CHICAGO (AP) Mashaun Alston’s office has a corkboard with pictures of some of the kids he has helped over the years. A basketball player in his uniform. A row of smiling teenagers.On one side of the room there is a framed quote that reads Authentic Mikael Backlund Jersey , ”All those who achieve great things are great dreamers.”Alston, 41, is definitely dreaming. In one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Chicago, he is dreaming of more graduations and birthday parties. Life for a group of kids on the edge.”I can be overwhelmed, but then when I go home … I never say I’m not doing this, I always reflect and say, `Wow, this kid is going through this,’ and then the next day, I’m renewed,” Alston said.Alston is a therapist in Choose to Change, a five-month program that aims to reduce youth violence through therapy and mentorship. And it very well might be gone by now if not for the effort of one unusual coalition.The Cubs, White Sox, Bears, Bulls and Blackhawks. The titans of Chicago sports, united with a singular purpose.—Near the end of a violent 2016 in Chicago, Roseanna Ander went to a meeting. Ander, the executive director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, goes to a lot of meetings, but this one was different.The room included White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf and his son, Michael, the president and chief operating officer of the Bulls. Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts and his sister, Laura, who also is part of the Cubs’ ownership group, were there. Same for Bears chairman George McCaskey and Blackhawks owner Rocky Wirtz.”It was like a very Godfather-esque moment,” Ander said with a grin.Concerned about a precipitous rise in violent crime – Chicago had 762 homicides in 2016, a 64 percent increase from 485 in the previous year – the city’s most prominent sports executives had an idea Mike Smith Jersey , and they were looking for help.”They decided that this was a very unprecedented challenge facing the city and they wanted to do something unprecedented,” Ander said, ”and that was really to try to see if putting their resources together that they might be able to do something more significant than they could each do independently.”It began with Jerry Reinsdorf, 82, who once lived in some of the South Side neighborhoods that have been racked by violence. He took the idea of a united effort to the rest of the owners, and they quickly signed on for what became the Chicago Sports Alliance.Then came the tricky part.”It became very clear that we really didn’t understand what was behind the homicides and the violence,” Michael Reinsdorf said. ”We all had ideas and theories, but we really weren’t as educated as we should be.”We decided instead of just jumping in there and making some type of investment, let’s get smarter.”That led the group to Ander and the Crime Lab, which was created in 2008 following the shooting death of a graduate student at the University of Chicago to study crime and develop and evaluate crime-reduction programs. While the room grabbed Ander’s attention, her presentation struck a chord with the group.”It’s just tough,” Michael Reinsdorf said. ”I have kids and we teach our kids that they can dream and they can do anything they want and they have such incredible opportunities. But the kids that we’re talking about trying to help in some of these communities, their dreams are totally different than the dreams of like my children.”Their dreams are like, surviving. … Their expectations are I won’t live a long life.”—Alston had a group session in May where only one of the six young men showed. It was a nice day in Chicago and graduation festivities were in full swing.The 17-year-old who made it to the session was depressed about the death of his cousin in January. He wanted to retaliate sometimes, but he said the program was keeping him on the right track.”He says, `Yeah, but this group,’ he says, `since I’ve been coming in February is helping me think,”’ Alston said.A buoyed Alston kept going, sitting straight up in his chair in a common room down the hall from his office on the city’s South Side.”You know just with the people he knows, the family he’s involved with, it’d be easy to go and retaliate,” he continued.”I want you to think logical. If you go retaliate and you’re 17, there’s two things going to happen. You may get away with it for a little bit. But you’re going to end up dead because they’re going to retaliate, or you’re going to be in jail and you’re 17, I want you to get to my age.”—The Chicago Sports Alliance was unveiled in December. The teams announced a total of $1 million in one-time grants for Choose to Change Artemi Panarin Jersey , the Crime Lab and for training for embedded civilian analysts who work with the police department to develop strategies to reduce crime in the city’s most violent areas.While the money provided a lift, the alliance itself might have made an even bigger statement.”It’s not just the dollars, but I think it’s kind of who they are, their ability to have influence with such a huge range of the population,” Ander said. ”But I do think for me the most important thing was sending a message that this isn’t just somebody else’s problem to fix.”The funding for Choose to Change had run out by the end of 2017, so the money from the alliance kept it alive for the first part of this year. Another group of teenagers went through the program, and the Crime Lab used the funding extension to build on its data, helping bring in new investors from the public sector.The teams were also able to make a difference in another way.”The kids look up to these teams and these athletes,” Ander said, ”and it’s a huge motivation to be able to say, `Look, we’re going to be able to get you to these games,’ things that they wouldn’t normally be able to do.”Homicides and shootings dipped in Chicago in 2017 and continued to drop at the start of this year. The future of the Chicago Sports Alliance is still being determined, but the teams plan to meet again with Ander soon and Michael Reinsdorf thinks the partnership will continue.”We’re just starting out in this process and so there’s probably a lot of things that we can do going forward that can add on to what we’ve already done,” he said.—Alston stays in touch with several of the teenagers he worked with in Choose to Change.One of them sailed through the program a couple of years ago. He made it to every session and participated in the conversations, but he ”was still involved heavily on the streets,” Alston said.On the last day, Alston told him he wanted to keep working with him, and the young man responded positively. About a week later, he was shot.”I went to go visit him in the hospital,” Alston said. ”’Hey, everything you was learning in group, I mean was it like all in vain, or were you a phony? Because what I’m hearing and seeing is two different people.’ So those types of things are challenging.”The visit made an impression.”He looked at this as more being a professional thing, just me doing my job,” Alston said. ”But then when I showed up at the hospital, it gave him a different outlook of me and said well Shane Doan Jersey , this is personal. Absolutely.”—Jay Cohen can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/jcohenap BOSTON (AP) — Boston’s defense provided all the offense the Bruins needed, and then some.Zdeno Chara scored twice, Jaroslav Halak stopped 26 shots and the Bruins beat the Philadelphia Flyers 3-0 on Thursday night.“If I can contribute to the offense, it’s always nice, but I think that we are more proud of keeping our net clean from the pucks going in,” said Chara, who gave the Bruins a 1-0 lead 13 minutes into the second period and added an empty-netter with 23 seconds left.Fittingly, Halak got the only assist on Chara’s second goal as he capped off his second shutout as a Bruin and 44th of his career.“Every time you start a game or play a game, you’re hoping to get a win,” Halak said. “If you can get a shutout, that’s always more special.”Brian Elliott kept Philadelphia close with 22 saves, but the punchless Flyers couldn’t capitalize on the few chances they had to beat Halak. Philadelphia’s frustration boiled over in the third period, when the Flyers hurt their own chances to rally with six penalties.“We have to push it in the right direction a little bit harder. That takes mental toughness right now because obviously we’re going through a tough stretch here and this was a tough loss tonight,” Philadelphia coach Dave Hakstol said.Jake DeBrusk also scored for the Bruins, who improved to 6-0-2 in their last eight against Philadelphia and 9-0-1 in the last 10 meetings in Boston.Chara’s goal 13 minutes into the second period put Boston up 1-0, and DeBrusk scored a power-play goal on a tip-in with 2:32 left in the second.“Any time you can give yourself a cushion with the way Jiro has been playing, it’s always nice,” DeBrusk said. “We were just playing smart.”The Flyers have lost two straight — getting outscored by a 7-1 margin — and three of four.“We’ve got to find a way to score some goals,” Philadelphia’s Sean Couturier said. “We’re trying to put pucks in the net. We’re just not jumping on loose pucks and capitalizing on our chances.”The Bruins improved to 4-0 at home, where they last played Oct. 13 in an 8-2 rout of the Detroit Red Wings.Halak was in position the few times he was tested, stopping a one-timer by Claude Giroux from the right circle with about eight minutes left in the second period. The Bruins got it going the other way and took a 1-0 lead on Chara’s slap shot from the blue line through traffic. It was the 197th goal of Chara’s career and first since the second game of the season.Notes: Gritty, the Flyers’ new mascot, was officially welcomed to Philadelphia on Thursday in a resolution by the City Council for “honoring the spirit and passion that Gritty has brought to the City of Philadelphia and to the entire country, both on and off the ice.” … Flyers F Michael Raffl was out of the lineup with an unspecified lower-body injury. … Flyers LW Scott Laughton played in his 200th NHL game. … RW David Backes and D Charlie McAvoy were scratches for the Bruins. … D Jeremy Lauzon made his NHL debut after being called up earlier Thursday from Providence of the AHL.UP NEXTFlyers: Host the New York Islanders on Saturday.Bruins: Host Montreal on Saturday night.