Tampa Bay Beats Columbus in 6 Hour, 5 Overtimes Game

The Tampa Bay Lightning and Columbus Blue Jackets opened their Stanley Cup Playoff series by playing over 2 1/2 games for Game 1 on August 11th. Lightning forward Yanni Gourde tied the score at 2-2 with a goal 23 seconds into the third period. The tiebreaking goal didn’t happen until the Lightnings’ Brayden Point scored on a wrist shot at 10:27 of the 5th overtime–or 150 minutes and 27 seconds into the game–27 seconds past the 2 1/2 game mark. It was the fourth longest game in NHL history.

Some of the stats for the game were off the charts. Blue Jackets goalie Joonas Korpisalo had 85 saves, breaking the old record by 12, and still lost. Tampa Bay goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy had 61 saves. Blue Jackets defenseman Seth Jones set a new playoff record of 65 minutes and six seconds of ice time. The game was almost 6 1/4 hours long; based on arena cleaning and prep time requirements between games due to Covid, the Boston Bruins vs. Carolina Hurricanes game that was due to follow was postponed until 11:00 am on the 12th.

Game 2 of the series is set for August 13th.