In a virtual replay of Game 1, Tampa Bay’s top line of Tyler Johnson, Alex Kilorn and Nikita Kucherov combined for eight points in a 5-2 win over Detroit Friday night. The Lightning have a 2-0 lead going back to Detroit for Sunday’s Game 3.
Johnson scored a pair of goals in the third period after Detroit had tied the game at 2, and then assisted on Killorn’s empty-netter to give the final score.
Kucherov opened the scoring at 15:17 of the first period from Johnson and Victor Hedman on a 5-on-3 power play, taking advantage of one of three Detroit penalties in the first period.
The Red Wings equalized in the second period, when Dylan Larkin got his first career playoff goal 18 seconds after coming out of the penalty box at the 3:30 mark.
The tie game was short lived as Dan Boyle scored at 6:46 to give Tampa Bay a 2-1 lead after two periods.
Detroit bounced back and tied the game at 2 when Brad Richards scored on the power play at 4:27. That’s when Johnson took over.
Johnson fed the puck to Killorn who broke in at Red Wings’ goalie Jimmy Howard. Howard tried to close off the right-hand post, but Killorn went behind the net and lost the puck, only to have Johnson tip the puck into the net as Howard lost his bearings.
On his second goal, Kucherov circled the net found Johnson cutting in between the circles, where he beat Howard low to the right side.
With about a minute to go, a skirmish broke out in front of Lightning goalie Ben Bishop, which resulted in six misconduct penalties, a game misconduct to Justin Abdelkader, and three fighting majors among the penalties doled out. There were 119 penalty minutes in the game.
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