He won his first three playoff starts to close out the Rangers in five games and has won nine of his 13 starts since taking the job from Jeff Zatkoff.
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Jonathan Drouin boosted Tampa Bay’s lead to 3-0 on a power-play goal with 5:22 remaining in the second period, adding to the Penguins’ woes after they failed on two extra-man chances of their own earlier in the middle period.
Pittsburgh’s Phil Kessel ended the shutout early in the third, scoring his eighth goal of the playoffs just 1:18 into the final period to make it 4-1.
Game 5 in the best of seven series is Sunday in Pittsburgh. The Lightning would go onto score three more goals before the buzzer sounded for the second intermission. The momentum in the Penguins-Lightning series changed 27 seconds into Game 4 when Tampa Bay took a 1-0 lead.
Three goals assisted by defenseman Victor Hedman matched a Lightning playoff record. “I think the team were feeding off his energy and we were trying to follow him, because he had a great start, he scored and he was all over the place”.
Second, Fleury is a veteran goaltender and is more than capable of leading his team to another Stanley Cup Final. They lost 4-3 and it’s not so much how the Lightning lost their four-goal lead as how they built it that Tampa Bay’s skaters will concentrate on as they prepare for Game 5, because that they say is the key to any future success. Evgeni Malkin scored his first goal since game one of the second round, and Chris Kunitz scored in his second straight game on the power play.
Kessel doubled the Penguins’ lead 5:16 into the third period, the USA right-winger finding the net for his seventh goal of the playoffs.
“You don’t win consistently without (depth)”. The Penguins have put 41 pucks on net each time out, including 48 in Game 3, a playoff high for a Bolts opponent this postseason. “They are a good team, and we knew this was going to be a hard game”. Sullivan was non-committal in his post-game interview, saying simply he saw the situation as a good opportunity to get Fleurry some game action after having not played in over a month.
The Lightning peppered rookie goalie Matt Murray with 30 shots through the first 40 minutes, so the fact that the Penguins were down 4-0 at that time certainly wasn’t his fault.
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Pittsburgh Penguins’ Evgeni Malkin (71), of Russian Federation, tries to get around Tampa Bay Lightning’s Braydon Coburn (55) during the first period of Game 4 of the NHL hockey Stanley Cup Eastern Conference finals Friday, May 20, 2016, in Tampa, Fla. Daley could not get up off the ice and eventually had to be helped to the Penguins’ dressing room. He gave up four goals on 30 shots, a couple of which he attributed to insane bounces rather than poor positioning. He picked up seven saves. Those two work really well together, as we’ve seen in many seasons past (and the Olympics), and will provide offensive firepower. The Penguins really clicked in game three, finally shaping up offensively and putting almost 50 shots on Andrei Vasilevskiy. It’s one of the most risky plays in the game. The pass failed to connect, but bounced off Palat’s skate and right back onto Drouin’s stick for an easy empty side tap-in that made it 3-0 Tampa Bay. “Regardless if you’re playing well or if you’re not”.
