Fresh off taking a 2-1 advantage in their Eastern Conference Final series with the New York Rangers, the Tampa Bay Lightning will look to take a commanding 3-1 lead when they take to the ice at Amalie Arena tonight. Either Tampa Bay will push New York to the brink of elimination, or the Bolts will hand the Rangers home-ice advantage with three games left to play in the series. Thus, tonight’s game is a pivotal one.
One thing the Lightning have to be happy about as they look toward Friday night’s game is the fact that they’ve had little trouble beating Henrik Lundqvist in the last two games. In both Games Two and Three, the Lightning put six (!) past ‘The King’ with relative ease. This is the sort of adversity that the Rangers’ netminder has only had to deal with a couple of times this year. As Larry Brooks notes, Tampa might just be getting in his head at this point:
More than once and more than twice Lundqvist admitted that he’d had trouble with his decision-making against the Lightning because of their elite skilled players’ ability to make plays and find openings at top speed in the most dangerous areas of the ice.
If the Lightning are going to continue to put pucks past Lundqvist, they’ll do it with a slightly different lineup than the one that shelled him in the last two games. Matt Carle, who left Game Three with an undisclosed injury, is out. That means that Mark Barberio will be in, as Associate Coach Rick Bowness reportedly told the young defender that he will dress tonight:
Associate coach Rick Bowness told Barberio he was in lineup tonight after the skate, asked if he was ready. "Hell ... http://t.co/cIs5AprrKU
— Joe Smith (@TBTimes_JSmith) May 22, 2015I don’t need to write some 10,000-word essay to let you know how big tonight’s game is for the Lightning. You already know. It’s massive. A win tonight would put a berth in the Stanley Cup Final within reach, while a loss would completely change the dynamic of the series. If the Bolts can play ‘Tampa Bay Lightning hockey’ like they did in the last game, they should have a great chance to claim victory. Anything less, and this series could be heading back to New York tied at two. Now is not the time to be taking their foot off the gas.
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.