Nine days after his 23rd birthday, Shane Prince reached one of his life objectives.
The thousands upon thousands of hours he spent both building his body and honing his shot finally paid off with his first NHL goal. Only it wasn't a bullet to the top corner like he had no doubt dreamt it would be. No, in the first period of Wednesday's game against Colorado, Prince fetched the puck in the right corner of the Avalanche zone, took a stride or two to the hashmark near the the circle, then spun and fired a harmless no-look shot through three bodies and the legs of goalie Semyon Varlamov.