Colorado Avalanche overwhelm Tampa Bay Lightning, take 2-0 lead in Stanley Cup Final
before falling in overtime.
They will need another comeback – the most daunting one yet against their most talented opponent yet – if they are to become the first franchise in nearly 40 years to three-peat.
Such is the case after Colorado steamrolled to a 7-0 victory Saturday night at Ball Arena, putting the Lightning on the ropes in the opening minutes, on the mat by the middle of the second period and powering to a 2-0 lead in the series.
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“We’ve shown a propensity to push back for years. Tonight we didn’t,” Tampa Bay head coach Jon Cooper said. “If this becomes a common theme in the series, it will probably be a short one, but I never doubt the guys in the room. Does it suck losing a game like that? For sure. We’re not used to it. It doesn’t really happen to us. Is it going to happen at times? Yeah, it is. You just hope it doesn’t happen in the Stanley Cup Final.
2-1, Game 7 win.
Perhaps the Rangers also thought they had Tampa right where they wanted them, scoring nine goals in a pair of opening wins before watching Vasilevskiy find his form and surrender just five more over a powerful, four-game response from the Lightning.
“We’re in the playoffs and does it feel different? We lost one of the games 6-2 to the Rangers, we lost one 7-0 (tonight),” Cooper said. “They’re two completely different teams and two completely different series. The common factor is we’re down 0-2 to both of them. We’ve written one story, now we just have to write another. For me, it’s regardless of whether you win 7-0 or 4-3 in overtime, you still lose the game.”
Whether Colorado finishes the job and raises the Cup for the first time since 2001 remains to be seen, but this hole certainly feels deeper than the past ones for Tampa.
The Avalanche, after all, have speed and skill across the roster. They have premier players like Makar and Nathan MacKinnon, certainly, but this series has been about the likes of Nichushkin and Burakovsky, who have been too much for Tampa’s defense to handle.
“That’s been the story of our team pretty much all year,” Helm said of the lineup-wide contributions.
It’s been about Helm himself, who has racked up 22 hits through two games, won 5-of-7 faceoffs on Saturday and scored a goal on a breakaway.
“He’s playing to win,” Bednar said simply.
It’s been about goaltender Darcy Kuemper, who outside of one 48-second blip on Wednesday night, has turned in rock solid work in his return from injury.
It has not yet been about Nazem Kadri, the talented center without whom the Avs have built a 2-0 lead but who could return to action at some point in the series depending on how his surgically repaired thumb holds up to more intense on-ice work.
Regardless of who’s been in the lineup and who’s done the scoring over the past six-plus weeks, Colorado’s playoff performance at this point is undeniably dominant. The Avalanche are now 14-2 in the postseason overall and ride a seven-game winning streak to the Gulf Coast. Perhaps even more impressive: They have not yet lost away from Denver in the postseason. They staked their claim as the Western Conference’s best team in the regular season and have hardly showed signs of wavering in the playoffs.