After six hours, five hours and a combined 151 shots on goal, the Tampa Bay Lightning won an epic Game 1 against the Columbus Blue Jackets on Tuesday night.
Brayden Point scored 150 minutes, 27 seconds into the game to give Tampa Bay a 3-2 victory.
“It was very special,” said lightning forward Yanni Gourde. “We were all exhausted. We were all looking for a goal. When we all saw that go inside, it was a lot of emotion.”
And about the winning goal, well, there wasn’t much science to it: “I see a rolling puck coming at me, I just throw it on net. I don’t even think,” Point said.
It was the fourth-longest playoff game in NHL history – so long as the Boston Bruins-Carolina Hurricanes game, originally scheduled for Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET, was replayed for Wednesday at 11 p.m. It takes arena workers roughly 90 minutes around the benches and cleans the ice between games; including warm-ups, Boston and Carolina sat for a start-up time typically reserved for beer readers.
Blue Jackets goalie Joonas Korpisalo made 85 saves, a new playoff NHL record – topping New York Islanders goalie Kelly Hrudey’s previous mark of 73 saves, set in 1987. Columbus blocked 62 shots in the game.
The Lightning alone reported 88 shots on goal, as many as the New York Rangers had combined in their three games against the Hurricanes in the qualifying round.
“I actually hope Korpisalo breaks the 100-savings mark,” Hrudey said in an interview on Sportsnet between overtime periods. “And I really hope the game goes on for so long [Andrei] Vasilevskiy also breaks my record. It’s just an unbelievable achievement. I’ve been waiting for this for at least 20 years. “
Vasilevskiy finished with 61 saves.
Columbus defender Seth Jones also set a new NHL playoff record for ice time, skating in 65 minutes, 6 seconds, beating Sergei Zubov’s old record of 63 minutes, 51 seconds, for the Dallas Stars in 2003. Jones even maintained his father, former NBA player Popeye Jones, played for minutes in a game. Popeye Jones’ career high was 56 minutes in 1996, while with the Toronto Raptors, during a three-hour loss to the Boston Celtics.
After the game, Seth Jones said he “feels good” but that he took the umbrella for the way the game was called.
“The official was, for me, a suspect,” Jones said.
Each player on each team recorded a shot on goal except for Columbus’ Cam Atkinson, although Atkinson had a breakaway chance shortly before Point scored. Atkinson crashed into the net after being chased by a defender, but no penalty was called on the scene.
At one TV timeout in the fourth overtime period, the big screen in the fanless Scotiabank Arena announced that it was time for a seventh inning stretch. By the fifth overtime, a new message appeared: “Sorry if you had any other plans last night.”
The Blue Jackets already had tired legs, playing their sixth game in nine days, including two that went to overtime.
Players on both sides said the mental fatigue was as exhausting as the physical fatigue.
“There’s no way to prepare for a game that goes that long,” Point said.
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