Tampa Bay Lightning wins games against Boston Bruins with strong performances on power-plays
Tampa Bay Lightning proved to be a killer team during the first two rounds of the play-offs as it was able to come up with superb performances during the power-plays.
Lightning was the strongest team in the National Hockey League’s regular season with regard to productivity during the power-plays. It was able to convert a high percentage of the chances it got during the play-offs.
Thus, Lightning is being considered a strong contender for the title. However, the series against Boston Bruins didn’t see the best out of them in this regard.
Lightning was trailing 3-2 in the series as the sixth game of the series began and they needed to win to keep the hopes of winning the series alive.
"To be honest, our last couple games, we just haven't been there, not many scoring chances", Lightning’s Martin St. Louis said. "Sometimes it's not about scoring but it's about gaining momentum. Our second unit has done that the last few games. They played
really well in the power play. It's kept us in some games momentum-wise. Last couple of games, I feel we squeezed our sticks a little bit [on the first unit]. Not enough poise -- I think tonight we just let go. We said just let's go play, nothing to lose here.
Our backs are against the wall. Let's go play, and we got rewarded by putting the puck on net".
Bruins was considered as favourites to win the game as it came up with strong attacks during the initial stages of the game and also had three power-plays coming its way.
Unfortunately for Bruins, Lightning was able to get out of trouble without conceding any goals and this helped them to stay in contention by making its way back into the series.
Lightning was absolutely brilliant during the power-plays as they came across three consecutive power-plays and goals were scored in each of them.
The first two came during the second period of the game that witnessed Martin St. Louis and Teddy Purcell scoring goals to put Lightning into a lead after they were trailing by 2-1.
The next power-play came at the start of the final period that resulted in another goal for Lightning. The goal was scored by Steven Stamkos with a superb strike.
Lightning was put in a strong position because of these goals to win the game and level the series.
Finally, Lightning was able to come up with a strong show during the power-plays after a poor run. It had just two goals over 18 power-plays during the first five games of this Conference Finals series.
If Lightning is able to perform the same way as they did in this game, they can win the final game to progress into the Stanley Cup Finals.
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