DENVER – Andre Burakovsky sent 18,000 fans at Ball Arena into a frenzy when he scored his second goal of the 2022 Stanley Cup Playoffs. Colorado took game 1 from the defending Stanley Cup Champions 4-3.
“I wasn’t thinking too much,” Burakovsky said about his goal. “It was kind of a crazy feeling. Just great to be here in this Final and help the team win a game.”
Colorado came out of the gate, firing on all cylinders and testing Andre Vasilevskiy early in the game. About 8 minutes into the first period, Colorado would break the scoreless tie with a goal from Gabriel Landeskog.
Just two minutes later, Valeri Nichushkin got his sixth goal of the postseason and extended the Avalanche lead to 2-0 halfway through the first period.
The two-time champions wouldn’t be left off the board for long. Nick Paul would put in his fourth of the playoffs and get Tampa Bay back within a goal.
Late in the period, the Lightning took two quick tripping penalties. The first was given to Mikhail Sergachev for tripping Nathan MacKinnon and 27 seconds later, Anthony Cirelli was called for tripping Cale Makar. This gave Colorado a 1:33 5-on-3 power play and they would capitalize.
Artturi Lehkonen, the hero of the Western Conference Final, would get his seventh postseason goal to extend Colorado’s lead to 3-1 going into the first intermission.
The man advantage was not strong for either team Wednesday night. Colorado was 1 for 3 on the power play and Tampa Bay was 0 for 3 with the man advantage.
The second period saw more urgency out of the Lightning.
Ondrej Palat scored his ninth playoff goal with 7:49 left in the period. There wasn’t much time for fans to process what had happened because Mikhail Sergachev scored less than a minute later to even the score.
“They scored two quick ones, kind of shocked us a little bit,” Mikko Rantanen said. “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.”
Both teams would head into the second intermission looking to break out in the third period.
Neither team would break the tie in the third period, but there was plenty of opportunities for either team to take the lead.
Late in the period, Patrick Maroon sent the puck over the glass in the Tampa Bay defensive zone for a delay of game penalty. This put Colorado on the power play for the last 1:24 of the period and carried into the overtime period.
In overtime, Tampa Bay was able to kill off the Maroon penalty but could not keep the Avalanche out of the net. Burakovsky ripped a one-timer past Vasilevskiy and gave Colorado the 1-0 series lead.
“The mindset is we’re here to win a series and you don’t know when that’s going to come,” Tampa Bay captain Steven Stamkos said. “Four games, five, six, seven, you never know. We’ve done a great job of making adjustments after losses. So, we’ll look to do that.”
“There are some positives tonight for us in this game, but the right team won the game,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “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.”
Game two of the Stanley Cup Final will be on Saturday, June 18, at 6 p.m. at Ball Arena in Denver, Colorado.
You must be logged in to post a comment.