George Richards, FHN Publisher
Before Game 6 began on Wednesday night, the large scoreboard at Amalie Arena had a message from the Tampa Bay Lightning to Florida Panthers: ‘It’s time to end them.’
Andrei Vasilevskiy took said message to heart.
The Tampa Bay goalie was superb on Wednesday night, throwing back everything he saw he made 29 saves to beat the Panthers and send them packing for the summer with a 4-0 victory.
”We needed to get that first one,” coach Joel Quenneville lammented. “We had some great looks, some great opportunities and some didn’t even get on net and those were the best quality chances we had. He was great tonight. … We weren’t able to crack him tonight. Hey, that’s a really good hockey team. A great hockey team. We learned how hard it is to win in the first round. It’s the hardest round ever.”
Tampa Bay won the first-ever Sunshine State Showdown series 4-2 and the defending Stanley Cup champions advance to the second round to face either Carolina or Nashville.
The Panthers, after one of their best regular seasons in franchise history, are done after one round.
Florida has not won a single playoff series since beating the Penguins in the 1996 Eastern Conference finals. The Panthers are 0-6 in Stanley Cup playoff series since — and that’s not counting last year’s play-in loss to the Islanders.
Spencer Knight, the rookie Florida goalie making just his sixth NHL start, played an admirable game in making 20 saves. He gave the Panthers a chance.
They just did not capitalize on it — and the Lightning have Vasilevskiy to thank for that.
”Right now it is tough to analyze our last game,” Sasha Barkov said. “He’s a great goalie, one of the best goalies in the league if not the best. To score on him, you have to get more guys to the net or shoot better. Stuff like that. Easy shots on him are not going in.
“I’m really proud of every guy in our room. Hell of a regular season, we played good hockey. We didn’t win more than two games in the playoffs, but we played good hockey. Credit to Tampa, too.”
Tampa Bay got the ball rolling, getting its first goal off its first shot (sound familiar?) against Spencer Knight after a great job of hustling down the ice from Tyler Johnson.
Johnson raced to retrieve a puck and beat Anton Stralman to it, preventing icing; Johnson controlled the puck behind the net, sent a pass through MacKenzie Weegar to Pat Maroon who was in front of the net and scored at 6:16.
Both teams had plenty of terrific scoring chances in the opening period with both Knight and Vasilevskiy making some fantastic saves.
Vasilevskiy kept the lead by stopping a point-blank one-timer from Frank Vatrano as well as a couple good looks from Mason Marchment. Knight stood tall as well, stopping Barclay Goodrow as well as Brayden Point.
Florida kept up the pressure in the second period although the team seemed to be looking for a perfect pass instead of taking the shot.
It cost the Panthers in the slot time after time as Tampa’s defenders were strong with the stick and kept the puck out of harm’s way.
Florida killed off a power play that leaked into the second and got a chance of its own when Barkov took a high stick.
The Panthers had a couple of good scoring looks from Sam Bennett and Patric Hornqvist but nothing going.
At 12:53 of the second, Bennett got called for roughing after he put David Savard in a bear hug and tugged off his helmet.
With Bennett in the box, Tampa Bay has cashed in during this series and did so again after Steven Stamkos made it 2-0 with a shot from his favorite spot inside the left circle.
Florida came with everything it had in the third period but Tampa’s defense in front of the net made it hard for the Panthers to get anything clean off.
Bennett, Barkov, Jonathan Huberdeau, Anthony Duclair, Markus Nutivaara and Weegar all had great looks.
Yet with just over five minutes left, Brayden Point got loose, kept control of the puck as he walked around Knight and pushed the puck through. With a three-goal lead, the Lightning were well on its way to the second round.
The Lightning added a final insult when Alex Killorn scored into an empty net with 1:42 left.
Huberdeau, who said on the Bally Sports pregame show that he was “tired of losing,” slammed the puck out of the net and went to the bench and hung his head.
”Obviously disappointed,” said Huberdeau, already dressed by the time he came to the postgame podium. “We had our chances in this series. It could have gone either way. Down 2-0, it could have gone the other way.
“Obviously disappointed, you want to be win and you play hockey to win. I loved our fans, the atmosphere and wanted to come back for Game 7. Didn’t happen. Obiously it will take some time to swallow. But year was the most fun I had, we had a good group. It just didn’t go our way in the first round.”
It’s going to be an interesting offseason in Sunrise — aren’t they all — and there will be plenty of time to talk about all of that.
GEORGE’S THREE STARS OF THE GAME
1. Andrei Vasilevskiy, Tampa Bay
2. Steven Stamkos, Tampa Bay
3. Spencer Knight, Florida