Warren Gatland has left his role as Wales head coach during the Six Nations after a record 14 successive Test match defeats.

Gatland, 61, was contracted until the 2027 World Cup but has departed by mutual consent, the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU) confirmed.

Cardiff head coach Matt Sherratt will take over as interim head coach for the remaining three games of the Six Nations.

WRU chief executive Abi Tierney said both parties had agreed an immediate change was "in the best interests" of the Wales squad.

In a statement, Gatland said: "I would like to thank the WRU board for the faith shown in me after a tough campaign throughout 2024 and affording me the time and resource to try to turn things around for this 2025 tournament.

"We have worked hard, we have a talented young squad that is developing and have been desperate to turn potential into results but now is the right time for a change.

"I've reached the end of this particular chapter, but remain grateful to all those in Wales who have supported me, the players who have played for me and all those around me, especially my management team, who have contributed to what we have achieved over the years."

No announcement has been made on the rest of the current coaching team.

The WRU are due to hold a press conference on Tuesday afternoon, which you will be able to follow live on the BBC Sport website from 15:00 GMT.

BROSSARD, Quebec -- Sweden found out a few weeks ago that New Jersey Devils goaltender Jacob Markstrom would not be available for the 4 Nations Face-Off because of injury. Around the same time, 2023 Vezina Trophy winner Linus Ullmark was nursing some back problems.

Ullmark, 31, left the Ottawa Senators lineup just before Christmas, but insists now that, within a week or so, he was not worried about making it back in time for the international tournament.

"It's been a long road. It's been different, but it's been very productive," he said Monday. "I learned a lot of things along the way and had good communication throughout the whole process that enabled me to be here today in front of you guys."

Ullmark, in his first season with the Senators, is 12-9-2 with a 2.49 goals-against average. On Saturday, in a 5-1 loss to the Florida Panthers, he made 43 saves.

"It didn't feel like we had to rush through the process to get me to be a part of this team," Ullmark said. "Once we kind of settled that in, and talked it over, and had the communication throughout this whole process, from the beginning, I never felt that I was stressed about it or concerned that I wasn't going to be a part of it."

Sweden also has Filip Gustavsson and Samuel Ersson, Markstrom's replacement, but Ullmark is the most accomplished of the three.

"I played with him a couple years ago, so I know how good he is and how good he makes the defense feel just for him to be out there," Buffalo Sabres captain and countryman Rasmus Dahlin said. "I'm very happy he's healthy and ready to go."

Sweden opens up Wednesday at the Bell Centre in Montreal against Canada.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Cole Hutson was one of four Boston University goal scorers, netting the game winner in the second period of the Terriers' 4-1 victory over rival and top-ranked Boston College in the final of the annual Beanpot college hockey tournament Monday night at TD Garden in Boston.

Brandon Svoboda, Cole Eiserman and Gavin McCarthy also scored for No. 9 BU in front of a raucous crowd of 18,258 fans in the home of the NHL's Boston Bruins. Goaltender Mikhail Yegorov, a prospect for the New Jersey Devils, made it stand up, as he finished with 43 saves in his first Beanpot final.

"I hope this gives us confidence as a team," Terriers coach Jay Pandolfo, a former assistant with the Bruins, said after the win. "With our guys, we're still trying to get the message across to understand that if we play a certain way, we're going to have success."

Yegorov took home the Eberly Award, given to the Beanpot netminder with the highest save percentage across the tournament, which also annually includes Northeastern and Harvard. Yegorov stopped 69 of 71 shots in two starts, registering a .972 percentage.

His teammate, Hutson, 18, a second-round pick of the Washington Capitals last year, was honored as tournament MVP. He finished with three goals and five points as the Terriers raced to their 32nd Beanpot title in program history, and first since 2022.

"We have to stick to it, and I thought we did that from the end of the first period on," Pandolfo said. "It's a pretty good recipe when we do play that way. But we have to get a boost from this moving forward."

Gabe Perreault, a 2023 first-round draft pick of the New York Rangers, scored the lone goal for the Eagles. Ryan Leonard, another one of BC's first-rounders who was selected No. 8 overall by the Capitals in that same draft, assisted on Perreault's tally.

"They were upset in the locker room," Boston College coach Greg Brown, a former assistant with the New York Rangers, said after the loss. "Especially the ones who this was their last shot at it. They wanted it a lot, but BU played a little better than us tonight."

Earlier in the night, in the third-place game, the Crimson outlasted the Huskies 4-3.

What is the most "Tkachuk" thing about Ottawa Senators captain Brady Tkachuk?

"You mean what's the rattiest thing about him?" asked his teammate Shane Pinto.

Is that an official synonym for Brady's surname in hockey circles?

"I guess so," Pinto said with a laugh. "He's just always stirring the pot on the ice against the other team. But off the ice, he's a nice kid. I mean, it's completely different. He's chill."

Being a Tkachuk means having a moniker that has defined a certain kind of NHL player: highly skilled with blunt physicality and a win-at-all-costs attitude. Father Keith Tkachuk personified it for 18 seasons, scoring 538 goals and totaling more than 1,000 penalty minutes. Older brother Matthew, 27, swaggered his way to postseason heroism, leading the Florida Panthers to the Stanley Cup last season.

Is it finally time for Brady Tkachuk, 25, to have his definitive moment?

He captains the Senators, one of the NHL's hottest teams recently and a franchise desperately seeking its first playoff berth since 2017.

"He's everything you'd want in a hockey player," said Travis Green, in his first season as Senators head coach. "He's a bit of a throwback where he can make plays, he can score, he can set up plays, he's tough, he fights. He's ultracompetitive. Hard to play against and loves to win."

Tkachuk will bring those attributes to Team USA in the upcoming 4 Nations Face-Off, as part of a generation of American players getting their first chance to represent their nation in a best-on-best tournament.

"There's just so much room and opportunity for us to grow in here before then, so I'm still focused on that," Tkachuk told ESPN recently, standing in the Ottawa dressing room. "But it's hard not to think about the fact that I'll be playing for Team USA and playing with my brother. It's hard not to get excited for it."

About a month before the tournament, Tkachuk said there hasn't been a ton of discussion among his national teammates -- no Team USA group chat yet. "Everyone's focused on their own teams right now," he said.

That's one of the unique things about the 4 Nations Face-Off, a round-robin tournament in which the U.S. battles NHL stars from Canada, Sweden and Finland. It's a midseason tournament, with players taking a break from intense playoff races to battle for international bragging rights. Tkachuk believes that the 4 Nations players will be able to focus on the task at hand before getting back to the NHL grind.

He also believes that unlike the 2016 World Cup of Hockey -- played before the 2016-17 season, when players were in preseason condition and games at times reflected that -- the level of competition will be high for 4 Nations.

"It's honestly perfect because you're already in the groove of the season," he said. "You're already in the groove of your individual season, and you're not shaking out any rust at the start of the year. You're in your tip-top shape. That's going to be the best quality hockey that you can have in the middle of the season."

The Senators will have 26 games left when the season resumes on Feb. 22. As of Tuesday, Ottawa had a 90% chance of making the playoffs.

"Right now we're in a position that I've never really been in before," Tkachuk said. "It's just so much fun to come to the rink every day. Every game is at the utmost importance."

Pinto credited Tkachuk, who has been captain since the 2021-22 season, with powering Ottawa into the playoff race. Through 56 games, he led the team with 21 goals and was third (behind Tim Stutzle and Drake Batherson) in points. Three of those goals were overtime winners.

"I think every night he drags himself into the battle," Pinto said. "He gets the boys going. We're lucky to have him."

Other teams would be lucky to have him, too. Such as the New York Rangers, for example.

BACK IN DECEMBER, Larry Brooks of the New York Post reported that the Rangers had made Tkachuk their "primary target" in trade discussions, seeking to import the 25-year-old star to change their culture like brother Matthew did with the Panthers. Brooks claimed to have three sources all saying the Rangers were after the Ottawa captain.

Pinto said that Senators players were aware of the report. "With social media now, it's hard to kind of stay away from all that," he said.

Tkachuk was obviously aware of it, too.

"It's just nothing I can control, right? There's always going to be rumors, there's always going to be rumblings," he said. "I think it would be on me if I let that stuff control my emotions and affect me in what I'm trying to do here."

But Senators owner Michael Andlauer couldn't ignore the rumors. In fact, he was absolutely fuming about what Brooks had written.

In an interview with The Athletic, the Ottawa owner said "100 percent there's never actually been an ounce of discussion" about trading Tkachuk, who is signed through 2027-28 ($8,205,714 average annual value).

Andlauer accused Brooks of being a vessel for "soft tampering," which immediately entered the NHL lexicon.

"If indeed he's being fed false information, or people are giving this information from another NHL organization, I don't know -- we just had a big memo about tampering from the NHL. I might consider that soft tampering," Andlauer said.

The Rangers responded in a statement at the time: "This is an irresponsible accusation and we defer to the Commissioner's office."

What was it like for Tkachuk to have his owner step up and basically tell the Rangers, "Stay away from him, he's ours"?

"I was really appreciative for that," Tkachuk said. "Not many people do that. I think it just speaks to the character that we have in this organization and the leadership we have in Mr. Andlauer. It felt really good to have that kind of support."

Tkachuk signed a seven-year contract in October 2021 after a difficult negotiation, not unlike the ones his father and brother had fought through in their careers.

"He's starting to become more of a Tkachuk the later this goes," Matthew Tkachuk joked at the time.

That contract was seen by many as an endorsement of Ottawa management's vision for the future. The following three seasons were good for Brady Tkachuk, who scored more than 30 goals in each of them, but the mediocrity continued for the Senators, who missed the postseason cut and finished no better than sixth in the Atlantic Division.

Over that span, owner Eugene Melnyk passed away, with Andlauer buying the team from the Melnyk family in September 2023. GM Pierre Dorion, who drafted Tkachuk fourth in 2018 and signed him to that extension, was fired in November 2023. Green is the fifth coach Tkachuk has had in seven seasons with Ottawa.

This season, Tkachuk has experienced another change, and it's a positive one: He's captaining a team that's in playoff contention deep into the season.

"I think the key is not looking too far ahead, just focusing on the here and now. As time has gone on this year, I think I've gotten better at that, but still need to improve a little bit more," he said. "Not get too high, not get too low, just focus on what I can do and what I control."

A LOT OF PLAYERS claim to stay in the "here and now" by not focusing on the daily NHL standings. Tkachuk admits that with the Eastern Conference playoff race basically changing by the hour, that's an impossibility. He wants to know where the Senators are around the bubble. He just can't have it weigh on him or his team too much.

"I never want to get consumed in it, where that's all I care about. That's going to be detrimental versus being a positive thing," he said.

That includes imagining potential playoff matchups. There's one of particular interest to Senators fans: the possibility of facing their archrival Toronto Maple Leafs in the Eastern Conference postseason. Ottawa has lost all four "Battle of Ontario" playoff series against the Leafs, the last one occurring in 2004.

"I did see that. I think it'd be fun and awesome. But for us, we can't really look too far ahead yet. That'd be exciting. But I think we got to just put our full sole focus and effort into today," Tkachuk said. "It doesn't really matter who you play; it's just about getting there and it's about the process of getting there."

Tkachuk's profile will get a further boost courtesy of Amazon Prime's "Faceoff: Inside the NHL," which has been renewed for a second season. Tkachuk was featured in the premiere season of the show during some segments featuring Matthew and Keith.

Brady Tkachuk was the only player named as part of the cast when the show's renewal was announced in December.

"It's probably going to be a little weird to start, just with cameras kind of around. When there's a camera or a mic around, sometimes you can just go into a shell. It's important to not really change who I am," he said. "I'm actually really excited to showcase the city of Ottawa and the amazing people that are in that city."

The Amazon show will chronicle the first time Tkachuk will captain the Senators through a playoff race. It's also the first time his own teammates are seeing him in that mode, too.

"Brady's Brady. He's going to wear his heart on his sleeve every day and he has done a great job so far," forward Josh Norris said. "I think sometimes he just gets some momentum during the game where you can tell that he's pissed off or he knows that we need to play better."

Green was impressed with Tkachuk's leadership from the moment the coach arrived in Ottawa.

"He's a great captain now, but he's still a young captain in the league. He's learning as he goes," Green said. "He's going to be even a better captain the longer he plays in the league."

Pinto said being this confident as a young captain is one of the most impressive things about Tkachuk.

"As a young guy, it's never easy to be a leader," he said. "I think he's still a year older than me and he's a captain of a team, so I can't imagine the pressure he gets put on every night. But I thought he's done a great job."

Pinto arrived in the 2020-21 season. He watched as players like Tkachuk and defenseman Thomas Chabot, who started playing for Ottawa in 2016-17, committed to the team contractually and gave it their all through some lean times.

As the Senators push for the playoffs, Pinto said seeing those players get their due is part of the thrill.

"They've been through a lot of tough times. It's made them stronger as people and as players. Obviously there comes a time where you want to start winning. Thankfully, we started to do that, and those guys are probably the happiest out of everyone," he said. "When the team's winning, people will start to realize how good they are. I'm just happy for them."

Liverpool head coach Arne Slot has described his team's shock FA Cup exit at the hands of Plymouth Argyle as "unacceptable" and has urged his players to "show a different side" in the Merseyside derby against Everton on Wednesday.

Liverpool were knocked out of the FA Cup thanks to a Ryan Hardie penalty, with Slot having rested several key players for Sunday's trip to Home Park.

The Premier League leaders also lost defender Joe Gomez to injury early on in the clash, but Slot believes his team should still have had the quality to beat the side who are rock bottom of the Championship.

"To lose against Plymouth is unacceptable," he said in a news conference on Tuesday. "We are disappointed with that result. Now we have to show a different side of us tomorrow. It was not only the result, but the performance was far below Liverpool standards as well."

Slot has been criticised in some quarters for failing to respect the FA Cup, while others have argued that being dumped out of the competition could actually help Liverpool in their pursuit of the Premier League, Champions League and Carabao Cup, having booked their place in the final of the latter competition last week.

"A wise man once said to me nothing good comes from losing a football game and I completely agree," Slot said. "We would definitely prefer to have played more games. Now after losing this game, there is one moment where we have a normal week but that is not what we wanted when we went to Plymouth.

"It was difficult because the plan was to play with Joe [Gomez] for 60 minutes, the plan was to start Curtis [Jones] but he didn't feel well enough to play so then all of a sudden, we missed two important players. Darwin became a dad one or two days before the game, that happened in Spain, so he came in one or two days earlier.

"There were some circumstances that weren't perfect. The idea was to play with a stronger team than we did but still this team should have been able to win that game. The fact we didn't win and that we didn't win against PSV [Eindhoven] as well tells us that these players need these games to get the best out of them. It's so difficult to get the best out of them if you don't play games. It makes it disappointing we don't have these extra games for them."

Starting with the game against Everton, Liverpool face a gruelling run of five Premier League matches in 15 days.

Asked whether this upcoming stretch will define his team's season, Slot said: "No, because this, playing five games in 15 days, is what we've done for seven months now. Every phase of the season is crucial if you play in the Premier League.

"This is the hardest league to win because there are so many teams that can win this league and there are so many teams that are able to win 10 or 15 games in a row. You cannot slow down, you cannot have a few games where you are not on top of your game because all of a sudden other teams catch you up.

"That's why it's such an exciting league. The upcoming five are important but then after that the next nine are important. But the first 23 have been just as important."

The United States Under-17 men's national team dominated their opening match of World Cup qualifying with a resounding 22-0 victory over the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The historic win marks the most goals ever scored by a U.S. team in World Cup qualifying at any level, according to US Soccer.

Forward Chase Adams led the charge with 10 goals, setting a new record for most goals scored by a U.S. player in a World Cup qualifying match.

What a goal by Pedro Guimaraes! pic.twitter.com/lj2eHaUV1d

Concacaf (@Concacaf) February 11, 2025

Captain Maximo Carrizo contributed with four goals, while Chance Cowell and Jude Terry each scored twice. Pedro Guimaraes, Ramiz Hamouda, Jamir Johnson, and Kellan LeBlanc rounded out the scoring.

The previous best result for a U.S. national team at men's World Cup qualifying was 13-0 vs. U.S. Virgin Islands at the 2018 Concacaf U20 Championship and the previous best overall was 20-0 vs. Grenada at the 2022 Concacaf Women's U17 Championship.