#Lightning tampa crack
Instead it went in.īut if New York expected that drawing first blood would crack the game open, it was mistaken.
#Lightning tampa series
Defenseman Ryan Lindgren scored for his first point of the series and second goal of the playoffs via a speculative flick from near the boards that maybe was intended for a deflection. The Rangers finally got theirs at 10:29 of the second period not from dominance, but almost from happenstance. Every time (and there were many) that there was a face-off in the Lightning end, there was the sense that this would be the moment the Rangers finally broke through.īut dominance doesn’t count unless you score a goal. The Lightning at times in the early going looked less like the two-time defending champions and more like a team awed by the occasion. And this came from a Rangers team that had been outshot, 153-127, in the first four games. His counterpart Igor Shesterkin was called upon to save just three. New York fired off eight shots, and Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy saved them all. The pace was fast, and the first period was free-flowing and penalty free.ĭisquietingly for the Rangers, who clearly had the upper hand, it was also goal free. Seemingly infused with energy from their venerable arena, they played from the opening face-off with an authority and crispness missing in Tampa. The Rangers started the night promisingly. And all the more frustrating because the key Tampa goals came not entirely from the power trio of Steven Stamkos, Nikita Kucherov and Ondrej Palat, but also from an unlikely defenseman taking a couple of low-percentage shots. So when the Lightning ended the magic with a 3-1 victory at the Garden on Thursday night, it was a hammer blow. After all, the team was 8-1 at home in the playoffs, its only loss coming in triple overtime in the very first game against the Pittsburgh Penguins. The Lightning might have fixed an issue by trading McDonagh for the salary cap hopes for the future, but they also are risking a lot when it comes to the future success of this team as McDonagh was a huge part of the postseason success for the past few years.Though they were facing the two-time defending champion Tampa Bay Lightning, and though they had needed seven games to advance from each of the first two rounds of the playoffs, the Rangers always had a trump card in their pocket: Fortress Madison Square Garden.Įven after losing two games in Tampa to allow the Lightning to tie the series, there was an unshakable sense of confidence in Rangerland coming into Game 5. While it could work, it definitely could lead to a big mistake if Sergachev doesn’t fit in on a shutdown line. Now the Lightning are going to hope that Mikhail Sergachev can potentially fill in the position for the foreseeable future. While Hedman was the star, those two were the shutdown pair that they needed to succeed. The two created one of the best duos in the league on the blue line. McDonagh leaves behind the other star of his shutdown pair in Tampa in Erik Cernak. Since his time as captain, the team has not named a replacement for the position. Including serving as the captain of the team from 2014-2018.
While the star on the blue line might be Victor Hedman, it was guys like McDonagh who helped lead the team to victory by blocking shots every night and doing the little things to win.ĭuring the past three playoff runs for the Lightning, McDonagh blocked 46 shots in their two trips to win the Stanley Cup and an addition 69 in the 23 games in the playoffs this past year.īefore his time in Tampa Bay, he was an integral part of the New York Rangers. McDonagh has been one of the team’s best defensemen the past few seasons. Ryan McDonagh was traded to the Tampa Bay Lightning back in 2017 in exchange for Vladislav Namestnikov, Brett Howden, Libor Hájek, a 2018 first-round pick, and a 2019 second-round pick.
#Lightning tampa free
The Lightning dealt McDonagh to the Nashville Predators in an apparent salary cap dump to make room to re-sign other notable free agents. The Tampa Bay Lightning chose to trade one of their star defenseman in Ryan McDonagh who had been with the team since midway through the 2017-18 season.
0 kommentar(er)
