

About last night ...

Game 4: St. Louis Blues 2, San Jose Sharks 1 (series tied 2-2)

The Blues had two options after that crushing Game 3 overtime loss. They could have allowed the blown call on Timo Meier's hand pass that set up Erik Karlsson's game winner to fester. Or, they could put it aside and focus on the real lesson of that loss, which is to not allow a game-tying goal late in the game.

They went for the second route in Game 4, closing out the 2-1 win thanks to a strong performance from Jordan Binnington (moving to 11-2 after losses) and a defense that bent (allowing 73 shot attempts in all situations) but did not break. (Here's a quirk: For the fourth time in this series, the team with the most shot attempts was the team that lost the game.) Ivan Barbashev and Tyler Bozak had the Blues' goals, and Tomas Hertl scored for the Sharks.

Three stars

1. Jordan Binnington, G, St. Louis Blues. The Blues rookie set a franchise record with his 10th playoff win, and became just the 10th rookie goalie in NHL history to hit double-digits in wins during a single postseason. He made 29 stops for St. Louis.

2. Martin Jones, G, San Jose Sharks. Jones made only 20 saves in the game and ultimately took the loss, but he was spectacular for the Sharks early in the game before they started controlling play from the second period on. "We were kind of lucky it was just 2-0 after first. Jonesy made a couple huge saves," Tomas Hertl said.

3. Ivan Barbashev, LW, St. Louis Blues. The Blues' fourth line had another strong game, and Barbashev followed up his assist on Alexander Steen's Game 3 goal with a goal of his own just 35 seconds into Game 4, setting the tempo.

Play of the night

.@StLouisBlues>#StanleyCup>pic.twitter.com/WaXKmh1N9n - NHL GIFs (@NHLGIFs) May 18, 2019

Follow the bouncing puck. Tyler Bozak was credited with the goal, as it hit a few skates and found its way past Jones.

Dud of the night

We need to talk about Erik Karlsson.

The Sharks defenseman played just 6:20 in the third period, his lowest ice time for any period of this series. His 25:09 in total ice time, while second only to Brent Burns (26:46) on the Sharks, was also his lowest of the series. He was missing from the ice for almost eight minutes of the third period, before he took the ice with 1:55 left and the Sharks having pulled Jones. Karlsson's skating was labored. He didn't rush the puck much at all. Burns passed on a question about Karlsson's health, and coach Peter DeBoer said he had "nothing" to add to the speculation about the defenseman's health. It's something to monitor before Game 5.

On the schedule

St. Louis Blues at San Jose Sharks, Game 5, 3 p.m. ET Sunday (series tied 2-2)

The noon local start time is an interesting wrinkle for Game 5. The Sharks will seek to extend one of the most cemented trends of the postseason, which is their record in odd and even games. They're now 1-7 in even-numbered games with a minus-10 goal differential, and 9-1 in odd-numbered games with a plus-15. It should also be interesting to see if DeBoer does some line scrambling, as he had Joe Pavelski skating with Joe Thornton, and Joonas Donskoi with Hertl's line for a bit in Game 4.

Social post of the day

Hypnotizing. #StanleyCup>pic.twitter.com/0GiuHFNRwM - NHL GIFs (@NHLGIFs) May 17, 2019

Honestly, who needs teammates when you have a hallway for fun?

Quotable

"It was exactly the opposite of what we wanted. ... The first was really ugly." -- Tomas Hertl on the Sharks' start

New Zealand-born forward Tyler Boyd has been approved to switch affiliation to the United States by FIFA.

Boyd, 24, scored five goals and had four assists in 13 games for Ankaragucu, in Turkey's top division, in the second half of the season on loan from Portugal's Vitoria Guimaraes.

- Davis: Lletget is the most interesting man in U.S. soccer

Boyd played for New Zealand at the 2013 Under-20 World Cup and made his debut for the senior national team in Japan in 2014. He has played six international matches, all exhibitions.

The U.S. Soccer Federation announced on Saturday that soccer's international governing body had approved Boyd's application.

LONDON, England -- Pep Guardiola believes that Manchester City's domestic Treble was harder to achieve than winning the Champions League.

City wrapped up the final part of the Treble on Saturday with an emphatic 6-0 victory over Watford, just six days after pipping Liverpool to the Premier League title by a single point.

"It's one of the best seasons I've experienced as a manager, not the best but one of the best for sure," Guardiola said at a news conference. "To be for 10 months playing in all competitions. No team, including incredible teams in this country, have done this and we were the first.

"I love the Champions League, but to do [the Treble] is more difficult than to win the Champions League and we did it.

"It's not easy for 10 months, every three days being there because when you have one bad night you are out of competitions. And especially the way we played today we were a little bit short of energy but that's normal."

City were ruthless against Watford as they equalled the record FA Cup final winning margin set by Bury more than a century ago in 1903.

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Raheem Sterling scored twice and looked to have become the first player to score a hat trick in a final since 1953. But City's second from Gabriel Jesus crossed the line just millimetres before Sterling could claim the goal, although it wasn't officially given to the Brazilian until more than 30 minutes after full-time.

"I've disputed it!" Sterling said. "What can we do?

"The boys were brilliant today and my goals just added to the win. Everyone was fantastic.

"Credit to all the boys today. It's been a fantastic year."

Sterling, whose boyhood home was in view of the Wembley Arch, added: "Growing up here, growing up seeing this get built, it's a dream to be on this football field and winning trophies. It's a massive dream come true."

Teammate Bernardo Silva said that there will be no let-up next season and warned City's rivals that they can get even better.

"There's always space for improvement, and that's what we will try to do," he said.

"Next season we'll try to get better and we'll try to win even more titles, to be even better, to control more of the games, to have more possession, to create more chances to score more goals. We'll work on that.

"To win all the massive competitions, first time any team has done it, it's amazing, what a team this is. The fans were amazing this season as well, they pushed us this far.

"Now it's time to rest and time to celebrate. Next season we will try again."

San Jose Earthquakes forward Chris Wondolowski has broken Landon Donovan's all-time Major League Soccer goals record with the first two of four strikes against the Chicago Fire on Saturday.

Wondolowski, 36, is now on 148 goals in 338 MLS appearances, while Donovan took 340 games to reach the previous record of 145.

His first goal goal came in the 21st minute when Cristian Espinoza delivered a long, cross-field pass to Shea Salinas on the left wing, and Salinas' low, driven cross was stabbed home by Wondolowski at the far post.

And Wondolowski set a new mark on 48 minutes when a seemingly innocuous cross from Nick Lima was floated into the box, but when Fire goalkeeper David Ousted fumbled the delivery, Wondolowski was there to pounce and side-foot it in.

He then added additional strikes in the 74th and 76th minutes to round out his historic afternoon.

Wondolowski started his career with the Earthquakes in 2005, but scored his first four goals for the Houston Dynamo, where he played from 2006-2009 after the franchise relocated.

MLS returned to San Jose in the 2009 season -- and so did Wondolowski, who had his breakout year in 2010, scoring 18 times in 28 appearances.

He had a record-tying year in 2012 when he scored 27 times to match Roy Lassiter's 1996 mark for most goals in a season. That mark was equaled by the New York Red Bulls' Bradley-Wright Phillips in 2014 before Atlanta's Josef Martinez surpassed the trio's mark in 2018.

Wondolowski also has 11 goals and 35 caps for the United States and was part of the squad that went to Brazil for the 2014 World Cup.

Rounding out the top five leading scorers in MLS history after Wondolowski and Donovan are Jeff Cunningham with 134 goals, Jaime Moreno (133) and Ante Razov (114).

LONDON -- It is never easy to put history into context just as it's being made, so it may be many more years before the real magnitude of Manchester City's domestic Treble can be properly judged. But by inflicting a 6-0 defeat on Watford in the FA Cup final on Saturday, Pep Guardiola's City achieved what no men's club has done before by winning the Premier League, FA Cup and Carabao Cup in the same season. However you feel about it, their place in history is certainly assured.

Saturday's Cup final win against Javi Gracia's team was City's 50th victory of the campaign, in their 61st game, and they took their goals tally to 169 and equalling Bury's 116-year record for the biggest-ever FA Cup final winning margin in the process. It's clear that the record books are in need of some rewriting.

- Ratings: Sterling a perfect 10/10 at Wembley
- Report: Man City smash Watford to win FA Cup

English football has produced some iconic sides over the years -- the Double winners at Arsenal, Tottenham and Liverpool, or the Treble winners (Champions League, Premier League and FA Cup) at Manchester United -- but City's class of 2019 are now in the same bracket as those illustrious greats of yesteryear.

With the club currently being investigated by UEFA and Premier League for alleged financial fair play transgressions, and similar probes being carried out by FIFA and the Football Association due to allegations of wrongdoing in the signing of underage players, City's achievements may yet be tainted depending on the outcome of those investigations. But as Guardiola said last week, the club is "innocent until proven guilty" and their success this season can only be judged by what we know now.

While the domestic treble is the greatest achievements in the club's history (so far), it is by no means a story that only began in the days after last summer's World Cup, when the players returned to the Etihad to be told by Guardiola that they had to meet the challenge of defending the Premier League title.

The reality is that this season's success began as far back as the summer of 2015, 12 months before Guardiola took charge of the club. At that point, he was preparing for the third year of his contract at Bayern Munich, yet sources have told ESPN FC that Raheem Sterling completed his £49 million move from Liverpool to Manchester City that summer after being told how highly he was rated by Guardiola.

Kevin De Bruyne was another who made the move to City in 2015, with the Belgian leaving Wolfsburg for the Etihad because of the prospect of working with Guardiola a year later. In short, the building blocks have been carefully laid over recent years in order to put City in the position that they are now in.

Players were signed and staff were recruited -- Guardiola's assistant coach, Rodolfo Borrell, the man who nurtured Lionel Messi, Cesc Fabregas and Andres Iniesta as a youth team coach at Barcelona, was hired as far back as March 2014 -- as every effort was made by the City hierarchy to make the club ready for Guardiola, whom they'd been attempting to hire since his departure from Barcelona in 2012.

Year 1 at City was turbulent under Guardiola, with the club finishing third in the league and ending the season without silverware. But huge recruitment in the summer of 2017, which saw the key arrivals of Kyle Walker, Benjamin Mendy, Ederson and Bernardo Silva, sparked the incredible run to the 2017-18 Premier League title, which was won by amassing a record 100 points.

All of the above is the backstory to the tale of this season's success. A long-term project, with improvements every year, culminating in a campaign that has seen City sweep the board domestically: they even called themselves the "fourmidables" and counted the Community Shield, won against Chelsea last August, as part of their haul.

The Carabao Cup was won against Chelsea in February after a penalty shoot-out victory at Wembley, while City held off Liverpool's spirited challenge in the Premier League to emerge as champions with 98 points -- the second-highest total in league history behind last year's 100-point mark. On the way to winning the Premier League, City had more goals (95), shots (683), passes (26,581) and touches (33,593) than any of their rivals, and they also won more games. Liverpool pushed them hard, but City were unstoppable in the end.

So how did Guardiola drive his players on to become the first team since Manchester United, in 2009, to retain the title, but also clean up in every other competition in England?

When Sir Alex Ferguson guided United to the club's first title in 26 years back in 1993, he walked into the dressing room at the start of the following season and told his squad he had three envelopes containing the names of those players he believed would let him down by resting on their laurels. Whether those envelope existed or not, it proved to be a motivational masterstroke, with United going on to win a league and FA Cup Double that season, also reaching the EFL Cup final, as his players proved to their manager that they had the hunger and desire to build on their previous success.

There were no envelopes for Guardiola, but there was a key preseason moment when he made it clear that he expected last season to be merely a staging post to greater things rather than a high watermark.

"People say now we have to forget what we did last season," Guardiola said last summer. "No way. I don't want to forget what we have done last season. I know exactly what we did to achieve that, and that is where we start from.

"That's the basic principle. Now, when I say something to them [the players], they know exactly what we have to do. We will have bad moments, but at a club where you win titles, winning another one helps for the future. It is impossible to win titles if you just have quality players -- if they believe their quality is enough, then you cannot win -- not even a friendly game."

And City's players work hard. Driven by Guardiola to train at all times of the day -- City train in the evenings before night games to prepare their minds and bodies, such is the manager's determination to have every detail covered -- their levels of fitness continue to leave opponents stunned. One player who has faced City over the past two season told ESPN FC that Guardiola's players "kill you with the ball, but they also run as hard in the last 10 minutes as the first."

It all stems from Guardiola. When Mendy turned up late for treatment on his injured metatarsal last September, after spending the previous night in London watching a world title boxing fight, the French defender was told to stay away from the training ground for a week by a furious Guardiola, who was determined to deliver a message to both Mendy and the rest of his squad that he expected full focus and commitment from every player. Kyle Walker, the full-back whose power down the right flank has been crucial to City since his arrival from Tottenham two years ago, attributes the team's success to Guardiola's character.

"Intense" is how the England international describes the City manager, while captain Vincent Kompany admitted after the title-clinching win at Brighton last week that Guardiola's demanding personality is why City have become serial winners.

"He starts everything off," Kompany said. "He sets the standards. If he is too nice, we don't go and win back-to-back titles, but I knew we could do that, straightaway.

"The first meeting of the season, it was all about trying to get back-to-back [league titles]. He had done it before [at Barcelona and Bayern Munich], and I felt we could do it from the first moment. I felt the desire."

City's domestic record during 2018-19, with the team winning 32 of their 38 league games, suggests a serene run to success, but there have been blips along the way. And while the 9-0 Carabao Cup win against Burton and 7-0 Champions League victory against Schalke point to the ruthlessness of Guardiola and his players, the league defeats against Crystal Palace and Leicester, and the loss at Newcastle in January, say more about their qualities.

After the back-to-back defeats against Palace and Leicester, City steadied the ship and then earned the ultimately decisive 2-1 win at home to Liverpool in January that reduced the gap to Jurgen Klopp's team to four points. A defeat would have left City trailing by 10, but the loss at Newcastle three weeks later was the pivotal moment.

From that moment on, City didn't drop a point in the Premier League, but it was only after Guardiola issued a rallying call in a training session the day after the defeat against Rafael Benitez's team. He was convinced that Liverpool would drop points, but told his players that they couldn't afford more slip-ups if they were to challenge Klopp's side.

"We spoke in the last [few] days," Guardiola said at the time. "We didn't recognise our team. They know it, they felt the same way in the last game against Newcastle." The Newcastle defeat was a line in the sand. From then on, City won every Premier League game -- 14 on the spin -- to beat Liverpool to the title.

The Champions League proved elusive, with Spurs edging an epic quarterfinal on away goals after a 4-4 aggregate draw, but Guardiola refocused his players by calling for one last, winning surge in the league and cup. Sergio Aguero's goal then crossed the line by millimetres in a 1-0 win at Burnley, and Kompany netted a stunner from 35 yards in another tight 1-0 victory against Leicester as City held their nerve in the face of incessant pressure from Liverpool.

Man City just rolled on, fighting back from a goal down to clinch the title with a 4-1 win at Brighton, before ending the season in emphatic fashion against Watford, making more history on the way. It was ruthless and brutal at times, but City have become a winning juggernaut thanks to Guardiola.

The concern for the rest is that he will be back next season, demanding more from his players. Only a fool would dare suggest that he won't manage to take City to even greater heights.

Scotland v Sri Lanka Match abandoned

For the second time in eight days, a rare Scotland home ODI against a Full Member was affected by rain as the series opener against Sri Lanka was abandoned without a ball bowled. After waiting through close to five hours of on and off drizzle, umpire Gregory Brathwaite called both captains together to deliver the news, turning Tuesday's second ODI into a series decider.

It was a major blow to Cricket Scotland, who had hired temporary bleachers to accommodate a sellout crowd of 1500 and will now have to issue refunds as a result of no play taking place. It was also a dent in Sri Lanka's World Cup preparation, leaving the second ODI as their only official action before their World Cup opener against New Zealand on June 1.

While clear skies are forecast for the next two days, rain is scheduled to return on Tuesday, putting the entire series at risk of being washed out.