Defending champions get off to slow start
DENVER – The Tampa Bay Lightning wasn’t the team that looked like the twotime defending champion in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final on Wednesday night.
The Colorado Avalanche, playing for the first time in nine nights, raced to 2-0 and 3-1 leads in the first period by punching pucks past otherworldly goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy, who had allowed just 2.27 goals per game in these playoffs.
“The first 10 minutes, we weren’t our best,” Lightning forward Patrick Maroon said. “We weren’t our best tonight. But I like the finish in our game, though.” Well, except for the actual ending. Colorado withstood Tampa Bay’s rally to improve to 13-2 in these playoffs and prevail 4-3 on Andre Burakovsky’s goal 1:23 into overtime.
Home teams have won 64 consecutive Cup Final games when leading by two or more goals, per ESPN. The last team to blow a two-goal lead and lose was the New York Rangers against Vancouver in 1994.
The Avalanche peppered reigning playoffs MVP Vasilevskiy with plenty of pucks in the first period and Ball Arena was rocking, those $1,000 tickets looking like bargains.
The Avalanche scored a whopping 65 goals in 14 playoff games to reach the Stanley Cup Final – their 6.46 scoring average the best in the playoffs in 30 years – and they netted two more goals in the first 10 minutes of the first period.
The two-time defending champions’ pedigree showed up with Ondrej Palat and Sergachev scoring goals less than a minute apart in the second period against Darcy Keumper, who was playing in his first game since May 31 against Edmonton, to knot things up at 3.
It stayed that way until 1:23 into overtime.
Lightning coach Jon Cooper insisted Vasilevskiy wasn’t to blame for the loss, suggesting nobody in a Lightning sweater played better than his goaltender who stopped 22 straight shots before Burakovsky’s winner eluded his left skate.