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BROOKLYN, Mich. — Chris Buescher won his second straight NASCAR Cup Series race by holding off Martin Truex Jr. late in the FireKeepers 400 on Monday.

Buescher, who won last week at Richmond, took the lead on Lap 133 in the No. 17 Ford and didn’t give it up. With 12 laps to go in the 200-lap race, Truex challenged him with door-to-door driving before sparks were seen under his No. 19 Toyota and he faded.

Truex made a savvy move to win Stage 2 shortly after pitting, going high before dropping low to surge past Daniel Suarez, and finished second. Denny Hamlin was third, followed by Brad Keselowski and Kyle Larson.

Buescher, driving for RFK Racing, gave Ford its ninth straight victory at Michigan to extend the longest winning streak by a manufacturer at a track that has hosted Cup races since 1969.

The race was suspended Sunday due to rain, which delayed the start and later led to a red-flag stoppage that lasted 19-plus hours before the race resumed under cloudy skies the next day.

Two of the top drivers, and one on the outside of the playoff chase, didn’t make it to Monday. Many of the fans who filled the stands and the infield Sunday, giving the track one of its biggest crowds in years, did not return to see the end of the race.

William Byron and Kyle Busch, who have a combined seven wins this year, were knocked out of the competition on the first day of the two-day race. Busch spun out and hit a wall after making side-by-side contact with Ryan Blaney early in the race, and Byron ran into a wall without anyone around him shortly after Truex won the first stage.

Chase Elliott lost control due to a tire failure, pushing the 2020 Cup champion lower in the standings and putting him in the precarious position of needing to win one of the final three races in the regular season to make the playoffs.

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Jets sign captain Lowry to 5-year, $25M extension

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Jets sign captain Lowry to 5-year, M extension

WINNIPEG, Manitoba — The Winnipeg Jets signed captain Adam Lowry to a five-year, $25 million contract extension Wednesday. The deal starts next season.

The 32-year-old Lowry has played his entire 12-year NHL career with Winnipeg, serving as captain since 2023-24.

St. Louis native Lowry has a goal and two assists in seven games this season. The 6-foot-5 center has 122 goals and 154 assists in career 782 games.

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Bruins’ McAvoy, hit in mouth by puck, has surgery

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Bruins' McAvoy, hit in mouth by puck, has surgery

ANAHEIM, Calif. — Boston Bruins defenseman Charlie McAvoy had surgery Wednesday to repair facial injuries and will be sidelined indefinitely.

McAvoy was hit in the mouth by Noah Dobson‘s slap shot Saturday in the second period of Boston’s 3-2 victory in Montreal.

“He’s doing good,” Bruins coach Marco Sturm said before Boston’s game against Anaheim. “He’s recovering right now at home. We still don’t know how long he’s going to be out for.”

McAvoy has 14 assists in 19 games this season.

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Panthers say Luostarinen out after BBQ ‘mishap’

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Panthers say Luostarinen out after BBQ 'mishap'

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers are now dealing with even more injuries, including one sustained in a grilling accident.

And coach Paul Maurice, when looking at the big picture, is seeing all of this as a way for the champs to get even better.

Forward Eetu Luostarinen will be listed as week-to-week, Maurice said Wednesday, after what the coach described as “a barbecuing mishap.” But the already-shorthanded Panthers don’t seem to have a concrete timeline in mind for Luostarinen’s return.

“We don’t have a lot of experience with this,” Maurice said. “When he comes back and feels comfortable with the equipment on him, away we go.”

And forward Cole Schwindt, claimed off waivers last month to help with the Panthers’ injury problems, is now on the injury list himself. Schwindt will need surgery in the coming days to repair a broken arm, and the Panthers expect that he’ll miss two to three months.

Luostarinen and Schwindt become the latest entries on an injury log for the Panthers that already included long-term issues for captain Aleksander Barkov (preseason ACL tear), Dmitry Kulikov (upper body), Jonah Gadjovich (upper body), Tomas Nosek (knee) and Matthew Tkachuk (groin). Barkov, Kulikov, Gadjovich and Nosek all still have months to go in their recoveries; Tkachuk might start skating by the end of this month and could make his season debut sometime in December.

It is not at all what the Panthers expected to start the season. But that’s where Maurice sees opportunity; the roster depletions have forced Florida to change its playing style somewhat, and he thinks that could wind up providing valuable lessons.

“There’s an awful lot of good if you can capture, if you can learn some new things, things that you have to learn to survive,” Maurice said. “And that’s really in some ways what we’re doing, is trying to survive. When you get to seven guys out of your lineup, you’ve got a problem. We can survive that and then learn through the adversity of it eventually.

“We’re going to have, slightly after the trade deadline, the biggest movement in the league,” he added. “We’re going to get some players back. We can be a better team than we were going into the playoffs last year, if we can learn how to do this. It’s just going to be hard. It’s going to be uncomfortable right now. And we’ve got to be good with that.”

The Panthers expect that rookie forward Jack Devine, part of two NCAA title teams at Denver and twice a Hobey Baker Award finalist before turning pro last year, will make his NHL debut Thursday in a home game against New Jersey.

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