On Monday night there were two sides of emotion: one side had elation and one side was collapsing.
Unfortunately, for the team in red and gold, their season would come to an end.
The Presidents Trophy curse still lives on as the Tampa Bay Lightning move on to the Eastern Conference Final, defeating the Florida Panthers 2-0 on Monday night. With their win, the Lightning have been to six of the last eight Eastern Conference Finals. They were again carried by Conn Smythe winner Andrei Vasilevskiy, who had an insane 49-save shutout.
It only took four games for Tampa Bay to advance, sweeping the No. 1 seed Panthers. Tampa Bay is well on its way to completing the quest of three straight Stanley Cup Championships.
First Period:
If there was a word to describe the first period, it was domination. And domination on the Panthers end, as they would outshoot the Lightning 18-3, including multiple close calls on two power plays. However, the score remained scoreless.
Second Period:
The Lightning would finally get a little bit more shots on net, despite them being outshot 16-12 in the second period.
Tampa would have some pretty bizarre moments in the middle of the period.
The first would come 8:44 in the period when a shot by Mikhail Sergachev would bounce off into the net past Bobrovsky. However, Florida coach Andrew Brunette would challenge it for a missed stoppage. And upon a long nine minute review, it would turn out that the puck went out of play, therefore deeming no goal, which was the right call.
A few minutes later with 10:31 gone, it would seem like Tampa Bay would take the lead for good when Anthony Cirelli won the faceoff, and would pass it to Nikita Kucherov, who slapped a one-timer home past Bobrovsky. However, the refs reviewed this one also, and made the right call to overturn the goal when Cirelli played the puck with his glove.
Third Period:
It would be the sink-or-swim period for the Panthers, and they would swim.
Pretty early on in the period, Bobrovsky made a huge save on Brandon Hagel to keep the game at 0-0, but that would change a few minutes later.
At 6:16, the third time was the charm for the Lightning as they took the lead for good when a shot by Zach Bogosian bounced up in the air, and would get tipped by Pat Maroon behind Bobrovsky.
After multiple huge saves, and a near freebie, Ondrej Palat sealed the deal with an empty netter with 23 seconds remaining.
Next Up:
The Lightning will play the winner of the Carolina Hurricanes/New York Rangers series.
The Panthers will get to go golfing at one of the millions of Florida golf courses. They will have many answers to figure out with UFAs looming like Chiarot, Mamin, Marchment, and Giroux.