3
0
Lightning fail to lock down lead. Let cheaters prosper.
TB-2
FLA-4
Florida Leads the Series 3-1
Andrei Vasilevskiy allowed three goals on 22 shots for the loss. Almost. Thought his rebound control on Sunrise’s second goal may have betrayed him.
First Period
NO SCORING
Second Period
9:06 FLA Lundell (1), (Marchand, Luostarainen)
12:21 TB Chaffee (1), (Lilleberg, Perbix)
12:32 TB Cernak (1), (Guentzel)
Third Period
16:13 FLA Ekblad (1), (Reinhart)
16:24 FLA Jones (1), (Lundell, Marchand)
18:20 FLA Verhaeghe (1), (Barkov)(EN)
I feel ill for the team. Not saying they played a perfect game (they didn’t), but served another heaping helping of adversity they got within five minutes of the finish line and then a missed detail and some crummy puck luck and now their backs are against the wall. I hate it for them. I thought they deserved better given the number of injustices heaped upon them. It just wasn’t meant to be in Game Four, and this is why giving away Game One hurts even more.
Sunrise again got the first goal of the game in the Second Period on a play where the Lightning got three players caught on one side of the ice, and I’ll call out Nick Perbix for being in no-man’s land on that one, leaving Lundell one on one with Vasilevskiy in front on a centering feed. Things then looked even darker when Aaron Ekblad threw a very delberate forearm shiver into Brandon Hagel’s chin forcing Hagel out of the rest of the game in concussion protocol. As an aside, kudos to Sunrise fans for again showing what class acts they were cheering lustily while Hagel was laying on the rink struggling to get his bearings. Odd I don’t recall the Lightning fans cheering while Barkov was being attended to in Game Two.
Naturally, there was no call. I wasn’t surprised after the NHL practically spat in Tampa Bay’s face after Game Three by not even holding a hearing for Matt Tkachuk’s cheap shot on Jake Guentzel. But then the Lightning got some puck luck on a blocked shot broken goal that resulted in Chaffee’s tying goal and Cernak quickly followed that up with a goal off the rush from the top of the circles to make it 2-1 after 40 minutes. Karma again seemed to be favoring the Lightning. They weren’t out of the woods yet, though, down to 10 forwards with Hagel gone when Niko Mikkola very early in the Third Period decided to try to snap the neck of a defenseless Zemgus Girgensons on a very nasty boarding call that drew a major and a game misconduct. Unfortunately, the Lightning did nothing with the five minute penalty that would have allowed them to all but seal the game and get the series back to Tampa Bay at 2-2. If the Lightning do lose this series, it’s going to be a bitter pill to swallow knowing that even a mediocre power play probably would’ve won the series for them. Still, the Lightning were doing a decent job managing the puck and whittling down the time to under five minutes to play… until the wheels came off.
Sunrise’s top line made a big push and Jake Guentzel had an opportunity for a clear that he frankly pee’ed down the leg, leading to a point shot that Vasilevskiy kicked to a wide open Aaron Ekblad he was left alone one-on-one with. Of all the guys And the freshly returned from a 20-game PED suspension cheater, who shouldn’t have even been in the game because he should’ve been kicked out for the forearm to Hagel’s head, tied the game. One shift later an innocuous Seth Jones point shot took a buzzard’s luck deflection off Ryan McDonagh’s skate, and the Lightning were doomed to fall down 3-1 in a series where they probably deserve to be up 3-1 if there was any justice in the world.
But, tonight, there wasn’t. Will Ekblad and/or Mikkola get suspended? Will Brandon Hagel clear concussion protocol in time for Game Five? Ultimately I think that matters less than how the Lightning respond psychologically to the massive gut punch of how they lost this game. The series isn’t over. It’s still 100% winnable. Sunrise has not run away with the series, by any means. But the Lightning were less than five minutes from pulling off another legendarily special road win only to have it slip through their fingers in the blink of an eye. That’s a tough one to get over in less than 48 hours, but this team showed me it might be capable of it over the past couple of games. It hurts, though. Hurts bad.
Box score and extended statistics from NHL.com.
