*Photo from the Tampa Bay Times*
Colorado leads series 1-0
If game one is any indication of the rest of the series, we're in for a real treat. Gabe Landeskog had a goal and an assist, Andre Burakovsky scored the winning goal, and the Colorado Avalanche defeated the Tampa Bay Lightning with a 4-3 overtime victory on Wednesday night in Denver.
After a long layoff in between the conference finals and the Stanley Cup, the Avalanche came out firing on all cylinders, taking game one of the series at home, starting the series the right way. Landeskog, Mikko Rantanen, and Valeri Nichushkin were each two point scorers for the Avalanche.
Landeskog said after the game that "I hope I'm not alone, but I was pretty nervous all day and coming off of warmups the fans were amazing. You're trying to enjoy the moment as much as you can but you're human and the nerves are there. That's OK, you just have to deal with it and I thought as a team we did a good job of that tonight."
Starting the scoring for the Avalanche was Landeskog, who made it 1-0 with his 9th goal of the playoffs, coming 7:47 into the game. The lead then became 2-0 at the 9:23 mark of the first period, thanks to Nichushkin. Nick Paul then scored 12:26 into the first to get the Lightning on the board to make it 2-1, before Artturi Lehkonen scored for the Avalanche, making it 3-1 after one period.
In the second period, Ondrej Palat got on the board, scoring his 9th goal of the playoffs 12:51 into the second, making it a 3-2 game. Just 48 seconds later, Mikhail Sergachev scored and the game was tied, making it 3-3 on his second goal of the playoffs. After a scoreless 3rd period, Burakovsky scored 1:23 into overtime, sending the Avalanche home with a win.
Rantanen said of the Lightning rally that "They scored two quick ones, kind of shocked us a little bit. I think we were playing well before that, but in the second in that stretch we were losing battles and were not breaking the puck out as clean as we were in the first and start of the second."
Picking up the start and the win in net for the Avalanche was Darcy Kuemper, who came back from an upper body injury. Kuemper stopped 20 of the 23 shots the Lightning sent at him, which was good for a .870 save percentage in the series opening win.
As expected for the Lightning, it was the Andrei Vasilevskiy show again in net. Vasilevskiy took the loss, turning aside 34 out of the 38 shots on goal that he faced, recording a .895 save percentage in the loss, the Lightning's first since game two of the eastern conference finals.
Tampa Bay head coach Jon Cooper said of the loss that "There are some positives tonight for us in this game, but the right team won the game. Give them credit for pulling it out. We've got better in us, though. I don't think by a country mile we gave our best game and we still had a chance to pull it out. But to beat a talented team like that we've got to bring a better game than this."
After a few days off, game two of the series is back in Denver on Saturday night. There, the Avalanche will look to take a 2-0 series lead, while the Lightning look to even the series and force at least a game 5.
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