TAMPA, Fla. — The Lightning expected to face a desperate Panthers team willing to do anything to extend its season in Monday night’s Game 4 of the Sunshine State Series.
On the brink of elimination, Florida certainly pushed the Lightning, but on the scoreboard had nothing to show for it going into the final period.
And for a resilient Lightning team that needed just one break to go their way to send the Presidents’ Trophy winners into the offseason, Pat Maroon’s third-period goal was all they needed to advance to their third straight final-four round.
With their 2-0 win, the Lightning swept Florida in their second-round Sunshine State series rematch. Ondrej Palat scored unassisted in the final minute.
The Lightning are halfway to history, eight wins from becoming the first team to win three straight Cups since the Islanders dynasty of the early 1980s. The Lightning will face either the Carolina Hurricanes or the New York Rangers in the Eastern Conference Final. Carolina leads that series 2-1.
They wouldn’t have had the chance without another remarkable effort by Andrei Vasilevskiy, who made 49 saves and had recorded shutouts in six of his last seven series-clinching games.
Much like this entire series, the Lightning won ugly. Maroon’s winning goal came after Florida goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky deflected Zach Bogosian’s puck on net into the air. Maroon swooped in and batted it down behind Bobrovsky and the puck slowly rolled into the net before the goaltender noticed.
After piling on Maroon, the Lightning immediately looked up at the video board for the replay, understandable given the fact they had two goals overturned earlier in the game.
Fifty three seconds after Carter Verhaeghe’s shot hit off one post, across the paint, bounced off the other and then harmlessly out, Alex Killorn redirected Mikhail Sergachev’s puck on net into the goal at the 8:38 mark in the second.
But after a Florida challenge that prompted a 10-minute review, it was ruled the puck hit off the net over the boards before Sergachev collected, making the play dead.
Shortly after that, Nikita Kucherov snapped a shot past Bobrovsky right off Anthony Cirelli’s faceoff win with 9:30 left in the second.
The Panthers challenged again and the video review showed that the Cirelli used his right glove to push the puck back out of the circle, so a hand pass was called.
