Playoff & World Championship Dailies 5/13/17

Good morning sports fans. The NHL conference finals opened last night with Nashville taking a win in OT, the West will be back tomorrow evening and alternate days with the East going forward.

NHL

The Eastern Conference Championships begin tonight with upstart Ottawa taking on the defending champs in Pittsburgh. Oddsmakers have this as a Pens blowout but Erik Karlsson, Craig Anderson and the rest of the Sens have other ideas.

7pm ET - Ottawa at Pittsburgh on NBC, game 1

IIHF Worlds

While you were sleeping Team USA defeated the Latvians 5-3, JT Compher was a scratch unfortunately. The Americans have a 1-point lead on Russia in group A and look to have clinched a spot in the quarterfinals. Mikko Rantanen and the Finns also won this morning and have a tenuous hold on a QF spot over their opponent today, the Norwegians.

Coming up today we have newly signed Andrei Mironov and the Russians taking on winless Slovakia. Team Canada looks to extend their lead in Group B and clinch the top seed with a win over the Swiss.

10:15am ET - Russia vs Slovakia

2:15pm ET - Canada vs Switzerland

ECHL

The beloved Eagles had a bad stretch at the end of the 1st period last night against Toledo that cost them the game. 3 goals in less than 2 minutes was all the Walleye needed to take game 1 of the Western Conference Finals. Other than that, the Eagles dominated play for long stretches but couldn’t solve Toledo goalie Jeff Lerg more than twice. The upside is that Colorado showed they can compete with the ECHL’s regular season champs if they manage to finish off a few more chances. Game 2 is tonight and the series heads to Front Range next week for games on Wednesday/Friday/Saturday.

7:30pm ET - Colorado at Toledo on ECHL Live, Walleyes up 1-0