"We've played together a lot of games now, so we kind of know where each other is," Johnson said. "We know what we like to do with one another and a lot of those times it's not even thinking, it's just doing. I felt like that was one of those passes where we knew where each other was."
Gourde gave the Lightning a 3-0 lead on the power play, scoring his first Stanley Cup Playoff goal at 1:54 of the second period after Miles Wood was called for slashing.
"Yanni Gourde is being Yanni Gourde," Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. "He's not afraid to go anywhere on the ice, he's just a little water bug out there. He's hard on pucks, he's quick on pucks, but the big thing is he's right around the net. I felt for him early because he had some big-time chances, that 2-on-1 he had Kinkaid out and he fanned on it, but he kept plugging away and plugging away and he got rewarded on the power-play goal."
Hall made it 3-1 when he intercepted an errant pass by Palat and shot to the stick side at 13:55.
"Our push back showed this is going to be a dogfight, and we expected them to come out with a hard push in their first game in their building," Devils center Blake Coleman said. "I think that we still have an opportunity to go home tied 1-1 and everybody in this room would take that, so we're looking to bounce back on Saturday."
