Happy Thursday, everyone. Hope you're doing well.
Let's get right to it.
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Good morning to everyone but especially to...
THE COLORADO AVALANCHE
The Avalanche's explosive offense was on display last night -- but so was the Lightning's championship grit. Then Andre Burakovsky showed he knows a thing or two about clutch goals... especially against Tampa Bay.
It all led to the Avalanche taking Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final in a 4-3 overtime thriller.
Colorado jumped out to a 3-1 lead after the first period, with Gabriel Landeskog, Valeri Nichushkin and Artturi Lehkonen all scoring. Nicholas Paul had the Lightning's tally.The game changed quickly in the second period, when Ondrej Palat and Mikhail Sergachev scored 48 seconds apart to tie things at 3-3. Neither team scored in the third period.Then Burakovsky struck with his first career Stanley Cup Final goal, beating Tampa Bay goalie Andrei Vasilevsky just 1:23 into overtime.Lightning fans must have cringed when they heard Burakovsky's name: He scored twice against Tampa Bay in Game 7 of the 2018 Eastern Conference Final as a member of the Capitals.
While the game went to overtime, our NHL expert Austin Nivison wrote in his takeaways that the Avs dominated throughout.
Nivison: "No matter how you slice it, the Avs took it to the back-to-back champs in the opening game. At five-on-five, Colorado generated 2.60 expected goals to Tampa Bay's 1.05, per Natural Stat Trick... Colorado converted on one of its three power plays and got some quality chances on the other two. Meanwhile, the Avs' penalty kill unit completely silenced a lethal Lightning man advantage on all three opportunities."That being said, this was an exciting opening to the Final. If every game can be as good as Game 1, sign me up for six more, please.
