By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
A Tampa buddy who roots for the Lightning went hunting for Home Improvement reruns on his TV midway through the game.
A pal in Las Vegas advised me to skip the second half of the game in favor of a nice dinner on the 16th Street Mall in downtown Denver.
And one fan was practically running down the upper concourse at Bell Arena and screaming, “It’s six to zero.”
Let’s just say the Colorado Avalanche didn’t mess around with any overtime to defeat the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final tonight like they did in Game 1.
The Avs scored early and often from start to finish at Ball Arena in Denver’s Platte Valley and absolutely demolished the two-time defending Cup champs by a 7-0 score.
The Lightning can tell themselves that they also lost the first two games of a Best-of-7 series to Gerard Gallant and the New York Rangers a mere round ago in the Eastern Conference Finals.
But then again, Tampa Bay may be fooling itself if the team believes the Avalanche are the Rangers.
This Colorado team has a roster packed with fast-skating, skilled marksmen and the squad’s talent goes way beyond Avs superstars Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar. The Avs were skating into the Lightning zone as if it was a practice drill, while Tampa Bay mustered only 16 shots on goal
The Avs’ Valeri Nichushkin opened the scoring with his seventh postseason goal less than three minutes into the game and then five minutes later defenseman Josh Manson scored his third of the playoffs, giving Colorado a 2-0 lead.
In Game 1, Tampa Bay erased a Colorado two-goal lead in the first period to force OT before eventually losing, 4-3, early in overtime Wednesday.
But on Saturday, there was a completely different story line.
Colorado looked like the fresher, faster team from start to finish, leading 3-0 after one period; 5-0 after two periods; and 7-0 after 60 minutes.
The Avs lead the Cup Final, 2-0, in games as the series shifts to Tampa for Game 3 Monday and Game 4 Wednesday.
“They played at an elite level,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said after the loss. “They’re playing at a much higher level than we are.”
Cooper mentioned that the Bolts have displayed an ability to “push back” when down. But tonight, Cooper observed, there was no counter-fight.
Instead, the packed crowd of 17,849 pictured below was delirious all night.
Outside Ball Arena before the game, I ran into a fan who said the Avs are winning because it’s the non-stars who were coming through with clutch goals.
And you know what? That veteran Avs fan was right.
Colorado’s Andre Burakovsky, who scored the OT game-winner Wednesday, capped the first period scoring with his third of the playoffs to give the Avs a 3-0 advantage after the first 20 minutes.
In period two, Nichushkin scored his second of the game before third-liner Darren Helm notched his second goal of the postseason.
The Avalanche’s Makar piled on two more goals to polish off the shot-challenged Lightning and the Avs came away with a one-sided 7-0 victory. The Lightning’s offense was feeble as Colorado goalie Darcy Kuemper blanked Tampa Bay.
“It’s about the way we played,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said. “We buried the chances we got.”
Just one year ago, the Avalanche lost in the postseason to the Vegas Golden Knights, a team with high expectations this season that did not even qualify for the playoffs.
The VGK saw its coach, Pete DeBoer, get fired. The Golden Knights hired just-fired Boston Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy to be the team’s new head coach — the third coach in the franchise’s six years.
Tonight, the Avs looked like they were playing with not only speed and goal-scoring skill but also with a chip on its shoulder after bowing out to the VGK in six games last season after winning the first two games of the series against the Golden Knights.
It was a rough night for the Lightning’s highly-heralded goalie, Andrei Vasilevskiy, who did not look sharp in these two losses in Denver this week.
As Cooper said, “Turn the page.”
LVSportsBiz.com’s coverage of the 2022 Stanley Cup Final is presented by real estate agent Liz Lane of Las Vegas and ISM bicycle seats of Tampa