Lighting 1 – Panthers 6 | Panthers eliminate Lightning in five games

(Sunrise) The Florida Panthers scored four unanswered goals in the third period to defeat the Tampa Bay Lightning 6-1 and book their ticket to the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs on Monday.

The series ended in five matches.

It’s a third victory in as many occasions for the Panthers in a game number 5 when they lead 3-1 in a series. In the second round, they will cross swords with the Boston Bruins or the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Bruins lead 3-1.

Carter Verhaeghe and Aleksander Barkov scored doubles, then Evan Rodrigues and Niko Mikkola also made the red light shine for the local favorites, who advance to the second round for the fourth time since joining the National Hockey League in from the 1993-94 season.

Nominated for the Vezina Trophy, awarded to the best goaltender of the regular season, Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 31 pucks in front of the Panthers cage. At the other end of the ice, Andrei Vasilevskiy made 33 saves.

Victo Hedman scored for the Lightning, who won the first two series against rivals Florida, in 2021 and 2022. Nikita Kucherov had an assist.

Blanked for the first time in the series, Steven Stamkos scored in the first four duels. After collecting five goals and six points in five games, he could become an unrestricted free agent on 1^er July.

Stamkos won two Stanley Cups with the Lightning and has totaled 555 goals and 1,137 points in 1,082 regular season games since being drafted first overall in the 2008 draft.

Costly obstructive gestures

The Lightning thought they had opened the scoring at 13:00 of the first period when Anthony Cirelli took advantage of a comeback to deceive Vasilevskiy’s vigilance. However, Quebecer Anthony Duclair, installed in the semi-circle, interfered with the goalkeeper’s work. Video review confirmed the obstruction and Cirelli’s goal was overturned.

It was ultimately the Panthers who broke the tie when Verhaeghe recovered his own rebound in the center of the offensive zone 45 seconds into the second period.

For Verhaeghe, it was a 36^e point in their last 36 playoff games.

Barkov doubled the Panthers’ lead when he recovered a rebound from an Aaron Ekblad shot to beat the vigilance of Vasilevskiy on a numerical penalty at 12:38. For Barkov, it was a first goal in this series.

However, Hedman closed the gap just 59 seconds later. The Russian guard made a point shot that deceived Bobrovsky into the upper right corner of the net.

Cirelli was then involved in a second sequence at the end of which a Lightning goal was disallowed. This time, he was at the origin of the obstructive gesture against Bobrovsky which led to the officials’ decision to disallow a goal.

The Panthers took charge in the third period. Barkov scored his second goal of the game by pushing the puck between Vasilevskiy’s pads at 11:06, then Rodrigues scored his first goal of the series at 14:16 with a one-timer.

Verhaeghe and Mikkola finally added goals in an empty cage to put an end to the debate.