Tampa Bay’s fast start evens series at 1-1
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.
“That’s where we lost the game,“said Stars forward Mattias Janmark, who took the first penalty of the game. “We don’t want to take penalties. We have taken way too many throughout the playoffs. … So, we’ve got to do a better job there.”
Joe Pavelski and 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.
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.
‘“It’s easy to explain: we lost faceoffs and we were turning the puck over and we were taking penalties,“Stars interim head coach Rick Bowness said. “It was an even game until we started taking penalties. It’s faceoffs, turnovers and penalties — things you can’t afford to do against an elite team like that.”
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.