12
0
All that (stripper) glitters is not goals for Sunrise.
FLA-0
TB-2
Tampa Bay Sweeps the Series 4-0
Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped all 49 shots he faced for the shutout victory. They could’ve thrown 100 at him and they’d still get a goose egg.
First Period
NO SCORING
Second Period
NO SCORING
Third Period
6:16 TB Maroon (2), (Bogosian)
19:37 TB Palat (4), (Cirelli)(EN)
So ends one of the weirdest games I’ve ever seen. And I can’t stop laughing. The day began with reports on Tampa sports radio that Sunrise chose to celebrate yesterday’s 5-1 loss to the Lightning with a late night foray into the local shoe show. Seemingly wanting to disprove the report, Sunrise came out storming in this game, eventually outshooting Tampa Bay 49-26. It was a lot of empty calorie shots, though, and the Lightning ended up eyelash close to them on 5v5 xG because Sunrise’s shots were coming from the outside and Tampa Bay was getting high quality odd man counters. They must’ve wasted four breakaways in this game and a few other odd mans. Then there was the two disallowed Lightning goals in the Second Period on some pretty thin video evidence and the refs, seemingly as a charity, letting Sunrise get away with a whole lot of penalties. I mean, Radko Gudas could be in jail tonight for some of the stuff he got away with. And the Lightning kept grinding away and grinding away, and I did not have “Pat Maroon from Zach Bogosian” on the scorecard of prognostication tonight, but there it was. Lightning move onto the Eastern Conference Final.
Sunrise moves to purgatory. I know their delusional fan(s) will say that they can rebound from a President’s Trophy win/playoff sweep to grab the Cup the next year like the Lightning did. No, pudding. You don’t have the best goaltender on Planet Earth just entering his prime. You don’t have a stacked d-corps that includes a perennial Norris candidate and three other guys who each would probably be Sunrise’s best overall d-men. You have an unbalanced roster of overrated garbage that proved they don’t have it when the chips are down. Go watch the final sequence of the game and how none of their star(s) wanted to take the shot to try to tie the game. That was the whole series in a nut shell. They’re all press clippings and no guts.
Special shout out to our talisman Ed Olczyk who returned to NBCSN-like form tonight to bless us with his best anti-Lightning buffoonery. Someone can check this for me, but I’m not sure the Lightning have lost a game he’s called in person since G4 of the Stanley Cup Final last year against Montreal. Feel free to come to the Eastern Conference Final and talking that good stuff, Edzo. The more he runs down the Lightning, the surer I get we’re about to win again.
Box score and extended statistics from NHL.com.
