When you consider the mental toughness of this team, and ability to endure losses with great fortitude, it makes sense to give the Lightning the edge in game seven against a roster of players who got hot and finally made a decision to show up for the final quarter of the regular season.
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What if Matt Murray actually played like he was 21 years old?
Two nights ago, the Penguins carried a two-goal lead into the final 10 minutes of Game 5. His 17-save performance in the third period of Game 6 certainly suggested that he was as sharp as he’s been all spring.
The Penguins were tensing up. They came back in the third, but we battled through it.
“You know it’s going to be a big surge”, Sidney Crosby said.
It’s still not where you want to be.
Pittsburgh’s season was hanging by a finger nail. The team in front of him stepped up, helped him get the win tonight and evened things out.
Murray didn’t blink. He shuttered the Lightning as a buzzing 19,092 reached a crescendo. They could have closed out Pittsburgh at home but fell behind by three goals and didn’t recover, fitting for a series that appears to be a coin flip as a whole but not so much night to night.
The result was yet another victory for the rookie, whose benching one game earlier did not cause him to lose his focus. “You have two pretty darn good teams going at it”, Lightning coach Jon Cooper said.
“That’s usually an attribute that takes years to acquire”.
“‘I don’t think anybody in this room’s happy about that effort and that play”, said Stralman, one of just six players in the National Hockey League who is a ideal 7-0 all-time in Game 7s. Maatta was benched (sorry, Coach Sullivan) for three games in this series, as injury and uneven play conspired to make this a trying spring for the talented young defender.
Pittsburgh has gone from a 2-1 series lead to facing elimination for the first time this postseason after losing consecutively for the first time since January.
Just a few minutes in, Jonathan Drouin hit the puck into a gaping net as Matt Murray was down and out. As the Lightning started a comeback in the third period with two goals from forward Brian Boyle, Byran Rust came through with an assurance goal. It is a call made by millimeters, judged by 1/30ths of one second. There is no science to it.
“He has a maturity beyond his years”, Sullivan said on Wednesday. Defensively, the Tampa Bay Lightning are allowing 2.4 goals per game and are killing 84 percent of their power play chances. The Penguins had new life.
“You’ve got to go back to a tough environment, just like the Garden was previous year”, Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said.
The narrative is that Sidney Crosby hasn’t done enough in the Playoffs this spring. First, Kris Letang scored and widened the gap to two. Crosby then skated from an offside position, picked it up, went 180 in the neutral zone, then powered back into the Lightning’s end. The Penguins needed a big night from all their big name, big money players.
The Lightning entered Game 6 with a 3-2 series lead and an opportunity to conclude the series with a win on home ice. “Just got to make sure we’re at it from the start”. “We’ll see what happens tonight”.
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The series heads back to Pittsburgh just like Evgeni Malkin said it would and now both teams have to compete with a toss up game.
