5
0
Gonna be a tough offseason.
FLA-5
TB-3
Sunrise Leads the Series 3-0
Andrei Vasilevskiy allowed four goals on 30 shots for the loss.
First Period
10:39 FLA Tkachuk (2), (Lundell, Verhaeghe)
Second Period
0:44 TB Stamkos (3), (Hedman, Kucherov)
2:56 TB Motte (1), (Jeannot)
9:58 FLA Reinhart (2), (Tarasenko, Montour)
16:30 FLA Montour (1), (Lorentz, Okposo)
Third Period
9:41 FLA Lorentz (1), (Cousins, Forsling)
14:50 TB Paul (1), (Duclair, Cernak)
19:28 FLA Tkachuk (3), (Verhaeghe, Forsling)(EN)
Steven Stamkos was the game’s second star.
Tampa Bay goes 0-for-4 on the power play and they can’t win if that happens in this series given their handicap due to how banged up and inexperienced the defensive corps is. Nikita Kucherov looks a bit like a baseball player who screwed up their swing participating in the home run derby from his 100 assist pursuit at the end of the regular season and that may ultimately doom the Lightning’s season.
It’s going to be a tough offseason with Julien BriseBois left to consider how he can possibly retain his captain, Steven Stamkos, while also rebuilding a defensive corps that includes an aging but excellent Victor Hedman and very little else you can confidently hang your hat on. It’s difficult. Boston was able to retool under somewhat similar circumstances two years ago, but the Lightning have very little margin for error after some pretty mammoth mistakes like Conor Sheary and Tanner Jeannot and the way the “new core” pieces like Mikhail Sergachev, Erik Cernak, and Anthony Cirelli haven’t fully lived up to their contracts.
I know Jon Cooper isn’t going to love hearing this, and that’s fine, but there’s at least one Assistant Coach who needs a lot of scrutiny right now and just as after the Columbus debacle he needs to accept some responsibility to change things up as well. Glass half full, this has been three losses that were essentially one goal games so it’s not as if the talent gap is Grand Canyon-sized, but on the other hand more than half of the regular season was as unentertaining and difficult to watch a campaign as the franchise has had in maybe a decade. So, there’s a lot of things to clean up throughout hockey operations.
Mitchell Chaffee had 4 hits in 12:32.
Emil Lilleberg had 2 shots and 5 hits in 14:26.
Box score and extended statistics from NHL.com.
