PITTSBURGH, Pa – The Tampa Bay Lightning has been without their best player Steven Stamkos the entire playoffs season but other stars on the Bolts roster have emerged as stars in their own right. Even though Stamkos, a potential unrestricted free agent at the end of the season, has been missed but in Game Five of the Eastern Conference Finals no one was thinking about Stamkos.
People tend to forget that Tampa made the Stanley Cup finals last season. Now they are on the brink of another trip to the finals thanks to Nikita Kucherov’s two goals and Tyler Johnson’s game winning goal 53 seconds into overtime as the Tampa Bay defeated the Pittsburgh Penguins 43. Tampa now has the chance to advance to the Stanley Cup finals last season for the second straight season.
Andrei Vasilevskiy made 27 saves on 30 shot and the Penguins saw the return of Marc-Andre Fleury in net but only made 15 saves on 19 shots. You can bet the cat calls to put rookie Matt Murray will be loud and clear come Monday morning. The Penguins won every statistic but at the end of the night the four goals allowed by Fleury is what fans and media will remember most.
They say in hockey that the two things you don’t want to do in allow a goal at the end of the period and at the start of a period. The Pittsburgh Penguins scored their first goal with only .7 seconds left to play in the first period thanks to Brian Dumoulin’s first goal of the playoffs. Patric Hornqvist slammed home a goal off a nice tip pass from Carl Hagelin to make it 2-0 1:30 into the second period.
The problem with the Pens this series is blowing leads, especially two goal leads. Alex Killorn blasted a shot past Fleury to make it 2-1 and Kucherov scored the first of his two goals to tie the game at 2-2 1:10 apart. Chris Kunitz scored with 50 seconds left in the second for a 3-2 lead heading into the third.
Kucherov tied it again with 3:16 left in the third period on a nice wrap around to send the game into overtime. Tyler Johnson would play the hero 53 seconds into overtime and to everyone’s surprise has the Lightning on game away from another trip to the finals, this time against either the St Louis Blues or the San Jose Sharks.
You must be logged in to post a comment.