The Tampa Bay Lightning and the Dallas Stars meet in game four of the Stanley Cup Final in NHL action from Rogets Place on Friday.
The Tampa Bay Lighning will look to build on a 5-2 win over the Stars in game three last time out, taking a 2-1 series lead over Dallas in the process.
Tampa Bay jumped on Dallas early and often, with Nikita Kucherov and the returning Steven Stamkos scoring less than 1:25 later. Dallas got on the board off of the stick of Jamie Dickinson short-handed just after the midway point of the opening period. Victor Hedman would restore Tampa’s two-goal cushion in the first minute of the second period and Brayden Point pushed it to 4-1 with just under eight minutes to go in the middle period. Ondrej Palat pushed it to 5-1 just before the end of the second period and despite Miro Heiskanen pulling a goal back for Dallas. In the end, the three-goal deficit was just too much for the Stars to overcome as Tampa Bay held on for the win and the 2-1 series lead.
Andrei Vasilevskiy got the win for Tampa Bay after stopping 22 of 24 shots faced in the winning effort between the pipes while Anton Khudobin, giving up five goals on 29 shots faced in the defeat.
Tampa Bay is 7-3 in the last 10 meetings between these two teams while the over is 15-3-3 in the last 21 meetings between these two teams as well.
I think that game three was going to tell us whatever we needed to tell us about the series and how it’s going to play out and I stand by that statement. It’s starting to look like the Lightning have their proverbial feet under themselves as of late, while the Stars are just appearing to be running out of gas at the wrong time and I just think that the Stars are going to fall behind 3-1 against a Lightning team that’s on a mission right now. I’ll side with Tampa Bay on the puck line with an empty-netter late to push Dallas to the brink of elimination here.