Lightning strikes with 3.8 left
Ross Colton scored with 3.8 seconds remaining, giving the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning a 2-1 victory over the Florida Panthers in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference semifinals on Thursday night.
The stunning finish put the Lightning up 2-0 in the best-of-seven series that heads to Tampa for Game 3 on Sunday.
The game appeared headed for overtime before Colton scored from right in front of goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky off a backhand pass from Nikita Kucherov, who chased down a loose puck behind the Florida net.
Tampa Bay’s power play once again was the catalyst, producing Corey Perry’s first-period goal after delivering three goals in the Lightning’s 4-1 victory in Game 1.
Perry’s goal was the Lightning’s fourth in seven power-play chances to start the series.
Florida’s power play, meanwhile, continued to sputter.
The Panthers scored the thirdmost power-play goals during the regular season, but entered the second game of the series 0 for 21 in man-advantage situations through seven postseason games. They were 0 for 4 Thursday night, with the team’s lone goal coming on a 30foot shot from Eetu Luostarinen that trickled past Andrei Vasilevskiy with 1:53 remaining in the second period.
Florida got its third power-play opportunity in the final minute of the second period and had a couple of good looks, but still went into the break tied. The Panthers also got another chance in the closing minutes of the third, but came up empty again.
Vasilevskiy stopped 34 of 35 shots for Tampa Bay. Bobrovsky finished with 25 saves, including a couple of big ones that kept the Lightning from breaking a 1-all tie earlier in the third period.
STAR COACHES FEUD
The Southeastern Conference spring meetings will be held in person for the time since 2019 in a little less than two weeks.
It is unlikely two of the SEC’s superstar coaches will be chumming around Destin, Florida, together.
Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher called Nick Saban a “narcissist” on Thursday after the Alabama coach accused the rival Aggies of using name, image and likeness deals to land their top-ranked recruiting classes.
Less than 24 hours after Saban said Texas A&M was essentially “buying” players, Fisher called an impromptu news conference to blast college football’s most accomplished coach and his former boss at LSU.
“It’s despicable that a reputable head coach can come out and say this when he doesn’t get his way or things don’t go his way,” Fisher said in College Station, Texas. “The narcissist in him doesn’t allow those things to happen — it’s ridiculous — when he’s not on top. And the parity in college football he’s been talking about? Go talk to coaches who have coached for him. You’ll find out all the parity. Go dig into wherever he’s been.”
Texas A&M had the consensus No. 1 recruiting class in the country for 2022 after beating Alabama during the regular season. The Tide’s class was No. 2. In his session which lasted about 10 minutes, Fisher declared: “We never bought anybody, no rules are broken. Nothing was done wrong.”
The Crimson Tide lost to the Aggies in 2021, but went on to win the SEC championship and play for the national title. The Aggies finished 8-4 in their fourth season under Fisher, who, like Saban, is among the highest-paid coaches in the game at more than $9 million per season.
The public spat is perhaps the ugliest display of the growing angst and concerns among college coaches who are wrestling with two big changes: The compensation era, launched last July, and its impact on recruiting, and the ease with which players can now transfer.
Saban, who has won six national championships and is widely regarded as one of the greatest coaches in the history of the game, has called the current state of affairs unsustainable.
“You read about it, you know who they are,” Saban said Wednesday. “We were second in recruiting last year. A&M was first. A&M bought every player on their team. Made a deal for name, image and likeness. We didn’t buy one player. But I don’t know if we’re going to be able to sustain that in the future, because more and more people are doing it. It’s tough.”
Fisher was an assistant under Saban in the early 2000s at LSU, working as offensive coordinator on the Tigers’ 2003 national title team. That relationship is now badly damaged.
“We’re done,” Fisher said, adding Saban reached out by phone but he did not take the call. “He showed you who he is. He’s the greatest ever, huh? When you got all the advantages, it’s easy.”