A 15-goal playoff opener puts modern NHL offense on full display in Avalanche-Wild

After Colorado's low-scoring, first-round sweep of Los Angeles to a matchup against Minnesota everyone figured would be more competitive, Avalanche captain Gabriel Landeskog wondered aloud whether whether games against the Wild would end with scores like 2-1.

“It’ll be a tight-checking series, I’m sure,” Landeskog said then. “We’re ready and prepared for whatever.”

No one was prepared what happened in the series opener Sunday night, a show-stopping, 9-6 instant classic won by the Avalanche with a score more befitting of the 1980s when goaltenders wore a fraction of the equipment they do now and got lit up regularly.

This one was less about the goalies being bad and more of a sign about how hockey is being played now. Coaches let skilled players take more chances and there is high-end talent — 15 Olympians dressed for the opener — all over the place in this showdown between championship contenders.

Stanley Cup-winning coach Bruce Cassidy pointed specifically to the elite offensive defensemen involved, headlined by Colorado's Cale Makar and Minnesota's Quinn Hughes and Brock Faber. Makar and Hughes were among the 14 goal-scorers, the most in a playoff game since 1982.

“Personnel drives that as much as anything,” Cassidy said Monday. “Players, they shoot the puck better now. They’re finding different ways to score maybe than a little bit in the past. They can all bring it. Just better offensive skill.”

Coaches are more forgiving in the name of making plays, Cassidy acknowledged, because “it’s not fun trying to win 2-1 every night.” But Minnesota's John Hynes and Colorado's Jared Bednar will make adjustments that will likely keep the goal total down in Game 2 on Tuesday night (8 p.m. EDT, ESPN).

"We probably all felt there was a lot of scattered things going on throughout the game, but I do think there’s some things for us that we were a little out of sorts," Hynes said. “I feel like our team, some of the things that we gave up, are fixable.”

They can't fix the fact that the Avalanche have Makar, Nathan MacKinnon, Martin Necas and so much firepower. Even depth defenseman Nick Blankenburg, acquired at the trade deadline for insurance and only in the lineup because Josh Manson is injured, scored in Game 1.

The Avalanche, whose 233 points from the blue line led all teams during the regular season, got five of their goals from defensemen. They’re just the third team in NHL playoff history to do that and the first since Los Angeles in 1992.

Fourteen of the 15 goals came with a goalie in net, including the Wild's Jesper Wallstedt allowing eight on 42 shots. After a season in which the average leaguewide save percentage of .896 was the lowest in more than 30 years, there was something to Wallstedt and Colorado's Scott Wedgewood not being at their best. Wallstedt said the puck seemed to have eyes.

“I think if they put them both in and you played the exact same game with the same chances it would be closer to like 5-3." Cassidy said. “They found their way in. They weren’t bad goals, but they didn’t make a lot of saves that they typically do, both in the same night. It’s kind of a one-off.”

Each of these teams had close to an even split of duties in net during the regular season but has so far stuck to one guy in the playoffs. The Avalanche in 2022 became just the fourth team in NHL history to win the Stanley Cup having two goaltenders win at least five games during the title run.

“You do it all year. Why wouldn’t you rotate?” said Cassidy, who started two goaltenders coaching Vegas to the Cup in 2023, though that was because of injury. “It would make some sense to rotate in the playoffs, and not too many teams do it. I don’t know. That’s the one thing that hasn’t changed much is you’re going with one guy and he’s the guy, so it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out.”

Players were quick to take the blame for the rapid-scoring affair, and it's fair to say the game became so entertaining in part because of how wide open it was.

“Some of those details were lacking from the start of the game and all the way throughout,” Bednar said, acknowledging the Avs were prepared for the Wild to attack off the rush. “It was more D-zone coverage, but it starts with your rush coverage and then your arrivals, so you’re organized.”

Colorado's first three goals came over a span of 121 seconds, and Minnesota's response was two goals separated by just over a minute — all in the first period. After Blankenburg restored some cushion, the Wild got three in a row.

Cassidy thinks the Avalanche could play six more games like that. Minnesota, not so much.

“With a team like Colorado, they play to score the next goal a lot,” Cassidy said. “That’s who they are. They’re an offensive juggernaut and they’ve got three lines and four, five defensemen that can bring it, so why not play that way? That’s how they’re constructed.”

Even with that, Colorado defenseman Brett Kulak, who helped Edmonton make consecutive trips to the final, knows he and his teammates need to be better moving forward to have sustained success.

“You just got to laugh about it a little bit now — we’re able to anyways, that we we came out on the right side of it,” Kulak said. “So, we’re happy with that but certainly not a recipe to win through the playoffs and win the Stanley Cup.”

AP Sports Writer Pat Graham in Denver contributed to this report.

AP NHL playoffs: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

Minnesota Wild head coach John Hynes, back center, confers with players during a time out as assistant coaches Jason King, back left, and Patrick Dwyer join in in the third period of Game 1 of an NHL hockey Stanley Cup second-round playoff series against the Colorado Avalanche Sunday, May 3, 2026, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Colorado Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar, center, confers with players during a timeout in the third period of Game 1 of an NHL hockey Stanley Cup second-round playoff series against the Minnesota Wild Sunday, May 3, 2026, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Minnesota Wild right wing Mats Zuccarello, left, redirects the puck at Colorado Avalanche goaltender Scott Wedgewood in the third period of Game 1 of an NHL hockey Stanley Cup second-round playoff series Sunday, May 3, 2026, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Colorado Avalanche center Parker Kelly, right, jumps as Minnesota Wild goaltender Jesper Wallstedt makes a stick save of a shot in the third period of Game 1 of an NHL hockey Stanley Cup second-round playoff series Sunday, May 3, 2026, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Colorado Avalanche center Parker Kelly, center top, tries to redirect a shot at Minnesota Wild goaltender Jesper Wallstedt (30) as Wild left wing Marcus Foligno, right, covers in the first period of Game 1 of an NHL hockey Stanley Cup second-round playoff series Sunday, May 3, 2026, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

NEW YORK (AP) — The Washington Post won the Pulitzer Prize for public service for scrutinizing the Trump administration’s sweeping, choppy cuts and changes to federal agencies, and The Associated Press won the award Monday for international reporting about surveillance.

In a year when several prize-winning projects zoomed in on the Trump presidency, the Post's coverage illuminated the fast-moving, sometimes opaque particulars of the administration's drive to reshape the national government, and judges credited the Post with detailing what the changes meant for individual Americans.

The Miami Herald’s Julie K. Brown was given a special citation for her reporting, nearly a decade ago, that drew attention to Jeffrey Epstein ’s abuses. The New York Times won three of the coveted prizes, the Post and Reuters each won two, and smaller outlets ranging from The Connecticut Mirror to the podcast “Pablo Torre Finds Out” also were recognized in a challenging year for American journalism.

“This is always a day of celebration in our communities, but perhaps never more so than today as we face tremendous political and economic pressures,” prize administrator Marjorie Miller said in a livestream announcing the awards.

In the last few months, the Post cut a third of its staff, CBS News announced it would shutter its nearly century-old radio service, The AP offered buyouts to over 120 journalists and some regional newspapers also publicly struggled. CBS parent Paramount’s acquisition of CNN has raised questions about what’s next for those networks. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump continued to bash, and sometimes sue, outlets whose coverage he finds objectionable.

Spanning three years, thousands of pages of documents and numerous interviews, the AP project found that American companies help lay the foundations of the Chinese government’s system for monitoring and policing its citizens.

“This was sweeping and deeply impactful reporting, the kind of work that highlights the unique strengths of AP’s global, multiformat newsroom,” executive editor Julie Pace said in an email to staffers. She is among the Pulitzer Board's new members.

The prizes covered President Donald Trump's first year back in the White House, and two winning entries focused on his pulverizing approach to norms and constraints. The Times took the investigative reporting prize for exploring Trump's boundary-pushing approach to the notion of conflicts of interest. Reuters, which won for national reporting, looked at how Trump has used the federal government and his supporters’ influence to expand presidential authority and to try to punish his foes, the award judges noted.

Reuters' reporting on the social media giant Meta won a prize in the newly revived category for beat reporting, a term for journalists consistently assigned to a particular topic. The board brought that honor back for the first time in two decades.

Reuters' wins spotlighted "fearless, deeply reported, original work that holds powerful institutions to account,” editor-in-chief Alessandra Galloni said in a statement.

The prize for breaking news went to the Minnesota Star Tribune’s coverage of last year’s mass shooting at a Minneapolis Catholic school, where two children were killed and more than a dozen others were injured during the school’s first Mass of the academic year. Judges praised the thoroughness and compassion of the newspaper’s reporting on a scene of carnage in its hometown,

“To me, it’s really a moment to appreciate the power of local journalism,” Kathleen Hennessey, the Star Tribune's editor and senior vice president, said in an interview. One Tribune reporter who lives in the neighborhood heard the gunshots and called 911 before running over to the scene, she noted; an editor at the paper has children who attend the school.

“It feels really gratifying to be recognized, but for this newsroom, this is also just still a really painful event,” Hennessey said.

The San Francisco Chronicle received the award for explanatory reporting, which means work that makes a complex topic comprehensible to everyday readers and viewers. The Chronicle's series laid out how insurers, aided by algorithmic tools, undervalued and denied rebuilding claims for fire-destroyed homes, the judges said.

In visual journalism, The Times got a breaking news photography award for depicting devastation and starvation in Gaza resulting from Israel's war in the territory. The Post won the feature photography prize, for a visual essay on a family welcoming a firstborn as the child’s father grappled with terminal cancer. The award for illustrated reporting and commentary — a category that includes editorial cartoons and more — went to Bloomberg for a graphic novel about online scams that threaten “digital arrest.”

While several prizes reflected the year’s biggest news stories, others highlighted work that wasn’t pushed to everyone’s phones.

One of two local reporting awards, for example, went to The Connecticut Mirror and ProPublica for a series on how towing companies profited off Connecticut laws, at the expense of poor car owners; the state soon changed the laws. The Chicago Tribune also was honored for its coverage of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the Windy City.

Texas Monthly won the feature writing award for an editor's first-person story of flooding that killed his toddler nephew and swept his home away. Also in Texas, The Dallas Morning News' architecture critic won the criticism award; judges praised Mark Lamster's wit and expertise. The New York Times' M. Gessen won the opinion writing award for essays on authoritarianism.

The audio award went to “Pablo Torre Finds Out” for an investigation of Los Angeles Clippers superstar Kawhi Leonard’s financial arrangements with a environmental startup in which the team owner invested. The judges called the project a “pioneering and entertaining form of live podcast journalism.”

The Pulitzer announcement — usually followed by a dinner later in the year — came little more than a week after an armed man rushed a security checkpoint and exchanged gunfire with Secret Service agents outside another big event for U.S. journalists, the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington. The man is now charged with trying to assassinate Trump, who was attending the event for his first time as president.

The Pulitzer journalism awards are for work done in 2025 by U.S. news sites, newspapers, magazines and wire services in text, photo, and audio. Video and graphics can be part of an entry package. Television and radio stations’ websites also are eligible, if their entries focus on written material.

Separately, Monday’s awards also honored books, music and theater.

The Pulitzer Prizes were established in newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer’s will and were first awarded in 1917. Winners receive $15,000, and the prestigious public service award earns a gold medal. Decisions are made by the Pulitzer Board, based at Columbia University in New York.

Associated Press writer Sarah Raza contributed from Canton, Michigan.

FILE - Signage for The Pulitzer Prizes appear at Columbia University, May 28, 2019, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)