The tough luck for the Lightning, combined with strong defensive play, timely goals and superb goaltending for the Panthers, not only summed up this deciding game, but the entire series.
“There was a lot of things that didn't go our way tonight. A lot of things that didn't go our way in this series, and trust me, I've come to the podium second, plenty of times, and I know how fortunate our teams have been when we did win,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “But you do make your own breaks. And we, in this series, had our opportunities.
“Again, history is going to sit here and say this series was 4-1, but you know, there were some big moments where I thought we could have capitalized on some situations, we didn’t, and they did.”
Cooper was clearly miffed with the two disallowed goals on Monday, the first coming with seven minutes left in the first period of what was then a scoreless game. Anthony Cirelli scored off a rebound in the slot, but the Panthers challenged that Lightning forward Anthony Duclair interfered with the glove hand of goalie Sergei Bobrovsky. They won the challenge, with the officials determining that Duclair impaired Bobrovsky’s ability to play his position in the crease.
The second came with Tampa Bay trailing 2-1 with 2:12 left in the second period. Mikhail Sergachev appeared to score from the point, but the goal was immediately waved off for goalie interference. Cooper challenged the call, but it was upheld with the officials determining Cirelli, who was tied up with Anton Lundell, made incidental contact with Bobrovsky.
Cooper said he didn’t think the Duclair play was egregious enough to overturn a goal ruled on the ice, and thought each situation was the result of a net-front battle and that in the playoffs, goalies should be a part of that.
“When the players are working so hard on both teams, and it's like I said, it's a war down there. I think we let the goalies off the hook,” Cooper said.
He did say, however, the disallowed goals were not the determining factor in the series.
“Does this, by any means, say we were going to win the series? It does not,” Cooper said. “But would it have changed a lot of the momentum of this game and the way things had gone? I think so.”
And when Tampa Bay did get some chances, Bobrovsky was there to make the save, stopping 31 shots, only allowing a power-play goal from Hedman at 13:37 of the second period. Tampa Bay goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy was even more heroic, making 33 saves to keep his team in the game until the Rodrigues goal sealed their fate. Florida added two empty-net goals after that to complete the scoring.
"The good teams find a way and we've certainly done that in the past and they did that, so like I said, you have to give the other team credit. That's a really good, deep hockey team. Really good defensively, they limit your chances," Stamkos said. "And we just, you know, we capitalize on a few that didn't count tonight and that was the gameplan, to get some pucks more pucks toward the net, get some screens in front and some traffic and we did that, it just didn't go our way."
