Even after Florida’s three straight losses against Tampa at the start of the series, it was hard to believe the Panthers wouldn’t be able to catch a single game in this one. The memories of Andrew Brunett’s team smashing their opponents in the regular season, making incredible comebacks and winning the President’s Cup are so fresh. Yes, and in the first round, Florida managed to turn the tide of an unsuccessful duel, breaking the resistance of Alexander Ovechkin’s club and once again proving that everything is in order with his character.

The Panthers partially confirmed this in their fourth game against Lightning. They jumped on the ice “like gorillas out of a cage”, won the first period with a crazy 18-3 lead in the number of shots on target and 49 hits into Andrei Vasilevsky’s goal in just 60 minutes! Great statistics, but they did not save Florida from early retirement, of course, Andrey Vasilevsky is to blame for this.

As you already understood, the Russian goalkeeper had to work wonders from the first twenty minutes, he pushed the end very hard, especially with the dismissal of Nikita Kucherov. The guests positioned themselves in the zone, pressing the current champion on target and one step away from the goal, but Andrey worked the hardest part flawlessly, giving his partners additional energy.

The energy of these Lightning field players was enough to knock on Sergei Bobrovsky’s doors twice in the two minutes of the second period, but surprisingly, neither goal counted. The Florida coaching team successfully took up the coaching demands, stealing, among other things, a goal from Nikita Kucherov – in this episode, the referees rightly considered it a hand pass performed by Anthony Cirelli.

Zeros were burning on the scoreboard, Vasilevsky continued to drag tirelessly on the square that his colleague Bobrovsky was trying to match. Paying tribute to Sergei, it is worth admitting that he succeeded for 46 minutes, albeit with noticeably less work. But at the key moment, the Novokuznetsk hockey student faltered – he failed a long-range shot from Zak Bogosyan and a few minutes later brought the puck to his own goal line. Victorious, as it later turned out, the target was chalked up by Patrick Maroon.

The Tampa goalkeeper did not allow such miscalculations, withstood another attack from the Panthers at the end of the third period and became one of the accomplices of the second Lightning puck.

Now for some interesting statistics. Lightning has had the chance to close a playoff streak with a win in 6 of the last 7 games, Vasilevskiy is a “cracker” – setting a new Stanley Cup record.

The exit with 49 saves in the decisive game of the cup match is the second result in history, only Patrick Roy managed to deliver a cooler performance.

2-0 in the game and 4-0 in the series are dire numbers for Tampa’s next opponents. Even in the absence of one of the leaders, they knocked out the strongest club of the regular season – Braden Point is recovering from an injury. Andrei Vasilevsky humiliated the best offense in the league by conceding only 3 goals in 4 games. A third consecutive Stanley Cup was much closer for Lightning.