*Photo from The Hockey News*
Florida leads series 3-1
These guys are still going. Steven Stamkos scored twice, Brandon Hagel had two goals and an assist, and the Tampa Bay Lightning defeated the Florida Panthers with a 6-3 victory Saturday in Tampa Bay.
Needing to win to extend the series and their season, the Lightning did so to finally get on the board in the series. Only 4 times out of the 206 in league history has a team rallied to win a series after being down 3-0. The Lightning want to be the 5th.
Lightning defenseman Victor Hedman said of the win that "We came out with fire and we got rewarded. Special teams was big, power play, short-handed, 4-on-4, those were the kind of goals we got and that's big for us. They pushed back in the second, but I thought we had a tremendous third and deserved the win."
Stamkos gave the Lightning a 1-0 lead in the first period with a power play goal assisted by Hagel and Brayden Point. With the Lightning shorthanded 12:09 into the game, Hagel scored with Hedman assisting to make it a 2-0 game. Point scored at the 15:07 mark of the first, increasing the lead to 3-0 on his second goal of the playoffs.
Carter Verhaeghe got the Panthers on the board 4:17 into the second period on his 3rd goal of the playoffs. Hagel scored at the 9:40 mark of the period for the Lightning to make it a 4-1 lead. Sam Reinhart scored for the Panthers to cut the deficit to 4-2 before Oliver Ekman-Larsson scored to make it a 4-3 game after two periods.
At the 9:34 mark of the 3rd period, Stamkos scored his second goal of the game and his 5th of the playoffs to make it 5-3 Lightning with Point and Nikita Kucherov assisting. Nick Paul made it a 6-3 final score when he added a power play goal at the 16:22 mark of the period.
Stamkos said after the game that "It's a period at a time for us at this point, for us that's the mentality. We had a great start, that's something that we've been struggling with lately. Obviously to get a power-play goal, too, that was a big reason why we didn't have success last game. To get that was a confidence boost."
It was Andrei Vasilevskiy between the pipes for the Lightning, getting the necessary win to keep the season going. Vasilevskiy stopped 22 of the 25 shots the Panthers directed at him, recording a .880 save percentage.
Getting the start for the Panthers on the other end of the ice was Sergei Bobrovsky, who was dealt his first loss of the series. Bobrovsky made 26 saves on the 32 shots he faced from the Lightning offense, giving him a .812 save percentage.
Florida captain Aleksander Barkov said of the loss that "They played really well in the first period, they scored three goals in the first period. It's tough to come back from a three-goal lead, but we almost did. That's good for us, but obviously we don't want that to ever happen again."
Game 5 of the series is set for Monday night as the teams head back to Sunrise. The Panthers will once again look to secure a spot in the second round while the Lightning need to win again to force a 6th game.
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