Kings<\/a> tried a different route, opening against the Colorado Avalanche.<\/p>\nThey lost 2-1.<\/p>\n
The goals came from Artturi Lehkonen late in the second period and Logan O\u2019Connor early in the third. The Kings made a game of it late, pulling goaltender Anton Fosberg with 2:57 to play and getting a power-play goal from Artemi Panarin 35 seconds later. But that was as close as they would get.<\/p>\n
Maybe the Kings should been careful what they wished for. Because while the Avs aren\u2019t the Oilers, they\u2019re better \u2014 much better \u2014 than any of the recent Edmonton teams.<\/p>\n
This season they won the Presidents\u2019 Trophy, the prize that goes to the team with the best regular-season record in the league, and they earned it by scoring the most goals and giving up the fewest in the NHL. They also had the best home record in the Western Conference and the best road record in the league.<\/p>\n
And they started quickly Sunday, putting four shots on goal in the first four minutes. But Forsberg was spectacular, making 28 saves to keep the Kings in the game.<\/p>\n
Colorado thought it had beaten him less than seven minutes into the second period when O\u2019Connor found the back of the net from the right circle but the goal was waved off by a goalie interference call on Jack Drury, who tumbled into the crease as O\u2019Connor was releasing his shot. The Avs questioned the call, claiming Kings defender Drew Doughty had pushed Drury from behind, but they lost the challenge.<\/p>\n
There was no doubt about Colorado\u2019s next goal, which came 4:31 before the second intermission when Lehkonen, defended tightly by Doughty, was able to reach out his stick and sweep in the rebound of Nathan MacKinnon shot from the right boards.<\/p>\n
The Avs doubled their advantage 5:50 into the third period when Joel Edmundson lost the puck in the Kings zone, allowing O\u2019Connor to collect it and race defenseman Cody Ceci to the front of the net before beating Forsberg cleanly. Drury got an assist on the play.<\/p>\n
The game, which had been physical all afternoon, turned chippy after that, giving the Kings a power play they took advantage to halve Colorado\u2019s leader. But the Avs then closed out the game to a 1-0 lead in the series.<\/p>\n
The best-of-seven playoff resumes Tuesday night in Denver before moving to the Crypto.com Arena on Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DENVER\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Different opponent. Same result. In each of the last four seasons, the Kings have opened the Stanley Cup…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":556327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[463,464],"tags":[5,4,60,14,104,718],"class_list":{"0":"post-556326","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl-playoffs","8":"category-stanley-cup-playoffs","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-nhl-playoffs","12":"tag-stanley-cup","13":"tag-stanley-cup-playoffs","14":"tag-stanley-cup-playoffs-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116433697402415216","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=556326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/556327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}