NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — U.S. Olympic golden goal-scorer Jack Hughes extended his points streak to four games since returning from Milan, and the New Jersey Devils dealt the Florida Panthers' playoff hopes another blow by beating the two-time defending Stanley Cup champions 5-1 on Tuesday night.
Hughes' shot that went wide banked right to Dougie Hamilton for his goal. Hughes has four assists — one in each game — since the NHL season resumed.
Hamilton, whose name has been involved in trade buzz for several months, also had an assist. It's unclear if the Devils will be able to move the defenseman before the deadline Friday, given that Hamilton has two years remaining on his contract beyond this season at a $9 million salary cap hit and is owed a $7.4 million roster bonus on July 1.
If New Jersey, which looks out of the race, sells elsewhere, depth forward Cody Glass may have boosted his value by scoring his 14th goal of the season. Arseny Gritsyuk also scored, looking off Hughes on a 2 on 1 before beating Sergei Bobrovsky, who was excellent early and finished with 28 saves on 31 shots.
Florida is in danger of becoming the first Cup-winning team to miss the playoffs the following season since the Los Angeles Kings in 2014-15. The Panthers have lost three of four games since the Olympics ended, all of those coming in regulation.
Combined with Boston's victory against Pittsburgh, Florida is 10 points back of the second and final wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference with just 21 games left to play. Coach Paul Maurice said captain Aleksander Barkov, who's recovering from tearing the ACL and medial collateral ligament in his right knee during training camp, is not expected back until at least late March.
Panthers: At Columbus on Thursday night.
Devils: Host Toronto on Wednesday night.
AP NHL: https://apnews.com/NHL
New Jersey Devils' Jack Hughes (86) leaves the ice before an NHL hockey game against the Buffalo Sabres Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026, in Newark, N.J. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
Voters in two major Texas counties were turned away at polling locations and directed to different precincts Tuesday, after a recent change in how the primary is conducted created confusion and frustration.
In Dallas County, a judge ordered polls to remain open for two hours past the scheduled 7 p.m. closing time, citing “voter confusion so severe” that it caused the website of the county election office to crash. The judge was acting on a petition filed by the local Democratic Party in a heavily left-leaning county. Democrats in Williamson County, north of Austin, said they succeeded in getting two precincts to stay open late.
In both counties, voters had been allowed to cast their ballot anywhere in their county for years. But for this primary, the local Republican parties opted against countywide voting. State law says both major parties have to agree to the countywide system for it to be in effect.
That meant that on Tuesday all voters could cast ballots only at their assigned precinct.
The campaigns of the two Democrats running in the primary for U.S. Senate denounced the effect of the change on voters.
“Both Dallas and Williamson county voters have grown accustomed to countywide voting, including on election day,” U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett 's campaign said. “This effort to suppress the vote, to confuse and inconvenience voters, is having the intended effect as people are being turned away from the polls.”
The campaign of James Talarico, a state lawmaker, said it was “deeply concerned” about the reports of voters showing up at polling locations and being sent elsewhere.
Adding to the confusion was the fact that voting locations also might be specific to someone’s party affiliation, said Nic Solorzano, a spokesperson for the Dallas County Elections Department.
“We’re seeing a lot of people that are going to their vote centers that they usually go to ... and not realizing they can’t do that anymore. They have to go to their precinct-based location,” he said.
The extensions in Dallas applied only to Democratic voting precincts. Voting also was extended for an hour in El Paso County after problems with voter check-in systems earlier in the day.
Texas was one of three states kicking off the 2026 midterm elections Tuesday, along with North Carolina and Arkansas. Voting otherwise went fairly smoothly, except for a problem with electronic poll books in one rural North Carolina county that prompted the state elections board to delay the release of statewide results by an hour.
Tomas Sanchez, a student at Dallas College, was among those who showed up at a voting location on campus to cast his ballot in Texas' Democratic primary. But he was under a “mistaken impression” and told that he needed to vote at his assigned precinct, a location about 6 miles (about 10 kilometers) away and closer to his neighborhood.
“This is something that we were really concerned about, honestly,” Solorzano said. He added that after nearly seven years of voters being able to cast their ballots anywhere in the county, “then we kind of had to retool our entire operation to go back to precinct-based voting for Election Day.”
The county elections department has been putting up signs, running ads and sending text messages and mailers to make people aware of the change. On Election Day former poll workers were stationed outside voting locations with tablets to help people find the correct place to cast their ballot.
While Solorzano said his department was not keeping track of how many people were been turned away, local Democrats said the number was significant.
Brenda Allen, executive director of the Dallas Democratic Party, said her offices were swamped by hundreds of calls from voters of both parties trying to find their precincts. She noted that congressional districts in the county also were remapped in Texas’ mid-decade redistricting and that new precinct lines were only finalized in December, leaving little time to inform voters.
“Lots of reports of people being turned away, hundreds of people unable to vote. Both parties are affected by this,” Allen said. “It’s not great.”
In Williamson County, the local Democratic Party headquarters was slammed by calls, executive director Madison Dickinson said.
“We’re having significant problems with the precinct-level voting,” she said, adding that, like in Dallas, even Republicans were confused by the change and were calling the Democratic Party for help.
Republicans were less vocal about the changes online, although the Dallas County Republican Party posted a link showing voters where to find their assigned polling places. The Williamson County Republican Party did not respond to a request for comment.
Associated Press writer John Hanna contributed.
Primary voter Allie Davis carries her seven-week-old son Declan as a Dallas County Election Navigator checks her ID before entering a voting center in Dallas, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
