Scoring the first goal and winning the first game has become a habit for the Florida Panthers in the playoffs.
Tuesday night, they scored the first goal again. Then the Colorado Avalanche made sure Florida didn't get the second part right by scoring the next three themselves.The result was a 3-1 victory for the Avalanche and a head start in the Stanley Cup finals.
"They came hard and they sensed we were probably not in full composure," Panthers goaltender John Vanbiesbrouck said of Colorado's three-goal burst in the second period. "That's what great teams do - they wait to take advantage, and they did."
It was uncharacteristic of the Panthers to fall apart. After all, they made an art form in these playoffs of taking the early lead and making it stand up with paralyzing defense. They had started all three previous playoff series with victories.
And just look at their performance in the Eastern Conference finals against Pittsburgh. The king of the front-runners, Florida took the early lead in five of the seven games, and the Penguins simply couldn't recover.
That's just what the Avalanche were afraid of Tuesday night.
"One of the things the guys were worried about was them getting the first goal, because they play such good defense with leads," Colorado forward Scott Young said of the Panthers. "John Vanbiesbrouck has just shut everybody down."
Vanbiesbrouck shut down the Avalanche's big guns, as he did Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr in the Pittsburgh series. It was mostly the lower-profile players who hurt him this time, as Young and defenseman Uwe Krupp scored the first and last goals for the Avalanche.
Young and Krupp aren't the first players you think about when rattling off the Avalanche's impressive scorers such as Joe Sakic, Peter Forsberg and Claude Lemieux.
Actually, Lemieux was missing from the lineup - and will be again in Game 2 Thursday night - after being suspended by the NHL for what the league termed a cheap-shot hit of Detroit's Kris Draper in the Western Conference finals.
No matter. Young came to the Avalanche's rescue with a long shot from center ice that beat Vanbiesbrouck at 10:32 of the second period. The Florida goaltender, admittedly partially screened on the shot, didn't react quickly enough. It wasn't Vanbiesbrouck at his best - certainly not the Vanbiesbrouck who backstopped the third-year Panthers to their improbable spot in the finals.
"It was just a good shot," Vanbiesbrouck said.
It was just what the Avalanche needed, after they fell behind in the first period on a goal by Tom Fitzgerald. He beat Patrick Roy from outside the crease at 16:51 after getting the puck from Bill Lindsay.
"In the first period, we didn't play the type of hockey that we've been playing all throughout the playoffs," Colorado coach Marc Crawford said. "We didn't pursue the puck very well, we didn't finish many checks. We certainly didn't do a very good job of getting traffic in and around Vanbiesbrouck."
That's about all they did in the second period - at least for a four-minute span of the second. Mike Ricci followed Young's goal with a rebound goal at 12:21, and Krupp scored at 14:21 off a great pass from Valeri Kamensky for a 3-1 lead.
That's all the Avalanche needed with Roy in fine form.