Colorado Avalanche

Tuesday's game was the Avalanche's eighth straight playoff win over the Blues, dating back to Game 4 of the 2001 conference finals. Counting the regular season ...

After St. Louis gave up the next two goals, Jordan Kyrou tied things late in the third period to send the game to overtime, but the Blues didn’t manage to record a shot in the extra period. Colorado certainly looked like a team that had a weeklong layoff between games in the first period of Game 1. Binnington stopped 51 of 54 shots faced, becoming the fourth different goaltender in franchise history to make at least 50 saves in a playoff game. Colorado improved to 10-2 straight up in their last 12 home dates, with their playoff win streak currently sitting at five games. The Blues have fallen from +300 series underdogs heading into Game 1 to +542 dogs entering Game 2. Game 1 also snapped a six-game Over streak in this all-time head-to-head.

For myriad reasons stemming from long breaks to unfamiliar game plans, Game 1 is usually identified as the one the road team is best positioned to steal.

For all the hope that this year would be different with a healthier and deeper Blues team, Game 1 sure looked a lot like last year’s four-game sweep. Comparing this to St. Louis puts their dominance in stark contrast, as the Blue with the highest expected goals figure from last night was Colton Parayko at 0.68, with Ryan O’Reilly being his only other teammate to finish higher than 0.5. Aside from a first period where the Blues won a few races to the slot and got their sticks on some tipped pucks, the vast majority of their 5-on-5 shot attempts were confined to the corners or bad angles. The adage of “a series doesn’t begin until a home team loses a game” is generally true, and if the St. Louis Blues had pulled a win out of their hat last night, there would be immense pressure on the Colorado Avalanche today, as their recent years of second-round playoff failures would become the white-hot focus of this series. You can dig through Natural Stat Trick’s archives and find countless lopsided games this year that looked like this where the Avalanche won comfortably. Instead, the Avalanche grinded a win out of a game they controlled from (near) start to finish, and today St. Louis must be wondering whether that was their best chance to win a game in Denver.

Josh Manson scored his first career playoff goal lifted the Colorado Avalanche to a Game 1 overtime victory over the St. Louis Blues.

The goal was Girard’s first of the postseason and just the second playoff goal of his career. Ryan O’Reilly slid the first goal of the game past Kuemper midway through the first period, and Kyrou added the equalizer late, but Kuemper was still pretty sharp throughout the contest. It was his first goal of the playoffs, and only the third goal he’s scored with Colorado since arriving on March 14 in a trade with the Anaheim Ducks. Kuemper was injured in Game 3 on a fluke play when Ryan Johansen’s stick poked through the gaps in his face mask, jabbing him in the eye. He made team president Joe Sakic look like a genius on Tuesday. Manson scored the game-winning goal in overtime, whipping a seeing-eye shot from the point past Binnington for the win. The first playoff goal of Josh Manson’s career proved to be the difference, lifting the Avalanche to a 3-2 overtime victory.

Josh Manson scored at 8:02 of overtime and the Colorado Avalanche beat the St. Louis Blues 3-2 in Game 1 of their Western Conference semifinal series on…

Manson passed it across to Girard, who drifted to the top of the right circle and beat Binnington with a snapshot at 11:32. Mikko Rantanen took a sharp-angle shot from the right circle that Binnington saved, but the rebound bounced out front and Nichushkin tapped it in at 3:14. It was his third goal of the postseason. The Avalanche had a few quality scoring chances early on but it was St. Louis that broke through in the first period.

The Colorado Avalanche take on the St. Louis Blues in Game 1 of the Second Round of the 2022 Stanley Cup Playoffs on Tuesday, May 17. Puck drop is set for 7:30 ...

It's easy to get deflated when you feel like you're playing well and you get a bounce like that and it ends up in the back of your net, but there was a response right away. "We came back and got back to our game. "We got the job done tonight," Bednar continued. The regulation play came down the wire as the Blues capitalized on their only power play of the game late in the third at 16:46 and the Avs were unable to do the same when awarded their third power play of the night with 1:19 left in the game. "After they scored that first goal there was no change in the mentality on the bench. Despite dominating the game early on, the Avalanche found themselves trailing 1-0 to St. Louis heading into the first intermission.

He's since won a Stanley Cup and a Conn Smythe Trophy with the Blues, while the Avs haven't been past the second round since 2002. If the Avs fail to get to a ...

And O’Reilly will be booed again, just as the Predators’ Matt Duchene was in the first round. He’s since won a Stanley Cup and a Conn Smythe Trophy with the Blues, while the Avs haven’t been past the second round since 2002. And yeah, it’s always nice to see people.

Back in 1983 en route to becoming the NHL's all-time leading goal scorer, Wayne Gretzky said: “You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."

They couldn’t get the puck to go so they don’t get on the sheet. The Avs outshot the Blues 54-25 in Game 1 and, given the fact they had five shots clang off iron behind Binnington, they could have easily produced a blowout. “If we’re preparing properly for the next game, and this series, we can expect there to be ebbs and flows and we can expect their goalie to come up big,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said Wednesday. “We can expect times where it’s not going our way and to be resilient is the key, and be mentally strong. That’s a good team across the way there. In Game 2 against the Preds, Colorado attempted 103 shots. Colorado missed the net 25 times, including five shots off the post.