Bolts check into series
Tampa Bay gets even with a physical Game 2 victory
TAMPA — Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy tried to assess the different factors that led to a split in the first two games of this best-ofseven Stanley Cup playoff series against the Tampa Bay Lightning at Amalie Arena.
The Lightning recovered from a humbling loss in the opener and rallied to a 4-2 victory over the Bruins in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference semifinals.
The Lightning evened the series at 1-1 with Game 3 tomorrow at the Garden.
“Obviously we were able to finish better in Game 1,” said Cassidy. “They finished in (Game 2), you have to give them credit and we were on the wrong side of three or four calls tonight that impacted the game, but you have to play through that.
“The first game we were able to find the open man and today at times it was a little more shot mentality. I give them credit, they played the right way but going forward you have to capitalize on your power plays and odd man rushes.”
The Tampa checking line of Tyler Johnson, Brayden Point and Ondrej Palat were humiliated by the Bruins first line in the series opener. The line of Patrice Bergeron, David Pastrnak and Brad Marchand put up 11 points on Tampa.
The Lightning trio regrouped and scored three of Tampa’s four goals with four assists.
Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask had 27 saves and kept the Bruins in contention to the final minute of the game.
“They are a good team and they lost 6-2 at home and they didn’t feel good about there game,” said Cassidy. “You had to expect they were going to come out and play hard.
“By the time we got going we were fortunate we weren’t out of it because we could have been with all the scoring chances they were generating.”
The game came down to which team would make plays in the third period. The Bruins penalty-kill unit neutralized the Tampa power play when Pastrnak was serving a double minor for high sticking defenseman Victor Hedman.
“Even the Hedman one, we felt it was Hedman’s own stick that cut him and now your down four minutes and we killed that,” said Cassidy.
The Lightning went up 3-1 with a nice play by Point along the blue line. Point kept the puck in the Bruins zone and flicked to Palat streaking into the right circle. Palat ripped a high wrist shot that beat Rask to the glove side.
The Bruins cut the lead to 3-2 at 15:58 on Torey Krug’s third of the playoffs. Patrice Bergeron won a face off in the Tampa zone and Krug picked up the loose puck along the boards.
Krug threw the puck at the Tampa goal and it beat goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy (18 saves) inside the near post.
Point secured the win with an open-net goal with 25.5 seconds remaining.
“We play to win every game and I’m not trying to be arrogant,” said Cassidy. “That is just how we prepare win or lose so we are going to prepare to win Game 3 and when Game 4 comes we will prepare to win Game 4.
“We don’t mind our situation, don’t get me wrong but we prepare to win.”