Two teams near the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings take the ice when the 15th-place Tampa Bay Lightning (1-3-0) host the 11th-place New York Islanders (2-2-0) at Amalie Arena on Saturday at 7:00 PM ET. Auto Racing / NASCAR Picks and Predictions.NFL Fantasy Football Rankings, Sleepers and Analysis.ET (NBC)Īdam Gretz is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. He logged 16 minutes of ice-time and recorded two shots on goal in the win.ĬANADIENS VS. The other big story on Friday was Kucherov being able to play in Game 7 after exiting Game 6 with an injury. They are a constant at this point in the playoffs. This is their third Cup Final during that stretch, while they have also lost two other Eastern Conference Finals in Game 7s mixed in. Going back to the 2014-15 season they have won a league best 66 playoff games (no other team has won more than 42 during that stretch) and a league-best 333 regular season games (only the Capitals and Penguins have won more than 305 games during that stretch). This has been a magnificent seven-year run for the Lightning franchise. The Lightning now have an opportunity do to that. Only three times (Penguins 1991, 1992 Red Wings 1997, 1998 Penguins 2016, 2017) during that stretch has that team repeated as champions. This is just the eighth time since 1990 that a team has made consecutive trips to the Stanley Cup Final. Now the Lightning have a chance to repeat as Cup champions and add to the legacy that this core of Steven Stamkos, Nikita Kucherov, Brayden Point, Victor Hedman, and Vasilevskiy has built for itself. They were unable to beat Vasilevskiy to get the game-tying goal. It was not until the closing minutes with the net empty that the Islanders finally started to generate some good looks. This marks the only time a Game 7 has ended with a 1-0 score with only goal being scored while shorthanded.įrom there, the story was all about Vasilevskiy and the Lightning defensive play as they went significant stretches without allowing a shot on goal. Once Cirelli received the pass he bought time in the offensive zone and found Gourde flying off the bench for the shot. The play started deep in the Tampa Bay zone when Ryan McDonagh showed a ton of patience to hold on to the puck instead of just sending it down the ice, waiting for an opening to find Anthony Cirelli with a stretch pass. Talk about a bad time for that mistake to happen. But what made it so shocking is that the Islanders were the only team in the NHL this season that had not allowed a single shorthanded goal throughout the regular season or playoffs (75 games). While he was keeping the Islanders off the scoreboard, the only player to get on the scoresheet was Yanni Gourde, who scored the game’s only goal midway through the second period with his team shorthanded.Īnytime you can get a shorthanded goal in a Game 7 it is going to be significant. Just another example as to why he is the best goalie in hockey and a regular Vezina Trophy finalist. In the series-clinching win before that streak started (the Eastern Conference Final a year ago against the Islanders) he allowed only one goal. Going back to last year’s playoffs he has now ended four consecutive series with a shutout, making him just the ninth goalie in NHL history to have at least four series-clinching shutouts in a career and the first to do it in four consecutive series. Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped every shot he faced for his third shutout of the playoffs, with all of them coming in series clinching games. It was a clinical defensive effort from the Lightning on Friday night as they limited the Islanders to just 18 shots on goal and completely dominated the game from a territorial perspective, even if it did not show up on the scoreboard. They will face the Canadiens starting on Monday night in Tampa Bay ( 8 p.m. Thanks to their 1-0 win over the Islanders in Game 7, the Lightning will attempt to win back-to-back titles. The 2021 Stanley Cup Final is set and the Lightning will have an opportunity to defend their title.
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