Stanley Cup Final blog: Nicholas Paul

Tampa Bay Lightning forward Nicholas Paul will be keeping his own blog throughout the 2022 Stanley Cup Final against the Colorado Avalanche. He will check in regularly with behind-the-scenes access.
In the second entry, Paul talks about the Lightning's 4-3 overtime loss to the Avalanche in Game 1 on Wednesday and how they will prepare to bounce back in Game 2 on Saturday at Ball Arena (8 p.m. ET; ABC, ESPN+, SN, CBC, TVAS). Paul, playing in his first career Cup Final, scored at 12:26 of the first period to cut the Avalanche lead to 2-1. He had one goal, one shot, one hit and three blocked shots in 18:42 of ice time.

Obviously, that was not the result we wanted, but the series is the first to four games.
We dug in as a team and got ourselves back in the game, took it to OT and, as I said, it was not what we wanted, but I'm taking some positives.
Our fight was good.
Leading up to the game, my day was good. Pregame, I had a pretty calm mind coming in and then was just kind of feeling it in warmups. The fans are loud, and we need to take it in and feed off the crowd even though it's not for us. This building has lots of energy and I'm confident in our group.

On the goal, the puck wouldn't really settle, it was mishandled, but I ended up putting it on the far side, so it was good. It was a big goal, and I needed that. I know I messed up on the wall there, so to get that back was nice to get the team going, and then the team built off that, we built off each other and we played for one another.
Over the next two days, we have some practices coming up. We'll do some drills to work on a couple of things, breakouts is one of them. Again, this was not the result we wanted, but we can take some good out of it.
The next two nights, we might have a team dinner. Our team is pretty close. We stay together in the lounge and all of us are pretty together whether it's in the hotel or wherever it may be.
As for having two days off between Games 1 and 2, I think it's good, too. We get to rest and get to practice, get a nice hard practice in, and get to do some cool system things. We'll touch the puck, get out there and get the legs moving and come right back in Game 2.