Lightning hold off Stars to even Stanley Cup final
EDMONTON, ALBERTA » Nikita Kucherov and the Tampa Bay Lightning got themselves up off the ice to get even in the Stanley Cup Final.
After the Lightning got knocked around in Game 1, and Kucherov took some more hard hits early in Game 2, he had the primary assists on power-play goals by Brayden Point and Ondrej
Palat in the first period. Kevin Shattenkirk then scored for an early three-goal lead and Tampa Bay held on for a 3-2 victory over the Dallas Stars on Monday night.
“It was a tough start I guess,” Kucherov said. “It’s the playoffs, you have to play, it doesn’t matter what happened.”
All of Tampa Bay’s goals came in a span of four shots in less than four minutes against Anton Khudobin, who made a Stanley Cup Final-record 22 saves in the third period for the Stars in their 4-1 win in Game 1. It was the first time in seven games that Tampa Bay scored the opening goal.
Game 3 is Wednesday night. Joe Pavelski and Mattias Janmark scored for Dallas on passes from John Klingberg, with Alexander Radulov also assisting on both.
“After that, we really got back to what makes us successful as a team, we got pucks deep, we
were good on the forecheck, we got some good opportunities,” said Lightning defenseman Victor Hedman, who had two assists. “I liked the way we responded ... to close them out.”
Kucherov left the bench momentarily early in the game after slamming into the boards during a collision with defenseman Jamie Oleksiak after trying to block a shot. Kucherov had already ended up on the ice twice before, when he was popped by Dallas captain Jamie Benn and when he drew a high-sticking penalty against Janmark. He was back quickly.
On their second power play in Game 2, the Lightning cycled the puck to set up Kucherov’s pass to
Point to open the scoring 11:23 into the game. Three minutes later with a a man advantage again, Palat finished a nice passing sequence, taking advantage of a half-open net and another setup by Kucherov.
Shattenkirk scored less than a minute after Palat to make it 3-0. Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 27 shots for Tampa Bay. Khudobin had 28 saves.
Tampa Bay had failed to score on its previous 14 power-play chances with the man advantage, since
Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finale, until the Kucherov-assisted goals with a man advantage.
“There’s a couple good teams that have somewhat of a foundation to win games and how you play,” Pavelski said. “We definitely were closer to ours in Game 1, and we got away from it early tonight and it cost us.”
Dallas finally got on the board on a power play with 5:17 left in the second. Klingberg took a shot from near the blue line, and Pavelski redirected the puck with his raised stick even with Ryan McDonagh all over him in front of the net.
In the third period, Klingberg was in the right circle, when instead of taking a shot as Vasilevskiy expected, passed to Janmark, who had charged and suddenly stopped behind Shattenkirk just beyond the crease to score.