The first round of the 2026 Stanley Cup playoffs continued on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Four separate Game 1 clashes highlighted the NHL postseason action, beginning with a matchup between the Colorado Avalanche and Los Angeles Kings.<\/p>\n
Here’s a closer look at Sunday’s results and the upcoming playoff schedule.<\/p>\n
Sunday Round 1 Results, Schedule<\/p>\n
Colorado Avalanche 2, Los Angeles Kings 1 (Avalanche lead series 1-0)<\/p>\n
Montreal Canadiens 4, Tampa Bay Lightning 3 in OT (Canadiens lead series 1-0)<\/p>\n
Buffalo Sabres 4, Boston Bruins 3 (Sabres lead series 1-0)<\/p>\n
Vegas Golden Knights 4, Utah Mammoth 2 (Golden Knights lead series 1-0)<\/p>\n
Philadelphia Flyers vs. Pittsburgh Penguins, Game 2: 7 p.m. ET (Flyers lead series 1-0)<\/p>\n
Carolina Hurricanes vs. Ottawa Senators, Game 2: 7:30 p.m. ET (Hurricanes lead series 1-0)<\/p>\n
Minnesota Wild vs. Dallas Stars, Game 2: 9:30 p.m. ET (Wild lead series 1-0)<\/p>\n
Anaheim Ducks vs. Edmonton Oilers, Game 1: 10 p.m. ET<\/p>\n
After a scoreless first period, Colorado got on the board first with a goal from Artturi Lehkonen late in the second. <\/p>\n
The Avalanche extended their lead following a wrist shot by Logan O’Connor with just over 14 minutes remaining in the third period. <\/p>\n
Los Angeles responded with Artemi Panarin’s power-play goal near the end of the third, but couldn’t complete a late comeback against the Presidents’ Trophy winners. <\/p>\n
Avalanche goaltender Scott Wedgewood racked up 24 saves in the victory.<\/p>\n
Canadiens 4, Lightning 3 (OT)<\/p>\n
Sunday was quite the day at the office for Juraj Slafkovsk\u00fd.<\/p>\n
The Montreal Canadiens left-winger notched a hat trick in his team’s opening game against the Tampa Bay Lightning to lead it to a 4-3 victory. None of his three goals were more important the winner he scored in overtime:<\/p>\n
His second goal came in the third period and gave Montreal a 3-2 lead, but Tampa Bay wasted little time tying things up with a Brandon Hagel\u00a0goal approximately three minutes later.<\/p>\n
It was one of two goals from Hagel for the Lightning.<\/p>\n
Neither team scored in the final 11 minutes of regulation, but Slafkovsk\u00fd proved to be the difference in overtime. It was far from a one-man show, though, as Josh Anderson opened the scoring for the victors while goaltender Jakub Dobes saved 20 of the 23 shots he faced.<\/p>\n
It was enough to seize initial control of the series.<\/p>\n
It had been 15 years since the Buffalo Sabres were last in the playoffs, and Sunday might have been worth the wait.<\/p>\n
After falling behind 2-0 early in the third period, the Sabres scored four goals in a row to seize a 4-3 victory over the Boston Bruins in front of an electric atmosphere in Buffalo.<\/p>\n
Tage Thompson started the scoring for the home team with fewer than eight minutes remaining and then tied it fewer than four minutes later. Mattias Samuelsson then put Buffalo ahead for good, and Alex Tuch scored an empty-netter that ended up being critically important.<\/p>\n
After all, the Bruins cut the lead to 4-3 in the final seconds thanks to a power-play goal from David Pastrnak.<\/p>\n
Boston goaltender Jeremy Swayman did what he could by stopping 34 of the 37 shots he faced, but the offensive pressure from the Sabres ended up being too much by the end. It also didn’t help the visitors’ chances that they only got 20 shots on goal against Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen.<\/p>\n
The end result was a thrilling comeback win and home-ice advantage remaining on Buffalo’s side.<\/p>\n
Golden Knights 4, Mammoth 2<\/p>\n
It seemed like the Utah Mammoth might steal Game 1 of their first-round series against the Vegas Golden Knights.<\/p>\n
And then the third period started.<\/p>\n
Vegas entered the final period trailing 2-1 only to score all three goals in the final 20 minutes. Mark Stone tied it at two with the first goal of the third period, while Nic Dowd put the home team ahead for good with the go-ahead mark.<\/p>\n
From there, Ivan Barbashev iced it with an empty-netter to keep home-ice advantage.<\/p>\n
Logan Cooley and Kevin Stenlund scored the goals for the Mammoth, but Carter Hart stood strong for the entire third period while the Vegas offense seized control. The goaltender saved 32 of the 34 shots he faced and was locked in at the most important moments.<\/p>\n
That is all the Golden Knights needed to take an early series lead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first round of the 2026 Stanley Cup playoffs continued on Sunday. Four separate Game 1 clashes highlighted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":556590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5119],"tags":[5,2409,231,5281,4,2410],"class_list":{"0":"post-556589","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nashville-predators","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-nashville","10":"tag-nashville-predators","11":"tag-nashvillepredators","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-predators"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116436153189890409","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556589","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=556589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/556590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}