Strike one
East-best Lightning zap Devils in playoff opener
TAMPA, Fla. — Captain Steven Stamkos and highscoring Nikita Kucherov garner lots of attention. However, the Lightning are hardly a two-man show.
The top seed in the Eastern Conference got early goals from four players — none of them named Stamkos or Kucherov — before holding off the Devils for a 5-2 victory Thursday night in Game 1 of the first-round series.
For the Devils, a shaky opening period was too much to overcome.
“I don’t know what happened. That’s the way hockey goes sometimes. Starting on time is a big part of hockey, and especially playoff hockey,” Hart Trophy candidate Taylor Hall said. “We have to be a team that’s ready to battle right off the bat and just be aware that they have more than one line; more than Stamkos and Kucherov. They have a lot of dangerous guys and we have to be aware.”
Ondrej Palat, Tyler Johnson and Yanni Gourde scored, helping the Lightning build a 3-0 lead that the Devils trimmed to one goal before Alex Killorn and Kucherov, who added an empty-netter with 1:12 remaining, finished off the win before a crowd of 19,092.
“Not the outcome we wanted,” Devils goalie Keith Kinkaid said. “That’s why it’s a series and not a game.”
Hall scored an unassisted goal off a turnover in the second period, then as- sisted on Travis Zajac’s power-play goal that trimmed the deficit to 3-2 midway through third against Andrei Vasilevskiy, who had 29 saves for Tampa Bay, which held off Boston in the final week of the season for the best record in the East.
Game 2 is Saturday at Amalie Arena.
Tampa Bay beat the Devils for the first time this year. The Devils won all three meetings between the teams during the regular season, with each game decided by one goal.
Kinkaid entered his first career playoff game as one of the hottest goalies in the league, going 7-0-1 over his last eight starts to help the Devils grab their first playoff berth since reaching the Stanley Cup Finals in 2012.