In Tampa Saturday afternoon, the Lightning found their offense and defense in a 5-1 shelling of the Detroit Red Wings to even their series at one all.
Tyler Johnson scored twice and Valtteri Filppula, Andrej Sustr and Alex Killorn added goals for the Bolts.
“We knew we had to step up our [game] and we did, it’s nice to be able to contribute,” Johnson said. “It was a physical game. We were frustrated we didn’t win Game 1 and I thought the guys came out with that spirit right away. Our mentality is to get better with every game.”
Petr Mrazek started in the Wings net and allowed four goals on 18 shots before being relieved by Jimmy Howard who made 11 saves.
“I think Petr played good, we have to give him a chance,” Wings coach Mike Babcock said. “We didn’t make a lot of mistakes, but when we did, they capitalized, and you can’t expect your goalie to make all those saves. So it’s a five-game series now and we’ll focus on Game 3.”
Ben Bishop made 23 saves for the win.
“If you look at this game, it wasn’t really a 5-1 game,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “It felt much closer than that and I thought they played a lot better and gave it to us a lot more than in Game 1. It’s definitely a series now and these are going to be tight games.”
Detroit heads home with home ice advantage but will be looking back at a game they might have had a chance to impact a different outcome.
“They got the goals,” Red Wings captain Henrik Zetterberg said. “If you actually look at the game compared to the first game, we had a lot more chances today. We played a lot better but the mistakes really did cost us because they scored on them.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.