The Tampa Bay Lightning’s postseason losing streak has come to an end, thanks to a 5-1 victory over the Detroit Red Wings in Game Two of their Eastern Conference Quarterfinal matchup. The threat of being swept for the second straight year was quelled with ease.
Unlike in Game One, Tampa Bay was far from dominant on Saturday afternoon. In fact, it would be easy to argue that Detroit was the better team. Mike Babcock’s squad tightened things up and did a much better job of suppressing the Lightning’s offensive charge. Their adjustments failed to pay dividends, as the final score clearly shows. That’s hockey.
One of the big issues for the Bolts in that first game was the power play’s feebleness. Gifted seven opportunities by the officials, Tampa’s unit failed to score. Head coach Jon Cooper made some adjustments to his man-advantage units at Friday’s practice in hopes that his group might break through in Game Two. It only took three minutes for that to happen.
With his team on a power play, Tyler Johnson scored his first of the postseason to put the Bolts up 1-0. Johnson found himself in the right place at the right time, as a Nikita Nesterov shot deflected off the post and right to him; from there, the undrafted forward made no mistake roofing the puck past Petr Mrazek. The man-advantage unit had life, and the Lightning had their first lead of the series.
Ben Bishop, who had a rough outing in game one, held strong through the rest of that first period and allowed his team to take that 1-0 lead into the intermission.
From there, the floodgates opened. It started with Alex Killorn’s first of the playoffs, scored 7:56 into the middle frame. All alone in front of Mrazek, Killorn fumbled the puck and somehow tucked it between the goaltender’s pad and the post. It wasn’t a pretty goal, but it counted just the same and put the Lightning up 2-0. Ryan Callahan and Steven Stamkos were credited with assists.
They weren’t done there.
Andrej Sustr extended the team’s lead to 3-0 at 14:48 of the second when he took a beautiful feed from Valtteri Filppula and wired the puck past Mrazek. The goal was Sustr’s first in over a calendar year, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.
They still weren’t done.
The real dagger came with only 38 seconds left on the clock in the second period. Able to take advantage of a neutral zone collision between Nikita Kucherov and Danny DeKeyser, Tyler Johnson broke in on Mrazek all alone and wristed the puck into the twine. His second of the night put the Lightning up 4-0, and all but put the Red Wings away.
Up by four goals through two periods of play, the Lightning were sitting pretty. It would have taken a miracle comeback by the Wings to turn the tides. The likelihood of that happening was about zero. Detroit did, however, get on the board at 5:49 of the third when Tomas Tatar scored his first of the playoffs. It was too little, too late.
Unwilling to let his team nurse their lead to victory, Coach Cooper had a serious conversation with his troops in the latter half of the third period. They responded in kind with another power play goal. This time it was Valtteri Filppula, the former Red Wing, who put the puck in the net. Assisted by Stamkos and Nesterov, Filppula followed up on his own rebound and poked the puck past Jimmy Howard, who had replaced Mrazek in the Detroit net to start the third frame.
That Filppula goal made it 5-1, and sent the crowd at Amalie Arena into a frenzy. As the final seconds ticked away, the reality that the team was going to win its first playoff game in nearly four years really sunk in. When the final horn sounded, things erupted. Jon Cooper smiled as he walked down the tunnel, and players saluted the crowd from center-ice.
This key win sends the series to Detroit tied at one. If anything, this set of two games in Tampa showed the Wings that they are going to need superb goaltending if they want to win this series. Game One proved that they can beat Tampa with goaltending. Game Two proved that they struggle without it. All in all, the Lightning have to be happy with what transpired this week. If they keep playing like this, it’s hard not to like their chances.
As always, thanks for reading.
Michael Stuart has been the Tampa Bay Lightning writer for HockeyBuzz since 2012. Visit his archive to read more or follow him on Twitter.