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Tampa, Florida – The New Yorkers were mentally prepared for the first game of the Stanley Cup semi-final series. It wasn’t Tampa Bay Lightning.
“Our work ethic was there [level] he was there. Our minds weren’t there,” said Lightning coach John Cooper, whose team lost 2-1 on Sunday afternoon. “Some of our decisions were bad. That’s what happens when you go deeper into qualifying. Everything has to be working in unison and we weren’t there tonight.”
The lightning looked disjointed in the first game. Their passes were not connected. They weren’t aggressively on the same page.
More importantly, they failed to protect the disc against one of the most skilled defensive teams in the NHL. Tampa Bay received seven gifts in the game, among which one from Stephen Stamkos led to Matthew Berzal’s opening goal in the second half. By contrast, the islanders had only one endowment.
1 related
“We knew it was going to be difficult,” said Stamkos. “In the first goal, I was trying to play, and you’ll see what can happen. They can go the other way and score.” “We knew it was going to be very difficult. We’ve been in this situation before. There’s definitely no panic in this room.”
This was the first encounter between the Islanders and Lightning since the Eastern Conference final last summer, which was played inside an Edmonton “bubble”. The Lightning won that series in six matches. Islanders coach Barry Trotz saw similarities between this game and some games in the series.
“Both teams are pretty much the same as they were last year,” Trotz said. “Systemically we’re pretty much the same. Very well what we expected, and in some ways it was good.”
The islanders couldn’t have written a better 1 game down the road. They’ve been physical from the start, with Matt Martin and Barkley Goudreau taking matching unsportsmanlike penalties just eight seconds into the match. They took a 2-0 lead over goals from Barzal and defender Ryan Bullock, who beat Andrei Vasilevsky (29 saves) in 5:36 of the third half. They had a solid performance in fending off 30th goalkeeper Semyon Varlamov.
Best of all for the islanders, they got their first three strong game runs before the Lightning players – the top athletics players of the playoffs – got one. Tampa’s only 6v4 goal by Brayden Point came late in the third inning, with Vasilevsky withdrawing.
“We took two penalties early in the game,” Stamkos said. “It was a very good start and I ran out of momentum.”
The Islanders did not allow Lightning many high-risk scoring opportunities in the attack zone, limiting them to six during their first two periods at 5-on-5 while taking nine high-risk chances on their own.
But Cooper felt that this was more due to lack of effort by the lightning than lack of implementation.
“We weren’t using our heads like we normally do tonight,” he said, adding that he didn’t feel the islanders’ defenders frustrated his team. “It’s frustrating to lose. That’s the frustrating part. But it’s no different from the team we beat in the bubble. We made a lot of mistakes. Unintentional mistakes. Disc management is a big deal against this team, and they did it better than we did.” .and they got one extra break.”
The second match is Tuesday night.
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