Whatever happened to its mental toughness that got it here? Our first 40 minutes wasn’t where it needed to be. Stralman and Boyle seek their third straight trip to the Stanley Cup Final.
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“If you’re not at your best, it’s near impossible to win”.
According to Joe Smith of the Tampa Bay Times, Steven Stamkos said there is no change in his status for tonight.
One difference this year is the Lightning are the team with the positive Game 7 history; they are of 5-1 all-time in Game 7, allowing three goals total. But Sullivan stuck with his 21-year-old netminder, and Murray made his coach look good with that decision.
“If they get the first goal, it lights up the building, and all of a sudden, momentum gets hard”, Sullivan said. It was down 3-0 before it awoke in the third. We played to our structure and to our strength, and we pulled off two really, really good games. No jam. No jump.
That energy was absent early in Game 6, when the Pens outshot the Bolts, 14-4.
“A lot of one and dones, not getting a lot of pucks through”, winger Ryan Callahan said. Kris Letang stayed out of the box, tightened up on his defensive zone coverage and chipped in with a goal as well.
Shortly thereafter: Penguins goal. The Lightning were 0 for 1, dropping to 2 for 12. It went from there.
Game 7 is Thursday night in Pittsburgh.
Stamkos’s morning skate, an optional one for the Lightning, was shorter than some of his other marathon sessions in this round.
After their Game 6 loss past year, the Lightning’s response to the all of the talk about the Rangers’ Game 7 success was, “They haven’t done it against our group”. He finished with a quick wrister through Andrei Vasilevskiy’s five-hole to give Pittsburgh the ever-important three-goal lead. Only there’s no Bishop in sight at the moment. “We’ll kind of be in that maybe you can play, maybe you can’t”. We weren’t aggressive. We weren’t on top of it. Where was the sustained time in the Penguins’ end? The Penguins, who forced only one giveaway in Game 5, had 17 in Game 6. But where was the help? It’s one game and you’ve got to find a way to win it. Try to enjoy it as much as you can, but also understand that it’s a great opportunity and try to leave it all out there. Only two players now on the Tampa Bay roster have played in more than one of those previous three series, and yet only one (Victor Hedman) will be on ice tonight (the other player is Steven Stamkos).
After Tuesday’s game, Lightning coach Jon Cooper was asked about what his team can take from last year’s conference-clinching Game 7 win, and he mostly spoke in cliches, saying that the Lightning will need their A-game to win in a tough environment. The real question is if the Lightning can be the better team-because now it’s for keeps. The series will now shift back to Pittsburgh, as guaranteed, for what promises to be a dramatic conclusion on Thursday night (8 pm ET).
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Heading into Tuesday’s game, many were unsure whether starting Murray in net was the right call by Sullivan. He also said that the Penguins strictly are anxious about themselves and how they approach each game.
