Tampa makes Point in fifth OT period
Lightning takes the first game of NHL quarterfinal against Blue Jackets in marathon match
Technically, it wasn’t the longest game in NHL playoff history. But it wasn’t far off.
Considering how quickly Columbus had disposed of Tampa Bay in last year’s firstround series, the eight-period and five-overtime finish that kick-started the Stanley Cup playoffs on Tuesday must have felt like an eternity.
It was that long. It was that absurd.
The game began at 3:09 p.m. ET. By the time Brayden Point scored to give Tampa Bay a 3-2 win at 10:27 in the fifth period of overtime, it was 9:22 p.m. The game finished so late in the night that Boston’s game against Carolina, which was supposed to begin at 8 p.m., had to be pushed back to 11 a.m. on Wednesday.
“That was something for sure,” Point told Sportsnet following the game. “It gets fun at some point. It was an exciting one for sure.”
Exciting is one way to describe the six-hour game. Exhausting would be another.
With eight minutes remaining in the seventh period, the centre ice screen jokingly displayed that “it’s time for the 7th period stretch.”
Another message apologized “if you had other plans tonight.”
Jokes aside, there were 151 shots. Columbus blocked 62 shots. Tampa Bay’s Andrei Vasilevskiy made 61 saves. Columbus’s Joonas Korpisalo made a record 85 saves. Blue Jackets defenceman Seth Jones logged an unreal one hour, five minutes and six seconds of ice time.
Both teams were on the ice for 150 minutes and 27 seconds. It was the fourth-longest game of all time. Had it gone another period, it would have been the longest. For the players, it must have seemed to last even longer than Columbus’s four-game sweep of Tampa Bay a year ago.
Don’t expect a similar outcome this time around. Based on Game 1, this looks like an entirely different series. There’s a good reason for that, Tampa Bay head coach Jon Cooper had said before Game 1.
“How many different players do we have from last year?” asked Cooper.
Six.
“And how many guys do they have different from last year?” he then asked.
A lot.
“So I think that answers your question.”
In other words, this series might have been marketed as a rematch. But these really aren’t the same teams from a year ago.
Columbus is missing goalie Sergei Bobrovsky and forwards Artemi Panarin and Matt Duchene. Tampa Bay, which was without Steven Stamkos for Game 1, has a much grittier lineup than a year ago thanks to the additions of Pat Maroon, Blake Coleman and Barclay Goodrow.
As such, this wasn’t the contrast of styles that we saw when Columbus outmuscled and embarrassed Tampa Bay a year ago.
The Lightning, like the Leafs, are still built around top-end skill — of Stamkos, Nikita Kucherov and Brayden Point. But the reason they beat the Blue Jackets in Game 1 was because their skilled players aren’t afraid to grind it out and get their fingers dirty.
There was nothing flashy about Game 1. There weren’t any breakaways. There wasn’t even much in the way of open ice.
What we got instead were hits, blocked shots and puck battles along the boards. And while there weren’t any fights
— or much in the way of penalties, especially in the overtimes — there was more blood spilled in the first two periods than there had been in all five games between Columbus and Tampa Bay.
It was vintage playoff hockey played between two teams that seemed to have spent the past year scouting one another. It was also the kind of game that Columbus is happy playing.
In a time of social distancing, the Blue Jackets want to get up-close and personal with their opponents. That’s what they did against the Lightning a year ago and it’s what they did against the Maple Leafs in the qualification round.
The interesting thing was that the Lightning seemed to want the same thing.
This wasn’t a clash of styles. On paper, it might have been set up as skill versus strength. But in reality, Tampa Bay gave as much as it received.
Certainly, the Lightning provided far more pushback than the Leafs had.
The Blue Jackets took a 1-0 lead when Zach Werenski’s banked in off Pierre-Luc Dubois at 2:39 in the first period for their first power-play goal of the post-season. Four minutes later, the Lightning answered back when Nikita Kucherov had his wrist shot redirect off Brayden Point.
With the score tied 1-1, Columbus took another lead in the dying seconds of the second period when Oliver Bjorkstrom’s bad-angle shot beat goalie Andre Vasilevskiy. But once again, Tampa Bay tied things up 23 seconds into the third period on a goalmouth scramble that Yanni Gourde received credit for.
From there, it became a goalie duel.
Korpisalo, who shut out the Leafs twice in his first taste of the post-season, continued to make a name for himself as a goalie who rises to the occasion. Vasilevskiy matched him shot for shot.
You expected that the winning goal would have gone in off someone’s butt. Instead, Point picked up a puck in the offensive zone and found the top corner with a wrist shot that Korpisalo may not have seen.
Or maybe, because of how long the game had gone, he was simply too tired to raise his arm and make the save. If so, you can’t really blame him.