Point off to fast start for Lightning in Eastern Conference Final

On one of the biggest nights of Brayden Point's NHL career, the Tampa Bay Lightning center sent a text to his dad, Grant, like he does after every game.

Of course, it had been no ordinary game.
Point (two goals, three assists) and forward Nikita Kucherov (one goal, four assists) each scored five points in the Lightning's 8-2 win against the New York Islanders in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Final at Rogers Place in Edmonton on Monday, becoming the first players in Tampa Bay history to score five points in a postseason game.
So if ever there were a night for Point be a little full of himself, this was it.
Except he wasn't. Not to the media. Not to his family. Because that's not who he is.
"I think our team is playing great," Point said after the game. "We're rolling right now. Everyone is playing responsible."

It was the same message he had for his father.
"His text was all about how great the team was," Grant Point said Tuesday from Calgary, where Brayden grew up. "He's humble. He's always been that way.
"I coached him for most of his minor hockey days. What we tried to instill in him is that hockey is the ultimate team game. He gets it. Look at how skilled the Lightning team is. Look at the position he's in with skilled linemates like [Kucherov and Ondrej Palat].
"That's what's important to him. That's why he's never going to talk about himself."
That hasn't stopped his teammates from talking about him.
Defenseman Victor Hedman has been one of Point's biggest supporters, earlier this season calling him a "superstar." When asked after Game 1 if there is anything Point can't do, Hedman chuckled and said, "I'm not sure."
Indeed, there appears to be no ceiling for the 24-year-old, who is in his fourth NHL season, all with Tampa Bay.
"Brayden Point is taking it to another level," Hedman said.

He started early Monday, skating down the left wing past Islanders defenseman Ryan Pulock before cutting sharply to the net and deking goalie Thomas Greiss 1:14 into the game to put the Lightning up 1-0. His early goal set the tone for the rest of the game.
Game 2 of the best-of-7 series is in Edmonton, the hub city for the conference finals and Stanley Cup Final, on Wednesday (8 p.m. ET; NBCSN, CBC, TVAS).
"He doesn't shy away when the pressure is on and the spotlight is shining," Grant Point said. "He doesn't freak out in those situations like some others do. He embraces those moments."
There have been plenty of those moments during this postseason, making Point a leading candidate for the Conn Smythe Trophy as MVP of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
In Game 1, he extended his point streak to seven games (16 points; four goals, 12 assists) and moved into second in postseason scoring with 23 points (eight goals, 15 assists) in 14 games. He's two points behind center Nathan MacKinnon, who scored 25 points (nine goals, 16 assists) in 15 games before the Colorado Avalanche were eliminated by the Dallas Stars in the Western Conference Second Round.
Point's penchant for coming through in the clutch has been front and center.
In the four overtime games the Lightning have played in the postseason, he has scored two game-winning goals and had an assist on another.
"The big thing for me is what he does in the biggest moment of the game," Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said. "He's an exceptionally valuable player on this team. It's up to the player, in those situations, to make himself better. And he's done that."
Never more so than in Game 1 of the first round against the Columbus Blue Jackets on Aug. 11. Point's goal in the fifth overtime gave the Lightning a 3-2 victory and ended the fourth-longest game in NHL history (150:27).
Grant Point had watched most of it but eventually had to go onto the ice for a hockey clinic and never saw the goal.
"My phone was going off and there were texts from people saying, 'What a shot,'" he said. "That's when I figured he'd done something special."
Again.
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Craig Simpson has seen such performances from Point before.
The analyst for Sportsnet worked the Game 1 broadcast alongside play-by-play man Jim Hughson on Monday. From his perch at Rogers Place, he watched Point take over the game from the outset.
"He was the Lightning's] most dominant player from the first shift of the game and put his stamp on Game 1 from that shift on," Simpson said Tuesday. "Impressive performance that was fun to watch."
Fourteen years earlier, Simpson watched a similar game by Point, a 10-year-old at the time, at the Ice Palace at the West Edmonton Mall, 7 miles west of Rogers Place.
[Watch: Youtube Video
At that time, Point and Riley Simpson, Craig's son, were teammates on Team Brick, a collection of Alberta all-stars who were the host team for the 2006 Brick Invitational Super Novice Tournament. In an event that featured future NHL players like Toronto Maple Leafs center Auston Matthews and Carolina Hurricanes defenseman Haydn Fleury, Point was captain of Team Brick in a 7-3 victory against the Montreal Ice Storm in the championship game.
"I think my son said referring to (Point's) play in that tournament that Brayden 'was sick,'" Simpson said. "He likes the big moments, he's not afraid of pressure. He likes to be the guy to make the play. You can see that at the NHL level. I think that's what separates him from other players, that knack for the moment. When you're a smaller guy, you've got to have that. You've got to have that mindset that you are going to be a difference maker and he's got it. It's cool to see."
Simpson, who played 10 seasons in the NHL, said Point's work ethic has always stood out and his size (5-foot-10, 166 pounds) has never been an issue.
Point, selected by Tampa Bay in the third round (No. 79) of the 2014 NHL Draft, has scored 262 points (116 goals, 146 assists) in 295 regular-season games for the Lightning and 40 points (16 goals, 24 assists) in 35 NHL playoff games.
"He's not the biggest guy, but his tenacity was evident even back then," Simpson said. "If he didn't have the puck, he wasn't relying on anyone else to get it, he'd do it himself. You see that now too. He'll go into a corner with two or three guys and come out with it. It's like the puck is magnetized to him, and vice versa.
"I remember watching practices and he was always fiddling with the puck, playing around with it, making plays."

Point's focus was always the same: to get better. It's the philosophy that eventually led him to seek the help of Hockey Hall of Famer Danielle Goyette in a quest to refine his skating.
"I think it was after his first season with Tampa [Bay]," Goyette said. "I was working with one of his teammates here in Calgary, (defenseman) Braydon Coburn, and (Point) asked if I could help him."
Goyette, coach of the University of Calgary women's hockey team, is Canada's all-time leading scorer in the IIHF Women's World Championships with 53 points (29 goals, 24 assists) in eight tournaments. She won the gold medal with the women's national team at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics and 2006 Torino Olympics.
"We worked on tight turns," Goyette said. "He was always so fast, but he was stopping before he turned. We worked on leaning. When you go full speed, let your body do the work. And now when you watch him, I can see what we worked on. He can go full speed and he's turning pretty quick. He's hard to check because he's always moving."
Much like the technique he showed when he drove the net for the first goal Monday.
"When you look at him right now, it's phenomenal," Goyette said. "It's all that extra work he puts in.
"That's what makes (Pittsburgh Penguins center) Sidney Crosby and Nathan MacKinnon so great. And Brayden does the same thing."
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A big part of Point's success is his heart.
"He's always had that," Grant Point said. "He's always been one of the smallest guys on his team dating back to when he was a kid. But he never used it as an excuse. It just increased his will.
"Think about it. When he was in bantam, which is age 13, he was only 5-feet, 100 pounds. Kids were much bigger. He didn't care."

In 2012, Point was called up as a 15-year-old to join Moose Jaw of the Western Hockey League. Kendall McFaull, the team captain, saw the diminutive forward in the dressing room and thought he was the little brother of one of the players.
"That's a true story," said Todd Hudson, whose family was Point's billets in Moose Jaw from 2012-16. "They had brought him up as a 15-year-old for the playoffs. When he showed up at our door, I'm looking at this young lad, not a whisker on his face, probably weighed 135 pounds, not big up top ... I thought, 'This little bugger is going to get killed out here against these 6-foot-2 kids.' But you know what? I guess everyone underestimated how quick this kid was, how smart this kid was. Not many 15-year-olds had his hockey IQ.
"Now he's an average-sized NHL player. He's not the smallest guy. He's got a lot of muscle."
And heart.
"He does, that," Hudson said.
These days Hudson watches Lightning games in his "man cave," which features some special Point memorabilia.
"I've got the puck from his first NHL point," he said. "And his Team Canada jersey from that 2015 gold-medal World Junior championship team that he captained."
Maybe one day, a photo of Point hoisting the Stanley Cup -- and maybe the Conn Smythe Trophy too -- will be added to the collection.
"I'll tell you what," Hudson said. "He had one [heck] of a game. And he was very humble.
"I love it."