St. Cloud, Minn. — Jack Beck’s deflection early in the third period stood up as the winner, and Arizona State (5-2-0) opened NCHC play with a 3-2 win over St. Cloud State (2-4-0) on Friday night at the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center.

The series closes Saturday at 4 p.m. Phoenix time in St. Cloud, streaming on NCHC.tv and on the radio on FOX Sports 910 AM.

The power play carried Arizona State through a wild first period — both Sun Devil goals in the period came with the man advantage, and it bailed them out of everything else that happened in those 20 minutes. The Sun Devils came into the night 4-0-0 this season when scoring a power-play goal; they left it 5-0-0.

Arizona State struck first on the power play, when captain Kyle Smolen opened the scoring early in the first period. The goal carried two milestones with it: Smolen became the fourth player in program history with 30 or more career goals, and the goal was his 70th career point, making him the 10th player in Sun Devil history to reach that mark.

Arizona State’s penalty kill is the backbone of this team, and it showed again Friday. The Sun Devils came into the night fifth in the nation on the kill at 95.2 percent, with one power-play goal allowed through six games — and they needed every bit of it in a first period that turned rough. Jacob Napier threw a left hook at Nordberg that the officials let go, both benches were warned, and a hit on the St. Cloud captain lit the Huskies up: Gavyn Thoreson tied the game, and Noah Urness put St. Cloud State ahead 2-1. Down a goal, Arizona State killed the tripping call on Baran — Smolen took a shot block on the kill and skated off slowly — and the kill held the game at 2-1 until the power play could answer. It held the rest of the night, too: one power-play goal allowed, now through seven games.

The tying goal came with 1:12 left in the period, on the power play. The puck moved across the top of the zone to Ben Muthersbaugh — an alternate captain in his first season in Tempe after transferring from Union — and where the coverage expected him to shoot near side, he went far side instead, past the shoulder St. Cloud goaltender Yan Shostak had vacated. It was Muthersbaugh’s fourth goal of the year, and the second time in three games Arizona State has scored two power-play goals in the first period.

The second period belonged to the goaltenders. Sophomore Samuel Urban held the line for Arizona State, and Shostak matched him at the other end, and the period ended the way it started. Urban finished with 28 saves on 30 shots; Shostak faced the heavier night and made 31 saves on 34 shots in the loss.

The winner came 3:45 into the third. A shot from the point found Beck, another of Arizona State’s alternate captains, in front, and his deflection beat Shostak for a 3-2 lead the Sun Devils protected the rest of the way. The win was Arizona State’s fourth in a row — the Holy Cross finale, both games of the sweep at UMass Lowell, and now the conference opener, on the road, against a team and a crowd that spent the night trying to drag them into something else.

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Florida Panthers (8-4-2) 5, Winnipeg Jets (4-7-3) 2 — Anton Lundell scored his first career hat trick, in his 373rd game, and Florida won its third straight. Sam Reinhart opened it on the power play late in the first, far side off a Carter Verhaeghe pass. Lundell’s first came early in the second — his shot was blocked and he put the rebound back past Nico Daws. Kyle Connor got Winnipeg within 2-1 on a 5-on-3, his team-leading 11th of the season, but Seth Jones answered on a Panthers power play eight seconds in to restore the two-goal lead, on his way to a three-point night. Morgan Barron’s first goal of the season cut it to 3-2 in the third before Lundell closed it — a rebound tap-in, then an empty-netter for the hat trick. Akira Schmid made 22 saves for his third straight win; Daws stopped 33 in his first start for Winnipeg. The Jets have lost eight straight (0-6-2), and Florida beat them twice this week, going 5-for-10 on the power play across the two games.

Calgary Flames (6-7-0) 6, Seattle Kraken (8-5-1) 2 — Calgary broke a 1-1 game open with three goals in under five minutes in the second period and chased Seattle starter Philipp Grubauer. Morgan Frost’s power-play goal on the game’s first shot opened it; Frederick Gaudreau tied it on his own rebound. In the second, Aydar Suniev one-timed a Frost pass, Matvei Gridin scored on the power play off a defender’s skate, and Joel Farabee beat Grubauer through the pads on a Mikael Backlund feed — four goals on 14 shots, and Grubauer’s night was done. Mackie Samoskevich’s power-play goal got Seattle to 4-2 late in the second, but Matt Coronato scored 39 seconds into the third and Ryan Strome finished it. 

Coronato had a goal and three assists — his first four-point game — and Dustin Wolf made 21 saves in his first start since Oct. 15. Calgary went 2-for-2 on the power play and has won five straight at home, a payback for the two 6-1 losses Seattle handed them in the season’s opening week.

For stats information, visit www.cbssports.com.

Las Vegas — The Vegas Golden Knights pointed the finger at themselves Friday, when turnovers and loose checking turned a first-period lead into a 5-2 loss to the New Jersey Devils at T-Mobile Arena.

Vegas opens a four-game road trip Monday, November 2, at the Boston Bruins, at 7 p.m. Eastern / 5 p.m. Phoenix time at TD Garden, on NHL Network.

“We didn’t help ourselves tonight,” Golden Knights coach Ryan Craig said in the team’s postgame media availability. “New Jersey is a good team and capitalizes on that. It starts with our puck play and turnovers, and when we didn’t have it, I didn’t think we checked well enough tonight. The first two are turnovers. We just got to be better.”

Vegas led 2-1 in the first period before New Jersey tied it less than a minute later, then took control in the second. Defenseman Shea Theodore said the problems started with the Golden Knights themselves.

“Just not good enough,” Theodore said. “Our execution wasn’t there. Our physicality wasn’t there. We weren’t really getting on the forecheck, and too many turnovers. It starts defensively — you can’t give up five and expect to win.”

Ivan Barbashev, who scored the goal that put Vegas ahead, said the connections just weren’t there.

“We’re just trying to make some plays that we’re not getting connected,” Barbashev said. “It’s either a turnover or just a bad puck play. Simple as that. We have a really good team, a lot of players who have been in the league for many years. We just got to figure it out and get out of that slump, and we’ll be better.”

Craig said the Golden Knights also didn’t test New Jersey goaltender Connor Hellebuyck enough: “No, we didn’t test him enough. It just wasn’t enough consistency.”

The one bright note was defenseman Brayden McNabb, an original Golden Knight, playing his 900th NHL game.

“He’s been a leader here from the start, and he plays a good hard game,” Theodore said. “The hard work that he puts in doesn’t go unnoticed.”

“He means everything,” Barbashev said. “He’s been here since day one. He’s a leader — when I came here, he helped a lot. Block shots, just does everything right for a team.”

Craig closed by saying the execution has slipped for about 10 days and the work starts right away.

“You hope it’s a one-off,” he said. “I thought we let some frustration creep into our team game. We’ll correct that, and we’ll get right back to work on the road. We’re going to get on the ice tomorrow before we head east.”

For full stats information, readers can visit www.cbssports.com.

Picture option: the game photo gallery on NHL.com / the Golden Knights’ site, credited to Getty Images and NHL.

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© Old Town News Scottsdale — oldtownnews.us

PROVO, Utah — Arizona State’s season now sits in the hands of a true freshman quarterback, in the loudest stadium in the Big 12, against the No. 8 team in the country.

The Sun Devils (4-3, 2-2 Big 12) play at BYU (6-1, 3-1) on Saturday, and everything about the week in Tempe bent toward one question: who starts at quarterback? Mikey Keene started last Saturday against Kansas State, left in the second quarter with a knee injury, and freshman Jake Fette came off the bench to help drive two fourth-quarter touchdown drives in a 28-17 comeback win. Keene practiced all week and is a game-time decision, but head coach Kenny Dillingham said Friday morning that the freshman is the plan. “The plan is probably Jake, but Mikey practiced all week. Mikey moved around pretty decent, so we’ll see where he is on Saturday,” Dillingham told Arizona Sports’ Bickley & Marotta on 98.7 FM.

If it is Fette, he becomes Arizona State’s third starting quarterback this season, and almost nothing about the assignment is gentle. BYU is 4-0 at home, and this is the Sun Devils’ third road game against a top-10 opponent in eight games — they are 0-2 away from Tempe. Dillingham saw something in the freshman last week that he is betting on now. “Jake’s got that look in his eye. Jake’s got the swagger, the confidence when he moves around,” Dillingham said after the Kansas State game. Fette went 3-of-6 for 45 yards in relief; the numbers were small, but the drives were the game — two touchdowns in the fourth quarter to turn a loss into a win the Sun Devils had to have.  

Fette will not have to carry it alone. Running back Cardae Mack ran for 159 yards and four touchdowns against Kansas State, the kind of afternoon that changes how a defense has to play a freshman quarterback, and receiver Reed Harris leads the Big 12 with 800 receiving yards on 47 catches and eight touchdowns — the first name BYU’s secondary has to find on every snap. The worry is up front: starting center Tana Alo-Tupuola is out, and guard Wade Helton is questionable, so the line protecting a first-time starter is being rebuilt in the same week. Safety Lyrik Rawls, out since Oct. 3, is questionable to return on defense.

BYU has wounds of its own, and they are real. The Cougars were No. 2 in the country a week ago before losing their first game, 39-31 in double overtime at UCF, a game in which their defense missed 18 tackles. Running back L.J. Martin, the reigning Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year, is out for a third straight game, and top cornerback Evan Johnson is out after being carried off on the final play at UCF. Quarterback Bear Bachmeier still runs a 6-1 team that beat Arizona and Notre Dame on its way to 6-0, and head coach Kalani Sitake spent the week on response, not excuses. “Life is things that happen to you and you get defined by how you react to it,” Sitake said. BYU gets Utah next week; look past Arizona State and the Cougars’ season bends the wrong way.

The stakes explain themselves. Utah leads the Big 12 at 4-0, and BYU is one of four teams a game behind. Arizona State, at 2-2, cannot take a third conference loss with Utah, Arizona and Texas Tech still on the schedule and expect any path to the title game to survive. The Sun Devils also own the memory in this series — they beat BYU 28-23 last November in Tempe in a wild finish that helped carry them to the Big 12 championship, and they lead the all-time series 21-8. None of that travels. What travels is a freshman quarterback, a hot running back and a team that has run out of room to lose.

Game information: Saturday, Oct. 31, 12:30 p.m. MST, LaVell Edwards Stadium, Provo. TV: FOX — Connor Onion (play-by-play), Robert Griffin III (analyst), Alexa Landestoy (sideline). Streaming: FOX Sports app, FOX One, Fubo. Arizona State radio: Arizona Sports 98.7 FM — Tim Healey (play-by-play), Jeff Van Raaphorst (analyst), Kevin Turner (sideline). BYU radio: KSL 102.7 FM and 1160 AM — Greg Wrubell (play-by-play), Hans Olsen (analyst), Mitchell Juergens (sideline).

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© Old Town News Scottsdale — oldtownnews.us

LUBBOCK, Texas — Arizona’s season has reached the game that decides what kind of season it really is.

The No. 22 Wildcats (6-1, 3-1 Big 12) play at No. 13 Texas Tech (6-1, 3-1) on Saturday morning, and the math is plain. Both teams sit one game behind unbeaten Utah in the Big 12 race. Win, and Arizona stays a game back with a real path to the conference title game. Lose, and the Wildcats fall two games behind with four weeks left, which is another way of saying the race is over. Games in late October are not supposed to work like elimination games, but this one does.

Arizona comes in rolling. The Wildcats have won five straight since their only loss, 28-17 at BYU on Sept. 12, and the fifth was a 39-3 beating of Iowa State last Saturday that locked up bowl eligibility in back-to-back seasons for the first time since 2014-15. This is a program that has now put together a five-game win streak in consecutive seasons for the first time since 1992-93. That is not a hot week. That is a program turning.

The engine is Noah Fifita. The junior makes his 42nd straight start Saturday, and he already owns Arizona’s career records with 11,247 passing yards and 91 touchdown passes — the standard every Wildcat quarterback after him will be measured against. This season he has thrown 18 touchdowns against just four interceptions while completing 74.2 percent of his passes. Those two numbers together tell the story of his year: he is pushing the ball downfield without giving it away.

That is exactly what Texas Tech’s defense is built to punish. The Red Raiders have intercepted 13 passes this season, second in the nation, and returned five of them for touchdowns — the most in the country and a school record. They have run one back for a score in four straight games. Arizona head coach Brent Brennan knows what is waiting. “We played against lots of really good defenses, and besides BYU, I think this is the best defense we played all year,” Brennan said. His counter is Fifita’s experience — 42 starts’ worth of defenses seen, hits taken and mistakes already made, which is what a quarterback leans on when a defense is disguising coverages and hunting the ball.  

Texas Tech has its own urgency. The Red Raiders won the Big 12 last season, and last week’s 37-24 loss at Cincinnati was their first of the year, snapping a school-record nine-game conference win streak. Head coach Joey McGuire framed the week simply: “Go 1-0 and you control everything.” Tech has also won 12 straight at home, one short of a school record that has stood since 1942, and this is not a place Arizona knows how to win. The Wildcats are playing in Lubbock for the first time since 1989 and have won there once in their history, in 1935. Fifita’s offensive coordinator, Seth Doege, knows the building from the other side — Doege threw for 8,646 yards as a Texas Tech quarterback and now calls plays against his old school for the first time in Lubbock.

Arizona will not be whole. Starting cornerback Jay’Vion Cole, who has started every game, is out after getting hurt against Iowa State, and Dwight Bootle II steps in opposite Tyrese Boss. Running back Antwan Roberts Jr., the team’s second-leading rusher, is questionable. The good news is at receiver, where Chris Hunter III and Giovanni Richardson are both probable to return after missing two games, giving Fifita his full set of targets for the biggest test of the year.

Game information: Saturday, Oct. 31, 9 a.m. MST, Galaxy Stadium, Lubbock. TV: ESPN — Dave Pasch (play-by-play), Dusty Dvoracek (analyst), Taylor McGregor (sideline). Streaming: ESPN app, Fubo. Arizona radio: Wildcats Radio 1290 AM and 107.5 FM — Brian Jeffries (play-by-play), Lamont Lovett (analyst), Mackenzie Hamilton (reporter); SiriusXM channel 82.

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© Old Town News Scottsdale — oldtownnews.us

The Arizona Cardinals will have Jeremiyah Love back in the backfield Sunday when they play the Dallas Cowboys, and these are the team notes heading into the game.

Love missed the last two games with an ankle injury. He opened this week with limited practices on Wednesday and Thursday, then practiced in full on Friday, and he carries no injury designation for Sunday. Head coach Mike LaFleur said Friday that Love was expected to play, and Love said the time off did what time off does. “Two weeks for anybody will get people feeling how they want to feel,” Love told Darren Urban of the team’s official site.

He returns to a backfield that held together without him. Tyler Allgeier and Bam Knight split the work almost evenly over the last two weeks, and both are available Sunday. Allgeier started this week not practicing because of a toe injury, then got through limited practices on back-to-back days and also carries no designation. Knight moves back into a rotational role, but he earned a place in the plan while Love was out — 22 carries for 128 yards over the last two games, better than five yards a carry, with five catches on top of it.

At receiver, Michael Wilson is set to play through sore ribs. Wilson wore a yellow non-contact jersey in practice all week and has no designation for Sunday, but LaFleur said pain tolerance will decide how much he can handle. That matters because the offense leans on Wilson — he has averaged 9.4 targets a game through his seven appearances this season, and a limited version of him changes what the passing game can do.

The defense will be without Walter Nolen III for a second straight game. Nolen is out with the ankle injury he suffered in Week 6 against the Los Angeles Rams, so L.J. Collier and Andrew Billings will take on more snaps on the defensive line. Nolen’s next chance to play comes Nov. 8 against the Seattle Seahawks.

This story was reported by a journalist and converted to this platform, and our editorial verifies all reported fairness and accuracy.

© Old Town News Scottsdale — oldtownnews.us

Rising costs of living are causing struggles for some Arizona residents, with minimum wage earners most acutely impacted. SmartAsset’s newest study examines how far the minimum wage goes in Arizona, and the other 49 states.

Among the study’s key findings:

• Arizona ranks No. 9 for the percentage of the local living wage which a worker earning the state minimum ($15.15 in Arizona)  brings home — 62%.
• In Arizona, the living wage is $50,898, while the annualized minimum wage is $31,512. The median income, meanwhile, is $50,926.
• Missouri has the nation’s strongest minimum wage. There, a worker earning the state minimum earns 71% of the local living wage. By nominal dollar value, Washington has the nation’s highest state minimum wage, beginning at $17.13 per hour.

Minimum wage laws expanded during the Great Depression to support a basic standard of living, but their value today depends on local costs. A relatively high minimum wage may still fall far short in an expensive state, while a lower minimum wage may cover a larger share of basic expenses in areas where costs are lower. In some states, the minimum wage approaches a living wage — the income needed to maintain a basic but adequate lifestyle. In others, the gap is wider, leaving workers with greater difficulty covering essential expenses.

SmartAsset analyzed minimum wages in all 50 states, comparing them with 2026 living-wage levels to determine where minimum-wage earnings go furthest. For each state, the analysis also calculated the Kaitz index, which expresses the annualized minimum wage as a share of the median wage. The results reveal where a minimum-wage paycheck comes closest to supporting a viable living and where workers face the steepest shortfall.

The Italian Association of Arizona is giving its signature celebration a fresh backdrop this fall, moving the 11th annual Italian Festival to the newly renovated Scottsdale Civic Center.

The two-day takeover is 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 7, and Sunday, Nov. 8, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The bigger space leaves more room for food, wine vendors, and crowds.

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“We are beyond excited to host our beloved festival in a new space that gives guests more room to enjoy authentic Italian cuisine, music, wine, vendors and activations,” said founder and organizer Dario Soldan.

He added that the team is reviving its popular La Strada del Vino concept, designed to “transport guests to Italy and celebrate our culture in the heart of Scottsdale.”

This year’s festival leans into growth. More than 30 Italian wines will anchor La Strada del Vino, alongside an expanded roster of food vendors — newcomers Sogno Toscano and The Italiano, plus returning favorites like Virtu Honest Craft, Pomo Pizzeria, Mamma Lucy and Marcellino Ristorante. Merchant booths will showcase curated Italian goods from Outrageous Oils, The Biscotti Box, Mamma Letizia, Allora Beauty, Sourced Italy and Bella Capri.

A new VIP section debuts this year, offering three complimentary pasta dishes crafted by chef Francesco Allegro, plus three exclusive wine or cocktail selections. VIP admission also includes general entry and six wine-tasting tickets for La Strada del Vino.

The festival is also rolling out a Saturday bocce ball tournament with two courts and team registration at $100 for four players, including general admission. On Sunday, local Italian restaurants will face off.

Entertainment centers on one main stage, featuring Italian opera soprano Ripalta Bufo, trilingual pop artist ILIANA, Little Rascal, and street performers — including a 15-member flag-twirling troupe from Asti, Italy. Families will find a dedicated kids’ area with face painting, balloon twisting and other activities.

Three ticket packages are available:

• De Cecco VIP Lounge: $185 presale; $250 week-of
• La Strada del Vino: $54.99 presale; $75 regular (includes general admission, six tastings, wine glass, lanyard)
• General admission: $14.99 presale; $30 at the door. Children 12 and under enter fr