Fantilli gets 1st career hat trick as Blue Jackets beat Maple Leafs 5-1

TORONTO (AP) — Adam Fantilli scored three goals for his first career hat trick, Elvis Merzlikins stopped 28 shots, and the Columbus Blue Jackets beat the Toronto Maple Leafs 5-1 on Wednesday night.

Luca Del Bel Belluz had a goal and an assist, and James van Riemsdyk also scored for Columbus. The Blue Jackets improved to 7-1-1 in their last nine games and moved into the Eastern Conference’s first wild card spot.

Auston Matthews scored for Toronto, and Dennis Hildeby had 14 saves. The Maple Leafs snapped a three-game winning streak.

Fantilli, a native of nearby Nobleton, Ontario, with 70 family and friends in attendance, pushed Columbus ahead 3-0 with 4:39 left in the second period with his second of the night.

Del Bel Belluz — who’s from Woodbridge, Ontario, also just outside Toronto — made it 4-0 at 5:56 of the third. After Matthews spoiled Merzlikins' shutout bid at 9:22, Fantilli completed his hat trick with an empty-netter with just under 8 minutes remaining.

Blue Jackets: Merzlikins appeared to suffer an injury during the morning skate, but was good to go against Toronto.

Maple Leafs: Matthew Knies (upper-body injury) left the game late in the second period following a big collision near the benches and didn’t return.

Merzlikins made a couple of big stops on Matthews in the middle period before van Riemsdyk and Fantilli scored 1:41 apart to put Columbus up 3-0.

Blue Jackets defenseman Zach Werenski entered play leading the NHL in average ice time at 26:49. He played 24:43 in this game.

Blue Jackets visit Carolina on Thursday to finish a four-game trip, and Maple Leafs play at Ottawa on Saturday.

AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

Columbus Blue Jackets goaltender Elvis Merzlikins (90) makes a save on Toronto Maple Leafs' Conor Timmins (25) as Blue Jackets' Zach Werenski (8) defends during first period NHL hockey action in Toronto on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press via AP)

Columbus Blue Jackets' Adam Fantilli celebrates his shorthanded goal against the Toronto Maple Leafs during the first period of an NHL hockey game in Toronto on Wednesday, January 22, 2025. (Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press via AP)

Columbus Blue Jackets goaltender Elvis Merzlikins makes a save against the Toronto Maple Leafs during the second period of an NHL hockey game in Toronto on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press via AP)

Toronto Maple Leafs' Nicholas Robertson (89) protects the puck from Columbus Blue Jackets' Dante Fabbro during the second period of an NHL hockey game in Toronto on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press via AP)

Toronto Maple Leafs goaltender Dennis Hildeby, Columbus Blue Jackets' Dmitri Voronkov (10) and Maple Leafs' Oliver Ekman-Larsson (95) look for the puck during the second period of an NHL hockey game in Toronto on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press via AP)

Columbus Blue Jackets goaltender Elvis Merzlikins (90) reaches for the puck in front of Toronto Maple Leafs' Pontus Holmberg (29) during second period NHL hockey action in Toronto on Wednesday, January 22, 2025. (Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press via AP)

Toronto Maple Leafs' Auston Matthews (34) tries to get around Columbus Blue Jackets goaltender Elvis Merzlikins (90) during second period NHL hockey action in Toronto on Wednesday, January 22, 2025. (Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press via AP)

Columbus Blue Jackets' Adam Fantilli celebrates his goal against the Toronto Maple Leafs with Kirill Marchenko and Dante Fabbro (15) during the second period of an NHL hockey game in Toronto on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press via AP)

Columbus Blue Jackets' Adam Fantilli (19) looks on as fans celebrate his third goal against the Toronto Maple Leafs during third period NHL hockey action in Toronto on Wednesday, January 22, 2025. (Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press via AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.

West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.

Decisions are expected by early summer.

President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.

Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.

“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”

She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.

Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.

She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.

Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.

“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.

Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.

The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.

About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.

"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”

But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.

“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”

Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”

“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.

One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.

Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”

The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.

The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.

The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.

The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.

If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.

“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)