Avalanche put up 8 in opener
Roll over Oilers in shootout to begin West final
DENVER — J. T. Compher scored twice, Cale Makar had a goal and two assists and the Colorado Avalanche held off the Edmonton Oilers, 8-6, Tuesday night in a fast-paced, no-leadfeltsafe Game 1 of the Western Conference final.
The Avalanche’s eight goals were tied for the most in a playoff game in franchise history.
Even Colorado’s four-goal lead in the second period hardly felt secure in a matchup between the two highest-scoring teams in the postseason— and the win wasn’t in hand until Gabriel Landeskog’s empty-net goal with 21.4 seconds remaining.
Not only were there goals galore, but both teams needed to use backup goaltenders: Mike Smith was pulled after giving up six goals and Darcy Kuemper left with an upper-body injury.
This was a matchup billed as a showdown betweenstars Nathan MacKinnon and Connor McDavid and they delivered. MacKinnon had a goal and an assist for Colorado, and McDavid a goal and two assists for Edmonton.
But it was the supporting casts that produced big time.
Nazem Kadri, Mikko Rantanen and Andrew Cogliano also scored for the Avalanche, who have a 19-6 series record when taking the first game of a best-ofseven since relocating to Denver. Twelve Colorado players recorded at least a point and six had multipoint games.
Evander Kane, Zach Hyman, Ryan McLeod, Derek Ryanand Ryan Nugent-Hopkins added goals for the Oilers. Hyman has scored in six consecutive postseason games to tie the team mark set by Esa Tikkanen in the 1990 playoffs.
Edmonton and Colorado scored six times over a 6:43 span — nearly a goal a minute. And the opening two periods saw 11 total goals. At times, this looked more like an all-star game — lots of scoring and defense being optional — rather than a conference final. Game 2 is Thursday. Edmonton’s no stranger to dropping the first game of a series in high-scoring fashion: The Oilers lost Game 1 of the second-round series at Calgary, 9-6, but won the series in five games.
Compher’s second goal of the night made it 6-3 and ended the night of Smith, who allowed six goals on 25 shots in just over 26 minutes. Mikko Koskinen came on in relief.
Kuemper left the game in the second period as well, after surrendering three goals on 16 shots. He was replaced by Pavel Francouz.
After Cogliano’s goal gave Colorado a 7-3 lead late in the second, it looked like that was it. But by 7:24 left in the third, Edmonton made it 7-6 on Nugent-Hopkins’ powerplay goal.