Tampa Bay’s fast start ties 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.”
Game 3 is Wednesday night.
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
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 Kucherovassisted goals.
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 the stick Janmark, who had charged and suddenly stopped behind Shattenkirk just beyond the crease to score.
The Lightning looked to have another goal, and a two-goal lead, with just under 11 minutes left when Mikhail Sergachev shot from the point and got the puck through traffic past Khudobin.
But Dallas interim coach Rick Bowness challenged that Tampa Bay was offside, and replay clearly showed that Blake Coleman was.
Late in the second period, Pat Maroon decked Khudobin after taking a shot and got a goalie interference penalty.
Earlier in the shift, McDonagh knocked Blake Comeau down and out with a questionable hit. Corey Perry
and Cedric Paquette went at it, with Perry putting him in a headlock before an angry Paquette flipped him over.
Comeau left Game 2 with an injury after the big, high hit from McDonagh in the second period. McDonagh made hard contact with Comeau’s right shoulder on the hit. Comeau was slow to get up and immediately went down the tunnel.
The Stars announced at the beginning of the third period that Comeau was unfit to play. The 34-year-old is an important veteran role player for Dallas.
Bowness has not been providing much in the way of injury updates all postseason, so expect the same with Comeau.
Tampa Bay is still without captain Steven Stamkos, who hasn’t played since February, but he could make his playoff debut in Game 3 Wednesday.
Pavelski’s 10th goal this postseason was No. 58 in his career, matching former Stars standout Mike Modano for second-most by a U.S. born-player. Joe Mullen’s 60 is the most, still less than half of the overall record of 122 for Wayne Gretzky.