Avalanche finish off sweep of Predators
Valeri Nichushkin scored the tiebreaking goal with 7:58 left, and the Colorado Avalanche became the first team to advance to the second round Monday night by finishing a sweep of the Nashville Predators 5-3 Monday night.
The Avalanche now are in the Western Conference semifinals for a fourth straight season and second consecutive after sweeping their first-round opponent. They improved to 6-0 since the franchise relocated to Denver in best-of-seven series after winning the first three games with their fourth sweep in that span.
Rasmus Andersson scored Calgary's first power-play goal since early in the playoff opener,
Jacob Markstrom had 34 saves and the Flames won at Dallas in Game 4 to even their first-round series.
Johnny Gaudreau converted a penalty shot with 12:13 left in the game to make it 2-0 Calgary, and later assisted on Elias Lindholm's third goal of the series as the Pacific Division champions regained home-ice advantage over the wild-card Stars. Mikael Backlund added an empty-netter in the final minute. PANTHERS 3, CAPITALS 2 >> Sam Reinhart tied it late in regulation, Carter Verhaeghe scored his second of the game in overtime and the Presidents' Trophy-winning Florida won Game 4 at Washington, tying the first-round series.
Verhaeghe scored 4:57 into overtime to keep the NHL's best regular-season team from getting pushed to the brink of elimination much earlier in the playoffs than expected. It's a bestof-three series now with
Game 5 Wednesday night at Florida.
The visiting Panthers were just over two minutes away from facing the prospect of getting knocked out at home. Then, with goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky pulled for an extra attacker, Reinhart collected a loose puck after it bounced off Capitals forward Garnet Hathaway and beat Ilya Samsonov with 2:04 remaining in the third period.
Given the combination of nerves and playoff inexperience that contributed to Florida's struggles in the series, Reinhart's goal may turn out to be the one that saved its season.
Before that point, the Panthers outshot the Capitals by a wide margin, but again were unable to finish. They went 0 for 4 on the power play to make it 0 for 13 in the series and couldn't put the puck in the net at 5 on 5.
Before Reinhart scored 6 on 5, their only other goal came 4 on 4 when Carter Verhaeghe finished a 2 on 1 rush late in the first.
Sidney Crosby had a goal and three assists to become the sixth player in NHL history to reach 200 career playoff points and Pittsburgh throttled visiting New York to take a 3-1 lead in their Eastern Conference first-round series.
Jake Guentzel scored for the fourth consecutive game and Jeff Carter, Danton Heinen, Mark Friedman and Mike Matheson also beat Igor Shesterkin as the host Penguins chased the Vezina Trophy favorite for the second time in three days to move within one game of advancing in the postseason for the first time since 2018.