The end did not come without a fight for the Minnesota Wild. But it was an ending, nonetheless.

Facing elimination in Game 6 of their first-round series with Vegas, the Wild were unable to play with a lead — which was critical in these half-dozen games — and fell 3-2 on Thursday, with the Golden Knights claiming the series 4-2.

Vegas star forward Jack Eichel scored his first playoff goal at a critical time, snapping a second-period tie, as the Golden Knights won the final three games of the series to advance for the first time since their Stanley Cup win in 2023. Mark Stone added an insurance goal for the Knights with just under 4 minutes left in regulation as they held off the Wild’s late charge.

Ryan Hartman scored both goals for Minnesota, which has lost its past three playoff series in six games after leading all of them 2-1. Filip Gustavsson had 20 saves for Minnesota, which last won a first-round playoff series in 2015.

Adin Hill was the difference-maker as the Wild made a desperate third period push, as the Knights goalie had 29 saves in the win.

The season-long story about penalty-kill struggles added another chapter before the game was 5 minutes old, when Marco Rossi drew a double minor for high sticking on his first shift of the game. Vegas used the man advantage to forge an early lead on Shea Theodore’s wrist shot from the blue line.

With 20 seconds left in the opening period, the Wild had the puck behind their own net and looked, briefly, like they might be content to run out the clock and get to the first intermission. Instead, they initiated one final rush up ice, which ended noisily, when Hartman sent a shot through a crowd, tying the game with 4 seconds left in the first.

It was the first goal of the playoffs for Hartman, who had four assists in the first five games, and famously had a potential game-winner taken away in Game 5 when replay showed the team entered the offensive zone offside.

Minnesota made a strong push early in the second but could not take the lead, controlling the play for much of a two-minute man advantage without a breakthrough.

Instead, it was Vegas grabbing the momentum and the lead late in the period. Eichel, who had been held without a goal in the series’ first five games as the Knights’ top line struggled, got a breakaway after a lead pass from Stone that was just out of reach of Kirill Kaprizov’s desperate attempt to swat it away. Eichel’s low shot beat Gustavsson on the glove side.

But Minnesota refused to go quietly in the third, making push after push early in the period as Vegas seemed content to sit back, play defense and ice the puck when they could. Matt Boldy had a wide-open shot from the low slot only to have the puck poked away. A minute or so later, Hartman came in all alone after a set-up pass, but Hill made the save.

After Stone knocked a puck out of the air and past Gustavsson for a 3-1 lead, Hartman potted a tap-in from the side of the net just 21 seconds later to make it a one-goal game again. Hartman had a potential hat trick at his feet, but could not get a shot off following a rebound that was loose in the crease with 2:40 left.

The Wild sent Gustavsson to the bench with two minutes remaining.

The Wild went with the same lineup as Game 5, most notable for the return of Gustavsson, after he exited the previous contest after 40 minutes in with an illness. There was some speculation of potential defensive changes following the coverage gaffe that led to the Knights’ overtime winner, but coach John Hynes stuck with the status quo.

Vegas made a change at forward with Pavel Dorofeyev, their top goal scorer, missing from the lineup for the first time this season. He had played all 82 regular season games and the first five in the playoffs, but suffered an undisclosed injury late in Game 5.

Vegas, which won the Pacific Division, will host the winner of the first-round series between Los Angeles and Edmonton.

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Authorities arrested a 34-year-old man Thursday in connection with the fatal shootings of three people in South Minneapolis, and the city’s police chief said it’s likely another person was killed the next day in retaliation.

Police have said that the four people killed and two others seriously wounded in the multiple shootings were Native American, and authorities strongly suspect the shootings were gang-related. However, Police Chief Brian O’Hara said during a news conference Thursday that authorities are still investigating the motives behind the shootings.

The shootings shook a large Indigenous community south of downtown Minneapolis. A 20-year-old woman, a 17-year-old boy and a 27-year-old man were killed in Tuesday’s shootings in the 1500 block of East 25th Street, and a 28-year-old man and a 20-year-old woman were taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries. A 30-year-old man died in Wednesday’s shooting in the 2100 block of Cedar Avenue South.

The first shooting took place just before midnight Tuesday. O’Hara said it’s “entirely probable” that the second shooting with a single victim was a response to the three deaths, and he said someone else was responsible. It occurred about 1 p.m. Wednesday a little more than a mile to the northeast outside an apartment building housing the Minneapolis offices of the Red Lake Nation tribe.

“But beyond that, I can’t speculate further about some ongoing beef,” O’Hara said.

The police chief said investigators believe the shootings are gang related based on the “lived experience” of the people in the area.

The U.S. Marshals Service said its local fugitive task force and an FBI SWAT team arrested the suspect Thursday afternoon. He was being held in the Hennepin County jail and had not been charged as of Thursday evening.

Meanwhile, police are investigating a fifth homicide that occurred within 24 hours. Shortly before 8 p.m. Wednesday, officers were alerted to gunfire in the 3000 block of 15th Avenue South. A man in his 50s was found with life-threatening gunshot wounds. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.

The violence shattered a relative peace in Minneapolis. The city recently went two months without a homicide until a man was shot to death April 19. It was the city’s longest period without a homicide in a decade, according to police.

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By MATT O’BRIEN, AP Technology Writer

BOSTON (AP) — Tariffs weren’t on the agenda of this week’s Robotics Summit, where thousands of tech industry workers mingled with humanoid and other robot varieties and talked about how to build and sell a new generation of increasingly autonomous machines.

Not on the official agenda, at least.

“Jump up to the microphones,” said keynote speaker Aaron Saunders, chief technology officer of Boston Dynamics, inviting a standing-room-only crowd to ask him questions. “And I’m the CTO, so don’t ask me about tariffs.”

The crowd laughed and complied. But as they streamed onto the show floor at Boston’s convention center, greeted by a remote-controlled humanoid made by Chinese company Unitree, it was hard to ignore the shadow of President Donald Trump’s far-reaching global tariffs and retaliatory measures from Trump’s biggest target, China.

Tariffs are the “No. 1 topic that we’re discussing in the hallways and at the water cooler with people that I’ve known for a long time,” said event organizer Steve Crowe, chair of the annual Robotics Summit & Expo. “I think it’s definitely top of mind, because there’s so much uncertainty about what is going to come.”

That concern is rooted in a robot’s complex anatomy of motors and actuators to move their limbs, computers to power their artificial intelligence, and sensing devices to help them react to their surroundings. Sensors, semiconductors, batteries and rare earth magnets are among the array of components most sensitive to global trade disputes.

Tesla CEO and billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk warned investors last week that China’s countermeasures restricting shipments of rare earth magnets will delay Tesla’s development of its Optimus humanoid robots.

At the summit on Wednesday and Thursday, some humanoid makers were looking at a potential bright side to the geopolitical shifts as American businesses look harder for domestic supplies of parts and the development of U.S.-based robots that can automate factories and warehouses.

“It’s added some inconveniences to our own supply chain. But it’s also opened up opportunities,” said Pras Velagapudi, chief technology officer at Oregon-based Agility Robotics, in an interview. The company is starting to deploy its humanoid robot, called Digit, at a U.S. plant run by German manufacturer Schaeffler, a maker of ball bearings and other components key to the auto industry.

Al Makke, a director of engineering for Schaeffler’s chassis systems, said tariffs could push many companies toward onshoring production of a variety of items in the U.S.

“And if that does happen, then local companies have to deal with high labor costs and a shortage of labor and so automation gets pushed further,” Makke said. “And one of those faces of automation is humanoids.”

Most of the big industrial robots employed in the U.S. are used to help make cars, and are imported from countries such as Japan, Germany or South Korea.

Automakers in the U.S. installed 9.6% more robots in their plants than a year before, according to new data from the International Federation of Robotics, a trade group.

For now, humanoids are still a niche but one that invites intense curiosity, in part thanks to popular science fiction. Saunders, of Hyundai-owned Boston Dynamics, presented an update Wednesday on the development of its Atlas humanoid robot but didn’t bring a physical prototype, instead showing off a more familiar pack of its four-legged Spot robots contained in a pen on the show floor.

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The sole humanoid at the conference was Unitree’s G1. Marketed for $16,000 and remote-controlled by an employee standing nearby, the robot fluidly shook hands, waved back at people and walked around the show floor, but it won’t be moving totes or working in a factory anytime soon.

Its main customers outside China are academic researchers and some social media influencers, and Trump’s current tariffs totaling 145% on China would raise its cost to American buyers to roughly $40,000, said Tony Yang, a Unitree vice president of business development who manages its North American sales. Nevertheless, Unitree’s strategy to rapidly develop its hardware and software is a long-term one.

“It’s still a very narrow market, but I think there’s still a huge potential market on the industry side, like for manufacturing and factory and even home use,” Yang said.

At a full pickleball court on the show floor, some conference attendees took a break to grab a racket and swing at balls tossed by a wheeled robot. Asked to describe what’s inside the Tennibot robot, its maker also had tariffs on the mind.

“Injection molded parts, rivets, screws, nuts, wheels, motors, batteries,” said Haitham Eletrabi, co-founder and CEO of Tennibot, based in Auburn, Alabama. “The supply chain gets very complex. We get parts from all over the world. Tariffs are adding a lot of uncertainty.”

It’s not just the U.S.-China trade rivalry that was weighing on some attendees. Francesca Torsiello, of the recruitment firm Adapt Talent, said she’s also hearing more wariness from Canadian robotics and engineering candidates about taking jobs in the U.S. amid a tense political environment.

“In the past, people in Canada found it attractive to come and work for U.S. companies; right now they’re being very hesitant,” Torsiello said.

AP video journalist Rodrique Ngowi contributed to this report.

By DAVID BAUDER, AP Media Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — During a contentious exchange about deportations in his interview with ABC News’ Terry Moran this week, President Donald Trump brought up — from his perspective — how Moran had gotten into the White House in the first place.

“They’re giving you the break of a lifetime, you know,” Trump said in Tuesday’s prime-time broadcast. “You’re doing the interview. I picked you because, frankly, I never heard of you, but that’s OK.”

Emphasizing again that it was his choice that Moran was there, the president scolded, “You’re not being very nice.”

From an ethics perspective, it’s considered a breach for a news organization to let a newsmaker dictate who will conduct an interview. In the real world of competitive journalism, things aren’t always so simple.

Did ABC News let President Trump decide who would do the interview?

We don’t know. ABC on Thursday would not talk publicly about what arrangements were discussed after Trump agreed to speak to the network about the first 100 days of his administration. ABC privately pushes back against the notion that Trump was given a list of potential interviewers, but it’s unclear whether other names came up.

On its face, Moran would seem an unexpected choice. At 65, he’s been with the network since 1997 and was chief White House correspondent during George W. Bush’s first term. He had nine one-on-one interviews with Barack Obama.

But his profile at ABC News has diminished. He’s an anchor for the “ABC News Live” streaming service and covers the Supreme Court for the network.

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There would seem to be more obvious alternatives, like “World News Tonight” anchor David Muir, effectively the face of the news division. Mary Bruce is the current chief White House correspondent. Jonathan Karl has written three books about Trump and rotates as a host of the “This Week” Sunday show with Martha Raddatz.

Only George Stephanopoulos would seem off the table, since Trump sued him for defamation in a case settled last December.

Why would a news organization not want to cede the choice of an interviewer to the president? “It undermines our independence as journalists,” said Kelly McBride, a media ethics expert and senior vice president at the Poynter Institute. “When we make decisions of what questions are going to be asked, who’s doing the interview and how we edit the interview, we do it in service to the audience.”

“If we let the powerful person that we are attempting to get information from choose who does the interview or select the questions, we’re breaking our promise to the audience that we would be acting on their behalf,” she said.

The power of a president

Practically speaking, however, a president has a great deal of power in these dynamics.

Whatever the well-established challenges inherent in interviewing Trump, news organizations prize an exclusive interview with the president, any president. At any given moment, his press office likely has many requests for interviews, usually with a specific journalist’s name attached. He already has choices.

The Trump administration has made no secret of its desire to wield more control over who questions the president. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has invited new, mostly friendly, journalists into the White House briefing room and talked about further changes in who is allowed there. The administration sparked a court fight with The Associated Press over access to the Oval Office.

When he worked as a news executive at CNN and NBC News, Mark Whitaker said he would discuss interviews with the White House involving certain journalists, but “the idea of giving a choice is not something I ever saw.” he said.

Andrew Heyward, a former CBS News president, said he understands the principle of not ceding the decision of who asks the questions, “but as a practical matter, it’s often a negotiation.” Heyward stressed he had no inside information about what happened with ABC News this week.

The ‘Wild West’ days of competition for celebrity interviews

In some cases, the importance of landing an interview ahead of a competitor can take precedence over the principle of controlling who does the asking. Its value is illustrated in the ratings: nearly 4 million people watched Moran’s interview with Trump on Tuesday, the largest audience of anything on television that night, the Nielsen company said.

There was even more at stake during the “Wild West” days of television networks competing for big celebrity interviews, primarily at the end of the last century.

“Shamefully, the interviewee was in the driver’s seat whenever it came to the flavor-of-the-week or the most sought-after new interview,” said veteran broadcast journalist Connie Chung. “It was one of the reasons why I despised getting the so-called ‘get.’ It was a matter of who could grovel better.”

On many of those occasions, news organizations didn’t always speak with one voice; Diane Sawyer and Barbara Walters often competed fiercely for the same interviews when they both worked at ABC News. In 2001, Chung recalled that Walters was designated by ABC to interview scandal-scarred U.S. Rep. Gary Condit, but the congressman’s representative said they were going to another network unless Chung did the story. Chung got the interview.

So what if the day’s big celebrity is the president of the United States?

“It is a bit of a gray area,” Heyward said.

David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.