Boston Bruins shutout Tampa Bay Lightning 2-0 to take a 2-1 lead in Conference Finals – NHL Playoffs
The Boston Bruins reverted back to their old defensive mechanism, which worked like a charm in Game 3 on Thursday, as they shutout the Tampa Bay Lightning, 2-0, and took a 2-1 lead in the National Hockey League (NHL) Playoffs, Eastern Conference Finals series.
The Tampa Bay crowd is not as rowdy as the Bruins home crowd, but they had a lot of expectations from their team. Lightning were expected to outperform the Bruins at home but during the final period, the sell out St. Pete Times Forum all of a sudden fell
silent.
Tim Thomas, the Bruins goalie, and league leader in stats during the NHL regulation season, made 31 perfect saves to lockdown the Lightning from getting anywhere near the net. It was his first shutout of the playoffs, while his counterpart Dwayne Roloson
faced fewer shots but still fell short on two, only saving 23 attempts.
"We did a good job as a team to be hard on the forecheck and not give them too much," said Boston’s centre player, Patrice Bergeron, who made a surprising return after being out in the first two games due to concussion related problems.
David Krejci scored the first of the match and his seventh of the season, 1:09 into the initial period. He was wide open in front of Roloson as the Lightning defensemen were still adjusting to the game, Milan Lucic found the opportunity from the right side
and slid him the puck after which he backhanded it through the goalie for a quick lead. Making the first goal proved crucial and extremely helpful as both teams remained unable to score after that. Both the Lightning and Bruins went into an insecure third
period, knowing that it was still anyone’s game.
Andrew Ference scored his second of the postseason off a clean pass from Michael Ryder at the 8:12 mark in the final period. His shot would become the insuring shot as Thomas still kept the Lightning disabled at the Bruins defensive end. Tampa Bay had a
key opportunity nearly midway through when the Boston captain, Zdeno Chara was penalized for hooking Martin St. Louis and was sent to the bench, giving the Lightning a 5-on-4 man advantage. Both teams managed to kill three power play opportunities throughout
the match.
"We made some stronger plays and better decisions," Boston Coach Claude Julien said. "We seemed a little bit more aware of what was going on. Comparing it to last game, when I thought we were pretty sloppy, I thought we bounced back well tonight."
The Bruins and Lightning have another game in Tampa Bay when they square off for Game 4 as Boston has the chance to put them on the verge of elimination come Saturday.
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