{"id":683587,"date":"2026-05-21T06:21:37","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T06:21:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/683587\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T06:21:37","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T06:21:37","slug":"golden-knights-hold-off-avalanche-in-game-1-of-western-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/683587\/","title":{"rendered":"Golden Knights hold off Avalanche in Game 1 of Western Final"},"content":{"rendered":"

Valeri Nichushkin<\/a> and Gabriel Landeskog<\/a> scored for the Avalanche, the No. 1 seed from the Central Division and Western Conference. Nathan MacKinnon<\/a> had an assist, and Scott Wedgewood<\/a> made 24 saves.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it was good at times and not good enough at others,\u201d Colorado coach Jared Bednar said. \u201cLike the start of the game, good energy, good pace, thought we faded away for 20 minutes in there. I\u2019d like to see the urgency and the relentlessness that we had in the third period earlier in the game, for longer stretches. Lots to improve upon for our group going into Game 2.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got to find the hunger earlier in the game. We all know the importance of these games and every game, especially next game now with it being our second home game down one. It shouldn\u2019t be hard to sort of drive the urgency, and there\u2019s a few things that are building blocks of our team and our team identity that I think we can do more consistently to help us earlier in the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colorado defenseman Cale Makar<\/a> missed the game with an undisclosed injury.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s an important player, right, and he plays a lot. Some of the areas that we struggled with tonight, those are his strengths,\u201d Bednar said. “But he\u2019s not playing. So we have to find a way. I think the guys that we had playing tonight, not just the \u2018D,\u2019 but like we\u2019re capable of more and capable of better. It just wasn\u2019t there for us tonight. We got to make sure it is for Game 2.\u201d<\/p>\n

Game 2 of the best-of-7 series is at Ball Arena on Friday (8 p.m. ET; ESPN, SN, TVAS, CBC).<\/p>\n

Coghlan’s first career postseason goal\u00a0gave Vegas a 1-0 lead at 12:29 of the second period after his wrist shot from the high slot went in clean five-hole. Brandon Saad<\/a> set up the play when he fed him in stride as he entered the zone. It was Coghlan\u2019s first NHL goal since\u00a0Dec. 17, 2021, against the New York Rangers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was pretty crazy,\u201d Coghlan said. \u201cHonestly, I didn’t know it went in until I turned and looked to Shea<\/a> (Theodore). He was smiling at me. So, yeah, kind of just blacked out for a second, but saw an opportunity to jump in the rush, and I think there was a few guys behind me. So great play by ‘Saader’ to find me, and kind of just shot it, and luckily it went in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Said Hart: \u201cSo happy for the guy. I mean, he came in in the Anaheim series. Thought he did a tremendous job then. Stepped up tonight huge, and just a huge first goal tonight and couldn’t be happier for the guy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Valeri Nichushkin and Gabriel Landeskog scored for the Avalanche, the No. 1 seed from the Central Division and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":683588,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-683587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/683588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}