It’s a testament to the NHL’s three-point standings system that the Wild were able to just about reverse the narrative on their season Sunday with a big overtime victory over the Dallas Stars at Xcel Energy Center.

After hemorrhaging points for nearly two weeks and playing without two of its best forwards for longer, Minnesota appeared to be stumbling toward playoff elimination (0-4-2) with the season winding down.

But the Wild answered the bell on Sunday, beating their traditional Central Division nemesis without forwards Kirill Kaprizov and Joel Eriksson Ek, and blue line anchor Jake Middleton, 3-2, on an OT power play.

Back to six points up on closest competitor Calgary for the eighth and final Western Conference playoff spot with four regular-season games remaining, the Wild appear all but a lock to return to postseason play after missing the playoffs last season.

In the immediate wake of Marco Rossi’s game-winning deflection of a typically preternatural feed from Mats Zuccarello — and with four regular-season games remaining against teams currently out of playoff position — confidence in the Wild dressing room was high.

“It’s been a grind, but we’re excited we’re still in the driver’s seat,” said veteran winger Marcus Foligno, who scored the Wild’s second goal. “Our fate’s in our hands.”

Pro Hockey Reference had the Wild’s postseason chances at 92.3 percent on Monday, and Playoffstatus.com had it at 96 percent, which seems about as good as it can get for a team that has been playing without two of its best forwards for months, and now has one of its best defenseman day to day after going head-first into the boards last Friday.

To be any good this season, the Wild had to avoid injuries; instead, it couldn’t have been much worse. They haven’t had Kaprizov, a Hart Trophy candidate before we went down, since early January. Eriksson Ek hasn’t played since he returned from the Four Nations Faceoff in mid-February, and defenseman Jonas Brodin on and off all season.

Fortunately, they were really good when the team was intact.

Minnesota finishes the regular season with four games in seven days starting Wednesday against San Jose at the X, and if the Wild close out a playoff spot, John Hynes should be a finalist for the Jack Adams Award. What they do there will depend largely on whether Kaprizov and/or Eriksson Ek will be available. Their presences dictate the team’s ability to ice two legitimate scoring lines, and whether they’re the No. 7 or No. 8 seed, the Wild will play either Winnipeg (0-3-0) or Dallas (2-2-0) in the first round.

The Wild were off Monday and it’s assumed Kaprizov will practice with the team Tuesday at TRIA Rink, but the Wild have been sensitive about the superstar’s status since they acknowledged in January that the left wing needed surgery — he had it on Jan. 31 — and Hynes has understandably given up estimating on either player, both of whom are skating but still on injured reserve.

“You know why I don’t like to give timelines; because it changes every day,” he said Sunday. “I truly do not have one. I can’t give you one.”

This has been the burning question for months now, and it will remain until one or both are back.

One wonders what has been going through Kaprizov’s mind the past few months. Has he watched the team flounder without him and die a little inside because he can’t help? Or does he wonder if the Wild will ever be deep enough that the team’s fortunes won’t completely rely on his health?

Kaprizov has one more year on a deal that will pay him $45 million over five years but he can sign an extension this summer. Minnesota will get a $22 million windfall they can use to get Kaprizov some help in July, and what general manager Bill Guerin does with it will likely be the biggest factor in whether the Russian sniper stays or looks elsewhere for his Stanley Cup.

Kaprizov will get handsomely wherever he goes. The successful suitor will be the one that convinces him he will play in a lot of playoff games, for big stakes, for the next several years.

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By PATRICK WHITTLE

SCARBOROUGH, Maine (AP) — Maine officials sued the administration of President Donald Trump on Monday to try to stop the government from freezing federal money in the wake of a dispute over transgender athletes in sports.

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Trump and Maine, which is controlled by Democrats, are in the midst of a weeks long dispute about the Title IX anti-discrimination law and the participation of transgender students in high school sports. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said earlier this month that the U.S. Department of Agriculture was pausing some funds for Maine educational programs because of what she described as Maine’s failure to comply with the Title IX law.

Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey filed a complaint in federal court on Monday that described the pause as “illegally withholding grant funds that go to keeping children fed.” The lawsuit seeks a temporary restraining order preventing the USDA from withholding money until a court is able to hear the case.

In a statement, Frey said, the president and his Cabinet “secretaries do not make the law and they are not above the law, and this action is necessary to remind the president that Maine will not be bullied into violating the law.”

The child nutrition program of the Maine Department of Education is unable to access several sources of funding at the moment because of the funding pause, Frey said. The money is used to feed children in schools, childcare centers and after-school programs and is also used to benefit disabled adults in congregate settings, he said.

The lawsuit states that the child nutrition program received or was due to receive more than $1.8 million for the current fiscal year. Prior year funds that were awarded but are currently inaccessible total more than $900,000, the lawsuit states. The lawsuit also says that the program was anticipating about $3 million that is typically awarded every July for summer meal program sponsor administration and meal reimbursement.

USDA officials did not return a request for comment.

Rollins said in a letter to Maine Gov. Janet Mills on April 2 that the state “cannot openly violate federal law against discrimination in education and expect federal funding to continue unabated.” The letter said the funding pause did not impact federal feeding programs.

“In order to continue to receive taxpayer dollars from USDA, the state of Maine must demonstrate compliance with Title IX’s protection of female student athletes from having to compete with or against or having to appear unclothed before males,” Rollins’ letter said.

Tensions between Maine and the Trump administration have simmered since February when Trump threatened to pull funding from Maine if the state does not comply with his executive order barring transgender athletes from sports. Mills, who was present at the White House for a meeting of governors, told the president: “We’ll see you in court.”

The Trump administration has vowed to cancel more federal funding if Maine does not bar transgender athletes from sports participation soon.

By STAN CHOE and ALEX VEIGA, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street could soon be in the claws of another bear market as the Trump administration’s tariff blitz fuels fears that the added taxes on imported goods from around the world will sink the global economy.

The last bear market happened in 2022, but this decline feels more like the sudden, turbulent bear market of 2020, when the benchmark S&P 500 index tumbled 34% in a one-month period, the shortest bear market ever.

Here are some common questions about bear markets:

Why is it called a bear market?

A bear market is a term used by Wall Street when an index such as the S&P 500 or the Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen 20% or more from a recent high for a sustained period of time.

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Why use a bear to refer to a market slump? Bears hibernate, so they represent a stock market that’s retreating. In contrast, Wall Street’s nickname for a surging market is a bull market, because bulls charge.

The S&P 500, Wall Street’s main barometer of health, was down 1.2% in Monday afternoon trading. It’s now 18.4% below the all-time high it set on Feb. 19.

The Dow industrials fell 1.8%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite, which already was in a bear market, dropped 0.9%.

The most recent bear market for the S&P 500 ran from Jan. 3 to Oct. 12 in 2022.

What’s bothering investors?

The trade war has ratcheted up fear and uncertainty on Wall Street over how businesses and consumers will respond.

President Donald Trump followed through on tariff threats last week by declaring a 10% baseline tax on imports from all countries and higher tariff rates on dozens of nations that run trade surpluses with the United States.

Global markets cratered the next day, and the sell-off deepened after China announced it would retaliate with tariffs equal to the ones from the U.S.

A container ship sails off from a container terminal in Qingdao in eastern China’s Shandong province Sunday, April 6, 2025. (Chinatopix Via AP)

Tariffs cause economic pain in part because they’re a tax paid by importers that often gets passed along to consumers, adding to inflationary pressure. They also provoke trading partners into retaliating, which can hurt all economies involved.

Import taxes can also cause economic damage by complicating the decisions businesses have to make, including which suppliers to use, where to locate factories and what prices to charge. And that uncertainty can cause them to delay or cancel investments that help drive economic growth.

The tariffs come at a time when the U.S. economy is already showing signs of slowing. Markets are also worried that tariffs could fuel inflation, which recently ticked higher.

How long do bear markets last and how deep do they go?

On average, bear markets have taken 13 months to go from peak to trough and 27 months to get back to breakeven since World War II. The S&P 500 index has fallen an average of 33% during bear markets in that time. The biggest decline since 1945 occurred in the 2007-2009 bear market, when the S&P 500 fell 57%.

A general view shows the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, April 7, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

History shows that the faster an index enters into a bear market, the shallower they tend to be. Historically, stocks have taken 251 days (8.3 months) to fall into a bear market. When the S&P 500 has fallen 20% at a faster clip, the index has averaged a loss of 28%.

The longest bear market lasted 61 months and ended in March 1942. It cut the index by 60%.

When is a bear market over?

Generally, investors look for a 20% gain from a low point as well as sustained gains over at least a six-month period. It took less than three weeks for stocks to rise 20% from their low in March 2020.

Should investors sell now?

If you need the money now or want to lock in the losses, yes. Otherwise, many advisers suggest riding through the ups and downs while remembering the swings are the price of admission for the stronger returns that stocks have provided over the long term.

While dumping stocks would stop the bleeding, it would also prevent any potential gains. Many of the best days for Wall Street have occurred either during a bear market or just after one ended. That includes two separate days in the middle of the 2007-2009 bear market when the S&P 500 surged roughly 11%, as well as leaps of better than 9% during and shortly after the monthlong 2020 bear market.

Advisers suggest putting money into stocks only if it will not be needed for several years. The S&P 500 has come back from every one of its prior bear markets to eventually rise to another all-time high.

The down decade for the stock market following the 2000 bursting of the dot-com bubble was a notoriously brutal stretch, but stocks have often been able to regain their highs within a few years.

Veiga reported from Los Angeles.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump welcomed Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and the reigning champion Los Angeles Dodgers to the White House on Monday to congratulate them for winning the World Series last season.

Trump complimented “the very talented people” who beat the New York Yankees in five games, while also refusing to introduce some Democratic senators at the ceremony because “I just don’t particularly like them, so I won’t introduce (them).” The event came during a manic Monday for U.S. stocks after Trump doubled down on his tariffs.

Trump singled out several Dodgers for their achievements last season, praising Ohtani for becoming baseball’s first 50 home run-50 stolen base player, Japanese pitcher Yoshi Yamamoto and NL Championship Series MVP Tommy Edman.

Trump praised Betts for his play — and took a dig at the Boston Red Sox for trading him to the Dodgers — and they shook hands at the ceremony.

Betts, the star outfielder at the time for the 2018 champion Boston Red Sox, did not make that team’s trip to the White House the next year during Trump’s first term. Betts was on the Dodgers when they won the World Series in 2020 and attended the celebration the following year under President Joe Biden.

The 32-year-old Betts is the lone Black player on the Dodgers who returned from last season’s World Series team.

“Nobody else in this clubhouse has to go through a decision like this except me,” Betts said over the weekend of his decision. “That’s what makes it tough. But it is what it is. I’m not trying to make this political by any means at all. All it is is just me being with my team to celebrate something. It’s a privilege to get an invitation like this. I just want to be there with them.”

Manager Dave Roberts had called the invitation a huge honor that each World Series champion gets to experience. Roberts said deciding to go to the White House was not a formal conversation he and players had.

The trip came almost a month after a Department of Defense webpage describing Brooklyn Dodgers great and civil rights icon Jackie Robinson’s military service was restored after it had come down.

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That development came after pages honoring a Black Medal of Honor winner and Japanese American service members were taken down — which the Pentagon said was a mistake — amid the department’s effort to remove content singling out the contributions by women and minority groups, which the Trump administration considers “DEI.”

Neither Robinson nor any other previous Dodgers greats were mentioned at the ceremony.

Trump did talk briefly about former New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, whom the former New Yorker called a friend. Trump also poked fun at the late Yankees owner’s notorious short-leash with his managers after he congratulated Roberts.

“I think he would have lasted even with George Steinbrenner,” Trump said. “You lose two games and you’re fired.”

Los Angeles Dodgers co-owner Mark Walter and pitcher Clayton Kershaw gave brief remarks at the White House. Kershaw presented Trump with a Dodgers jersey and No. 47 on the back.

Trump may have tipped his hand that he expected the Dodgers — who were 9-2 going into Monday night’s game at Washington — to repeat as World Series champs.

“After seeing how successful you’ve begun the season, I can tell you that you can plan on being back here, I hope you can be back here, next year,” Trump said.

The NHL’s reigning Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers became the first team to visit Trump in his second term when they were honored during a ceremony in the East Room in early February.

The White House also said recently the NFL’s Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles accepted their invitation for April 28.