By Canadian Press

Lightning look like upstarts in Game 1 loss to Avalanche

Jun 15, 2022 | 9:44 PM

DENVER (AP) — The Tampa Bay Lightning weren’t the ones who looked like the two-time defending champions in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final on Wednesday night.

The Colorado Avalanche, playing for the first time in nine nights, raced to 2-0 and 3-1 leads in the first period by punching pucks past otherworldly goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy, who had allowed just 2.27 goals per game in these playoffs.

Then, Colorado, now 13-2 in the playoffs, withstood a Tampa Bay rally to prevail 4-3 on Andre Burakovsky’s goal 1:23 into overtime.

The winner came after a bad turnover by Mikhail Sergachev, whose second-period goal tied it at 3.

Home teams have won 64 consecutive Cup Final games when leading by two or more goals, per ESPN. The last team to blow a two-goal lead and lose was the New York Rangers against Vancouver in 1994.

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The Avalanche peppered reigning playoffs MVP Vasilevskiy with plenty of pucks in the first period and Ball Arena was rocking, those $1,000 tickets looking like bargains.

The Avalanche scored a whopping 65 goals in 14 playoff games to reach the Stanley Cup Final — their 6.46 scoring average the best in the playoffs in 30 years —- and they netted two more goals in the first 10 minutes of the first period.

The two-time defending champions’ pedigree showed up with Ondrej Palat and Sergachev scoring goals less than a minute apart in the second period against Darcy Keumper, who was playing in his first game since May 31 against Edmonton, to knot things up at 3.

It stayed that way until 1:23 into overtime.

Lightning coach Jon Cooper insisted Vasilevskiy wasn’t to blame for the loss, suggesting nobody in a Lightning sweater played better than his goaltender who stopped 22 straight shots before Burakovsky’s winner eluded his left skate.

The Avalanche’s legs were both fast and fresh in their first game in nine days and their first Stanley Cup appearance in 21 years.

Throw in the altitude and the Avalanche’s attitude, maybe some choppy ice and definitely some uneven play early on from Vasilevskiy, who allowed uncharacteristic goals like the one Valeri Nichuskin put past him in the first period. That puck was the first to go through Vasilevskiy’s legs this entire postseason.

These Avalanche may be the upstarts but they’re not fazed by the prospect of having to dethrone the two-time defending champions to hoist Lord Stanley’s Cup.

Their confidence, like the thin air in the Mile High City, is sky high.

“I mean why not?” said captain Gabriel Landeskog, whose goal less than eight minutes into the game opened the scoring. “We’re in the Stanley Cup Final. We’ve earned this spot. We put a lot of hard work in. Obviously, we have a lot of respect for these guys — but not too much.”

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Follow Arnie Melendrez Stapleton on Twitter at https://twitter.com/arniestapleton

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More AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

Arnie Stapleton, The Associated Press