In Uniondale, Brayden Point scored his 11th goal of the playoffs with 18 seconds left in 
the middle frame on Thursday night to give the Tampa Bay Lighting a 2-1 lead over the New York Islanders.
“The puck just took a good bounce and lands right on my stick,” Point said. “It’s a lucky one.”
Andrei Vasilevskiy made that stand up in the third period for the Game 3 win, he made 27 saves on the night.
“I think the biggest thing is trying to get in lanes, and you know ‘Vasy’s’ back there to bail us out when they do get through,” Tampa Bay’s Anthony Cirelli said.
New York’s Cal Clutterbuck scored at 17:01 of the second period to tie the the game, 1-1.
Point goal came as a power play had just ended against the Islanders. Victor Hedman’s shot from the blueline deflected in the low slot and Point swiped at the puck, sending into the net.
“It’s everyone buying into the system,” Tampa Bay’s Steven Stamkos said. “We know what our job is, we talked about it in between the second and third. We’ve got a one-goal lead going into the third period of a playoff game, we know what we have to do. We’ve done it time and time again.
“This group is comfortable in these situations. It’s the conference finals or semifinals, whatever you want to call it. This time of the year, it’s guys doing whatever it takes to win, that’s the most important thing. When you have a complete buy-in, you’re getting results like we’re getting right now.”
Game 4 is set for Long Island on Saturday.
Yanni Gourde opened the scoring in the first period to give the Bolts a 1-0 lead.
The Islanders failed to clear a save from the left side of the low slot where it was sent across to Gourde for the goal.
“They’ve been in this position a few times, obviously, they’re Stanley Cup champions,” New York head coach Barry Trotz said. “They’ve been in these situations. We tried. We have to get more pucks, we’re going to have to get inside. We had some chances, and Vasilevskiy made a couple of key saves.
“”They didn’t have a lot tonight. I thought we were pretty good defensively as well. A lot of stuff they got, I think we gave it to them. It’s funny, as you go along this path deeper and deeper, these teams are better and better, and you’ve got to dig in even harder and harder.”
Neither team was able to score on their lone power play chance.
“It was will that got us through it,” Lightning head coach Jon Cooper said. “We’ll need to have that again if we’re going to come in here in Game 4 and do the same thing.”
Semyon Varlamov made 23 saves in the loss.
“We’re a veteran team,” the Isles’ Matt Martin said. “I think we try to brush off anything that comes our way throughout a game. That’s always made us successful is our composure and the way we stick to our identity and our game plan. So it was a big goal, obviously, at the time to tie the game. Point gets one back not long later, but we still felt good about our chances and we’re always going to play with confidence because we believe we’re a good team.
“Obviously, you want to be playing with the lead, but we believe we can come back in hockey games as well.”
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