Lightning tops Blue Jackets in five overtimes
Brayden Point scored 10:27 into the fifth overtime, and the Tampa Bay Lightning beat the Columbus Blue Jackets 3-2 on Tuesday in the fourthlongest game in Stanley Cup playoff history.
Point scored from just above the left circle, beating Joonas Korpisalo after the goaltender made an NHL-record 85 saves.
Point also scored way back in the first period of Game 1 of the best-of-7 series.
Vezina Trophy finalist Andrei Vasilevskiy also was outstanding for Tampa
Bay, making 61 stops. The teams combined for 151 shots – most in a NHL game since the league began officially tracking the statistic in 1955-56.
“It’s tiring for sure but then it gets fun at some point,” Point said. “I don’t know how many guys played a game like that, that long. It was an exciting one.”
The teams are meeting in the first round for the second straight year, with the Lightning looking to rebound from being swept 16 months ago by the underdog Blue Jackets, who became the first No. 8 seed to oust the winner of the Presidents’ Trophy in four games.
Pierre-Luc Dubois scored on the power play and Oliver Bjorkstrand added a goal late in the second period to give Columbus – the No. 7 seed in the East – a pair of shortlived leads in regulation.
Yanni Gourde had the other goal for the secondseeded Lightning.
Game 2 is Thursday.
While there’s no denying last season’s early exit from the playoffs has been a source of motivation for much of the past 16 months, coach Jon Cooper and the Lightning insist this series is about a lot more than redemption.
Flames 3, Stars 2: Rasmus Andersson scored the tiebreaking goal on a wrist shot after Dillon Dube scored twice in the first period for host Calgary, which beat Dallas in Game 1 of their best-ofseven Western Conference playoff series.
Andersson scored on a rush with four minutes left in the second period, with the defenseman taking a strong shot and the puck skirting over the top of defenseman Andrej Sekera’s stick blade on its way to the net.
Cam Talbot stopped 24 shots for the Flames, including a power-play attempt by Joe Pavelski with 10 seconds left in the game.
Game 2 is Thursday. Dallas already had an extra skater on the ice after sending goalie Anton Khudobin to the bench, and then had a 6-on-4 advantage because of a mistake by captain Mark Giordano. The 36-year-old defenseman, who has spent all 14 of his NHL seasons with the Flames, got a delay of game penalty after knocking the puck out of play when trying to clear it with 49 seconds left.
But Dallas got only one shot on goal in that final stretch, the attempt by Pavelski, whose goal with 31 seconds left pushed the Stars into overtime Sunday when they won their last game in the round robin among the conference’s top four seeds.
Khudobin, who in 10 NHL seasons had never started a postseason game before last week’s roundrobin play, had 23 saves.
The Stars, the third seed, tied the game by scoring twice on long shots in a nine-second span of the second period. It was the quickest they had ever scored two goals in a playoff game, the previous mark being two goals in 12 seconds during Game 1 of the 2000 Stanley Cup Final.