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The BulleTin • Sunday, June 13, 2021 B3 NHL PLAYOFFS Barbora Krejcikova wins women’s French Open title Semifinals feature 4 teams that have not faced each other all season BY STEPHEN WHYNO AP Hockey Writer If the teams left in the NHL play- offs are sick and tired of facing the same opponents over and over, they are in luck in the semifinals. After exclusively divisional play this season and through the first two rounds, the hockey playoffs are down to a final four of teams that ha- ven’t played each other all year. The New York Islanders face the Tampa Bay Lightning in one semifinal that’s a rematch of the 2020 Eastern Con- ference final, while the Vegas Golden Knights play the Montreal Cana- diens in a playoff series for the first time. After so much familiarity from seeing the same teams over and over, the final two rounds with the Stanley Cup on the line bring every element of the unknown. “It’s such a different series in terms of the preparation,” Vegas general manager Kelly McCrimmon said. “Now with the Islanders and Tampa Bay, our own series with Montreal, it’s brand new. Starting from scratch.” The league that has emphasized rivalries for decades limited play within four remade divisions for one season only because of the pan- demic. It allowed all 31 teams to complete a condensed, 56-game schedule with 16 making the play- offs. New York emerged from the East, Tampa Bay the Central, Vegas the West and Montreal the North. Play- ers and coaches from these teams ha- ven’t thought much about each other all season, let alone scout or prepare for them. “Different season for every- one,” Canadiens coach Dominique Ducharme said. “Different style of play or different teams that you play often, but that’s part of the challenge for everyone right now.” If Montreal-Vegas, which begins Monday night, goes the distance, the teams will face off more times during one playoff series than they have all- time in the regular season, because the Golden Knights began playing in 2017. The Lightning and Islanders grinded out a six-game series nine months ago in the postseason bubble — Associated Press Gerry Broome/AP Tampa Bay Lightning right wing Nikita Kucherov (86) passes during Game 5 of a second-round playoff series against the Carolina Hurricanes in Raleigh, North Car- olina, on Tuesday. Kucherov, the 2019 MVP who missed this year’s regular season while recovering from hip surgery, is leading all scorers with 18 points so far in the playoffs as the Lightning attempt to defend their Stanley Cup title. “Maybe you wish you had played them a little more recently, but at the end of the day, this is the situation we’ve been dealt. We knew if we got to this point we were going to have to face a team that we hadn’t played in the regular season.” — Ryan McDonagh, Tampa Bay Lightning defenseman in Edmonton, Alberta, so there will be some familiarity when the puck drops Sunday afternoon in Tampa. “It helps a little bit,” Islanders coach Barry Trotz said. “Most of our players played in that series, so they understand when we’re talking about certain trends or the way they play.” Tampa Bay won that series last fall before beating Dallas and hoist- ing the Stanley Cup. With the Light- ning, Islanders and Golden Knights in the semifinals again, the NHL has three of the same teams in the final four for the first time since 1991 and 1992. Vegas center Mattias Janmark John Locher/AP Vegas Golden Knights defenseman Alex Pietrangelo, right, scores a goal against Colorado Avalanche goaltender Philipp Grubauer (31) during Game 6 of a sec- ond-round playoff series on Thursday in Las Vegas. Boswell Continued from B1 “I went into it with the desire to do well, but more to have just a good run at it, rather than going there to try to win the thing,” Boswell said. “Obvi- ously winning it is awesome, but it wasn’t really an expectation that I had of myself.” Boswell said he did not think he was going to win until he actually crossed the finish line. “Just because there’s just so many unknown factors in gravel racing, with mechanicals, and (body) fueling, and flat tires and all that,” he said. “There’s a lot of unknowns, and it’s all kind of new to me with a different format of bike racing. But I was fortunate to have a clean run at it, no mechanicals, and was able to eat and drink enough. I really just had a perfect day out there mechanically and physically. Every- thing had to just align to put myself in the position to sprint for the win against ten Dam.” After an 11-year road career, Boswell announced in late 2019 that he was re- tiring from the WorldTour to pursue gravel racing and to be a full-time rider liaison for Atlanta-based technology brand Wahoo Fitness, which makes in- door trainers and bike computers and sponsors five WorldTour teams. Boswell was born in Bend with a marathon-running mother and a tri- athlete father who encouraged his love of cycling. A graduate of Bend’s Summit High School, Boswell, at 21, moved to Nice, France, to join PARIS — Thinking of her late coach the whole time, Barbora Krejcikova went from unseeded player to Grand Slam champion at a French Open full of surprises. Krejcikova beat 31st-seeded Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 6-1, 2-6, 6-4 in the final at Ro- land Garros on Saturday to win the title in just her fifth major tournament as a singles player. “It’s big achievement that nobody really expected,” said Krejickova, a 25-year-old from the Czech Republic. who never won a WTA title of any sort until last month. “Not even me.” When it ended with Pavlyuchenkova’s backhand landing long on Krejcikova’s fourth match point, they met at the net for a hug. Then Krejcikova blew kisses, her eyes squeezed shut, in tribute to her former coach, Jana Novotna, the 1998 Wimbledon champion who died of cancer at age 49 in 2017. “Pretty much her last words were just enjoy and just try to win a Grand Slam. And, I mean, I know that, from somewhere, she’s looking after me,” Krejcikova told the crowd at Court Philippe Chatrier, limited to 5,000 because of the coronavirus pandemic. “All of this that just happened, these two weeks, is pretty much because she is just looking after me from up there,” Krejcikova said, lifting her left hand toward the sky. “It was amazing that I had a chance to meet her and that she was such an inspiration for me. I just really miss her. But I hope she’s happy right now. I’m extremely happy.” Krejcikova is the third unseeded women’s champion since 2017 at Roland Garros. There were zero from 1968 through 2016. She now will try to become the first woman since Mary Pierce in 2000 to win the French Open singles and doubles titles in the same year. Krejcikova and partner Katerina Siniakova already own two Grand Slam doubles titles and reached Sunday’s final of that event. and Montreal winger Corey Perry are back in the third round after go- ing on a run to the final with Dallas. Perry said watching games in other divisions helps get past the uncer- tainty. “I think you look at our two teams and there’s four lines on both sides, six D, and two great world-class goalies are going to go battle head- to-head,” Perry said. “It’s going to be fun.” The Lightning are having fun with 2019 MVP Nikita Kucherov back after missing the regular season re- covering from hip surgery. Kucherov leads all scorers with 18 points through two rounds of the playoffs. “He’s a tremendous hockey player,” Islanders GM Lou Lamoriello said. The Islanders remember how tremendous Kucherov can be, and Tampa Bay now has captain Steven Stamkos playing too. But each team also knows there are some differ- ences masked by not being on the ice together since September. “Maybe you wish you had played them a little more recently, but at the end of the day, this is the situation we’ve been dealt,” Lightning defen- seman Ryan McDonagh said. “We knew if we got to this point we were going to have to face a team that we hadn’t played in the regular season.” Vegas goes into the semis as the favorite. The Golden Knights are the No. 1 seed by virtue of finishing with the most points and are battle-tested after needing seven games to knock off Minnesota and gutting through a tough second-round series against Presidents’ Trophy-winning Colo- rado. Now to see if the franchise in its fourth year of existence can hold off a challenge from an organization with 24 Stanley Cup titles to get to the final. “I’ve always believed that to win in the playoffs as you go along, you have to keep getting better,” Mc- Crimmon said. “It’s hard to win. Nothing has been easy for us in ei- ther series that we’ve played. It’s only going to get tougher as we move on here to the semifinals.” Thibault Camus/AP Stefanos Tsitsipas plays a return to Pablo Carreno Busta during their fourth-round match of the French Open in Paris on June 6. French Open Continued from B1 There’s also this milestone within reach for Djokovic, something Fed- erer and Nadal haven’t done: He can join Rod Laver and Roy Emerson as the only men in tennis history to win each of the four major tournaments at least twice. There were two first-time Grand Slam finalists in the women’s title match Saturday afternoon in Paris, and unseeded Barbora Krejcikova beat No. 31 Anastasia Pavlychenkova 6-1, 2-6, 6-4 for the trophy. Speaking at around midnight as Friday turned to Saturday after his 3-6, 6-3, 7-6 (4), 6-2 triumph dropped Nadal’s record at Roland Garros to 105-3 — two of those defeats were against Djokovic — the No. 1 seed in the men’s draw said he would take some time to catch his breath before thinking about what to do against Tsitsipas. “I’m not the freshest guy right now, obviously. But (the) good thing is that I have a day and a half to reju- venate and try to regroup,” Djokovic said. “Right now, it’s all about resting and hopefully being able to be fit to com- pete in the best-of-five with a guy who is in a great shape.” Djokovic has won five of their pre- vious seven encounters, although Tsit- sipas did push him to five sets before losing in the semifinals of the 2020 French Open. “I went into (the Unbound Gravel 200 race) with the desire to do well, but more to have just a good run at it, rather than going there to try to win the thing. Obviously winning it is awesome, but it wasn’t really an expectation that I had of myself.” — Ian Boswell world-renowned Team Sky. He raced seven years on the World- Tour, including five with Team Sky. In 2017 he finished fifth overall in the Tour of California. He competed four times in Grand Tour events, racing the Vuelta a Espana in 2015 and 2016 and the Giro d’Italia in 2016. In his first and only Tour de France, in 2018, he placed 79th overall in a field of 145 finishers. Boswell suffered a concussion — the sixth of his career — in a violent crash at the Tirreno-Adriatico in Italy in March 2019 while racing with Team Katusha-Alpecin, and he underwent a long recovery process, sitting out the rest of the season while dealing with vi- sion problems and constant headaches. Part of the reason Boswell has turned to gravel racing is because he believes it to be safer than road racing. He did not want to face the prospect of another crash, another concussion. Sure, gravel racing is dangerous as well, but in his new career his income does not hinge on his results. Andy Chastain/Wahoo Fitness Former Bend resident Ian Boswell races in the Unbound Gravel 200 in Kansas on June 5. Gravel riding and racing are surg- ing in popularity in the United States. Unbound, the most high-profile race and formerly called the Dirty Kanza, is staged every spring near Emporia, Kansas, and was started in 2006 with 34 racers. This year, it hosted nearly 3,000 riders, including top cyclists from throughout the country. Courses in gravel races vary from hard-packed dirt to softball-sized rocks, and distances usually range from 50 to 150 miles but can be even longer. Boswell said he has lots of dirt and gravel roads to ride near his house in Peacham, where he lives with his wife, Kaija. He has a much different approach to gravel racing, because racing is not his career anymore. “I’m working a full-time job with Wahoo, so my time to ride and train, and my approach to these types of events is very different than what I did when I was racing on the WorldTour and had the opportunity to train all day and focus exclusively on my per- formance and my body,” Boswell said. “There’s a lot more happening in my life now. So I still make time to ride, just not as much as I used to. “I do have a level of base, residual fitness from my time on the World- “I know it’s going to be another tough one,” Djokovic said. “I’m hop- ing I can recharge my batteries as much as I can because I’m going to need some power and energy for that one.” He’s the fourth-oldest finalist at Ro- land Garros in the Open era, which dates to 1968; the 22-year-old Tsitsi- pas is the youngest since Nadal won the title in 2008. The age gap between Djokovic and Tsitsipas is the largest for a French Open men’s final since Mats Wilander, 17, defeated Guillermo Vilas, 29, in 1982. “I’m looking forward (to) leaving my entire body on the court,” Tsitsi- pas said. There has been steady progress to- ward this moment by Tsitsipas, who leads the men’s tour in total match wins (39) and clay-court victories (22) this season. His 6-3, 6-3, 4-6, 4-6, 6-3 victory over Alexander Zverev at Court Philippe Chatrier on Friday repre- sented the Greek’s first win in four ca- reer major semifinals, including three appearances in a row in that round. The result also left Tsitsipas chok- ing back tears during the on-court in- terview. “I’m obviously just blessed to have the opportunity to play against the best and test myself, something that I’ve always dreamed and wished to happen one day,” Tsitsipas said. “I’m able to be here and really going for it. I love that.” Tour, which is incredibly helpful. I also don’t have the pressure and expecta- tions of having to win because it’s my job and career.” As an athlete liaison for Wahoo, Boswell hosts a popular bi-monthly podcast called Breakfast with Boz and he often gets pulled into other proj- ects, such as videos for new product launches. “I use my prior experience as a pro- fessional athlete to make things easier and relatable to athletes,” Boswell said. Boswell said he plans to race about five or six gravel events per year. His next race will be the Migration Gravel Race, a four-day stage race in Kenya, June 23-26. The race conflicts with the Oregon Trail Gravel Grinder, set for June 23-27 on dirt and gravel roads throughout Central Oregon, so Bo- swell will not be returning to Bend to race on his old home roads. But he said he could not pass up a chance to race in Africa. “The level and depth of the field in gravel races is rising,” Boswell said. “There’s so many people out there. There’s people who are racing to win, and there’s other people out there rid- ing for the experience, having as many tough moments and struggles as the people at the front. Their stories are just as compelling, which is the cool thing about these events. You’re on the start line with so many people of so many different abilities but everyone is riding the same course at the same time.” e Reporter: 541-383-0318, mmorical@bendbulletin.com