Lightning answer coach's call, gut out Game 5 win over Rangers
Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper liked his team's effort Friday’s Game 4 loss at home -- until he watched the tape.
"We can sit here and pat ourselves on the back and say we had chances to score. Well, moral victories don't get you this far, and we're giving up too many goals," Cooper said between games. "You can't continue to sit here and say we need to score six every night to win. We need to score three to win, and that's what we have to get back to. We've got to look after our net a little bit better."
In a pivotal Game 5 on Sunday at Madison Square Garden, the Lightning did just that. Tampa surrendered just 26 New York shots and got late, second-period goals from forwards Valtteri Filppula and Steven Stamkos to post an impressive 2-0 win that gave the Lightning a 3-2 lead in the series with Game 6 on Tuesday -- and back home in Tampa.
Cooper must have had the sense that his blue line would be short-handed because he opted to dress seven defensemen. He needed them when Braydon Coburn came down with an apparent illness that may have caused him to vomit on the bench. He played just 5:43 while Brian Boyle was laboring after blocking five shots.
"We had issues on the bench so I've got to find out more of what's going on," Cooper said of Coburn. "But there was, yeah, don't walk on our bench. That's what I'm going to say."
Tampa is one win away from the Stanley Cup Final. The only other time the Lightning made it that far was in 2004 when it won its only Cup by defeating Calgary, four games to three.
Play of the day: The Lightning's first goal was the product of three world-class plays. Defenseman Anton Stralman corralled the puck in his own zone and took his time reading the Rangers' defensive structure in the neutral zone. Stralman then banked a pass off the boards at the far blue line to bypass New York forward Tanner Glass and feed Stamkos. Stamkos cut down the right side and drew defenseman Marc Staal to him before feeding Filppula in the slot. Filppula delayed just enough to open some space and a shooting lane, then beat goalie Henrik Lundqvist with a perfect wrist shot inside the far post.
Turning point: An old foe came back to bite the Rangers on Sunday. New York had four power plays in the game's first 30 minutes yet failed to cash in on any of them. Ninety-eight seconds after the last of those expired, Filppula put the Bolts on top for good.
Three stars
1. Steven Stamkos, C, Tampa. Stamkos had a beautiful assist on Filppula's goal and scored off a backdoor feed minutes later.
2. Ben Bishop, G, Tampa. Bishop recorded his second career playoff shutout in his first postseason by stopping all 26 New York shots. His other shutout came in Game 7 of the Western Conference quarterfinals against Detroit.
3. Brian Boyle, C, Tampa. Boyle gutted out 17:06 of ice time despite playing in obvious pain from blocking a game-high five shots.
RECAP
Tampa Bay Lightning 2, New York Rangers 0
Series: Tampa leads, 3-2.
Key stat: Stamkos has seven goals and seven assists in his last 10 games, and he has goals in four straight games. The latter streak matches a Lightning playoff record also posted by Vincent Lecavalier in 2007 and Martin St. Louis in 2003.
Key stat II: The winner of Game 5 in playoff series that are tied 2-2 has won the series 79 percent of the time in NHL history.
Best visual: Boyle has clearly bought into the notion that the playoffs are about sacrificing for the team. This GIF shows the fourth of Boyle's five blocked shots on Sunday and the second that sent him limping to the bench. You know that famous photo from the movie American Beauty, where Mena Suvari is bathing in rose petals? Picture Boyle bathing in ice cubes.
Tic-tac-Tampa. The Lightning have scored so many of these one-touch goals among its 51 playoff markers that we've lost count, but Tampa's second goal on Sunday was a thing of beauty. In the span of three seconds, Nikita Kucherov freezes the defense and Lundqvist with a fake shot, passes to Ondrej Palat at the far post, and Palat feeds Stamkos at the backdoor for an easy tap-in and a 2-0 lead.
Best quote: "I have a lot of faith and trust in my players. They know how to prepare and they know how to get ready for games. For us this year, there is going to be no bigger game than the next one so I'm confident that we're going to be ready for it." -- New York coach Alain Vigneault on his team facing elimination on Tuesday in Tampa.
What we learned: The biggest question mark many analysts had about Tampa Bay this postseason was: Could it win close, low-scoring games when the competition was top-notch? Tampa did it in the first two rounds against the Red Wings' 10th-ranked offense and the Canadiens' 20th-ranked offense, but could it do it against the Ranger's third-ranked offense? The answer doesn't get more definitive than a shutout win in the opponent's building in a critical Game 5.
Next game: Game 6, Tuesday, 8 p.m., EST at Amalie Arena in Tampa.
Final thought: Since winning its only Stanley Cup in 2007, Anaheim has been tied 2-2 in a playoff series six times including this season's Western Conference finals against the Blackhawks. In the previous five series, the Ducks lost four of them with the only series win coming last year against Dallas in the first round. Once those five previous series had reached the 2-2 point, Anaheim went 3-8 in the following 11 games. The additions of Ryan Kesler and Simon Despres make the Ducks a different team than those past editions, but Anaheim has a gorilla on its back and the only way to shed it will be to dispatch Chicago, a team that has won two of the past five Stanley Cups and is without question the most successful franchise of this decade with four conference finals appearances since 2010 (five since 2009).
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