*Photo from ABC Action News*
Colorado leads series 2-1
We've got ourselves a series folks. Nick Paul scored the game winning goal, Steven Stamkos had a goal and an assist, and the Tampa Bay Lightning defeated the Colorado Avalanche with a 6-2 victory on Monday night in Tampa Bay.
After being punched in the mouth in game two, the Lightning responded in a big way, cutting the series deficit to 2-1 with a game 3 win. The Lightning offense was driven by two point games from Stamkos, Nikita Kucherov, Pat Maroon, Ondrej Palat, and Victor Hedman, certainly a big response.
Stamkos said of picking up the win that "We knew that this was a pretty much a must-win game for us. So I thought we played like it tonight. I thought our attention to detail was a lot better and the game plan, not that it changed too much, but we executed it. So a way better effort for our group."
Kicking off the scoring for the Avalanche was Gabe Landeskog, who scored on the power play 8:19 into the game, making it 1-0 on his 10th goal of the playoffs. Anthony Cirelli scored 13:03 into the game for the Lightning to tie it, and then Palat scored at the 14:54 mark of the first, making it 2-1 Lightning after one period.
Just 1:26 into the second period, Paul scored the eventual game winning goal to put the Lightning ahead by a 3-1 score. Landeskog scored on the power play to cut it to 3-2, but then the Lightning put it away. Stamkos scored, Maroon scored, and Corey Perry scored, making the score 6-2, effectively sealing the game.
Maroon said of the win that "We needed more shot volume and we needed more shot attempts. I think when you do that and you work hard and you work hard to reload and you work hard to get on top of them, you're going to get second and third opportunities, and we did a way better job of that tonight."
Getting the start and a win for the Lightning was Andrei Vasilevskiy, who got a bounce back win in this one. Vasilevskiy stopped 37 of the 39 shots that the Avalanche sent at him, recording a .949 save percentage in the win.
Darcy Kuemper was in between the pipes for the Avalanche, who took their first loss since the second round. In the loss, Kuemper stopped 17 of 22 shots he faced, before being pulled in favor of Pavel Francouz. In relief, Francouz turned aside 9 out of the 10 shots he faced.
Landeskog said of taking a loss that "They came out and they're fast and desperate, and we knew that going into it. We were going to expect them to be coming out hard here at home, kind of backs against the wall and be desperate. But I thought we did some really good things, and we've got to clean some up in our zone and make sure we're exiting our zone a little more clean than we did tonight."
Up next, game 4 of the series is back in Tampa Bay on Wednesday night. There, the Avalanche will look to bounce back and take a 3-1 series lead, while the Lightning will look to tie the series and force a game 6.
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