CFN – Montreal drew first blood and evened up that home ice advantage by defeating Steve Stamkos and the Tampa Bay Lightning 5-4 in Overtime. Stamkos scored twice in the game that wasn’t as close as the score dictated.
Tomas Plekanec scored as well as Brian Gionta, Lars Eller, Thomas Vanek, and the game winner by Dale Weise.
Montreal out shot Tampa 44-25 which is also good news. Plekanec also led Montreal in face offs winning 16 of 29 while the other centre’s struggled.
PK Subban led Montreal with 5 hits and Rene Bourque even looked like he was in the game! Thomas Vanek led Montreal with 7 shots and surprisingly David Desharnais had 6.
Carey Price survived a rocky night with 21 saves on 25 shots. Tampa out hit Montreal 40 to 27 and also blocked 13 shots to Montreal’s 11.
Pittsburgh survived Columbus and won on Brandon Sutter’s 3rd period goal winning 4-3 in their first game. Columbus was up 3-1 at one pint before Power Play goals by Beau Bennett and Matt Niskanen evened up the score. Sidney Crosby was held to 1 assist on 2 shots and was -2 for the night although he was 15 for 26 in the face off circle.
Anaheim ran up 4-0 lead in game one, holding on to win 4-3 to open their series. Kyle Palmieri, Ryan Getzlaf, Mathieu Perreault, and Matt Beleskey scored for the Ducks while Jamie Benn, Tyler Seguin, and Colton Sceviour hit the back of the ent for Dallas.
Shots were even at 35.
My fearless predictions for Round One.
Montreal over TB in 6
Anaheim over Dallas in 5
Pittsburgh over Columbus in 4
Rangers over Philly in 7
St.Louis over Chicago in 6
Minnesota over Colorado in 6
LA over SJ in 7
Boston over Detroit in 6
What say you Hockey fans? You can post your comments below!