2
0
Lightning let Florida off the canvas.
TB-1
FLA-4
Tampa Bay Leads the Series 3-2
Andrei Vasilevskiy allowed three goals on 37 shots for the loss. He played pretty well. Tonight wasn’t his fault.
First Period
0:53 TB Colton (2), (Coleman, McDonagh)
Second Period
6:19 FLA Weegar (1), (Huberdeau, Bennett)
16:55 FLA Marchment (2), (Barkov, Weegar)
Third Period
0:35 FLA Holmqvist (2), (Barkov, Huberdeau)(PP)
19:45 FLA Vatrano (1), (Hornqvist)(EN)
The Lightning were way too happy with themselves after their best First Period of the series staked them to a 1-0 lead tonight. They legitimately looked like they let their foot off the gas from the drop of the puck in the Second Period and rarely took back the initiative the final 40 minutes of the game. Florida manufactured a goal off a faceoff win and another off a greasy bounce off of Holmqvist down on his knees in front of Vasilevskiy and now a series that should’ve been a sweep is going to see a Game Six where there’s a healthy amount of pressure on the Lightning now. It’s nice to say the closeout win is the hardest to get, but the final two frames of the game the Lightning simply didn’t have the intensity to match their rhetoric. I expect better in Tampa in Game Six as they try to undo the insufferable media narrative about Spencer Knight we’re surely about to hear ad nauseam for the next 48 hours. They gave him way too many clean looks at shots with zero traffic and never really bumped him or made him uncomfortable. I expect them to take his eyes and knock him around a bit in Game Six.
Ross Colton had a goal, 4 shots, and 2 hits in 13:13. He was arguably the Lightning’s most dangerous forward tonight.
Box score and extended statistics from NHL.com.
