If Steven Stamkos’ time as a foundational piece of the Tampa Bay Lightning is destined to end this summer, he did his part on Saturday to make it last a little longer.
Stamkos, perhaps the greatest player in franchise history, scored twice in Tampa Bay’s 6-3 win over the Florida Panthers in their first-round Stanley Cup playoff series. The Panthers had a chance to secure the sweep and become the first team to advance, but Stamkos and Co. had other ideas, riding a fast start and strong finish to a series-extending win.
Stamkos was a force from the start, scoring first- and third-period goals, mixing it up at various points with Matthew Tkachuk and Vladimir Tarasenko, and generally looking the part of a guy who wasn’t ready for this chapter of his story to end.
Brandon Hagel also scored twice for the Lightning, with Brayden Point and Nick Paul adding goals of his own. For Florida, it was Carter Verhaeghe, Sam Reinhart and Oliver-Ekman Larsson. The game featured several momentum swings, including a second-period pushback from the Panthers that turned what seemed like an early-evening snoozer into another close game in a series that has been a bit tighter than its 3-1 status would indicate.
Sergachev sparks Tampa Bay
For a while, it seemed like the game’s primary story would be the return of Mikhail Sergachev, the All-Star defenseman for Tampa Bay who’d broken his leg just 80 days previously. The Lightning found themselves in a 3-0 series hole partially due to a lack of defensive depth behind Victor Hedman, so Sergachev’s return would’ve been huge strictly in an on-ice capacity.
More important, though, was the obvious lift the rest of the Lightning got from Sergachev’s presence. He’d been practicing with the team, but seeing him on ice for warmups was a legitimate shock, and it didn’t feel like a coincidence that the Lightning followed that up with their best period of the playoffs.
Sergachev wasn’t simply along for the ride, either. He played 5:48 in the first period alone and found his way to the scoresheet in the second, forcing a four-on-four dump-in by the Panthers, joining the rush and setting up Hagel for his first goal. By the end of the game, he’d clocked 17:03 of ice time and generally looked like himself — not like a player who’d left the ice on a stretcher on Feb. 7.
Lightning’s stars fuel first-period outburst
If the Lightning have any shot at pulling this off, their best players are going to have to play their best hockey. That hadn’t necessarily been true, en masse, in the first three games of the series. On Saturday, though, they laid the tracks to Game 5 with a major first-period performance.
Stamkos, in a shocking development, scored a power-play goal from the left circle. Hedman was the all-situations beast we know him to be, springing Hagel for a short-handed goal. Nikita Kucherov set up Point for his first primary assist since Game 1.
Three goals, three huge contributions from the stars and three bits of good news for the Lightning. You don’t dig out of 3-0 deficits with depth scoring, though they got that from Paul, as well.
Panthers claw back
The Panthers followed that up with a three-goal period of their own — and they did it in a way that could serve as a microcosm of their season overall.
We saw five-on-five dominance (a 13-4 shot advantage and 70 percent expected goal share) that included a Tkachuk-Verhaeghe connection, plus a Reinhart power-play goal. Reinhart scored his third of the postseason by pouncing on a loose puck to make it 4-2. The goal was his 60th overall, continuing to cement his season as one of the great contract pushes of all time. The three-year deal he signed with the Panthers back in the 2021 offseason expires on July 1, and he’s set himself up for a major raise on his $6.5 million AAV. He came within a millimeter of No. 61 early in the third period, on a screened snipe from the top of the circle. You can bet on him reaching that mark relatively soon.
Ekman-Larsson scored Florida’s third goal, his first of the playoffs and a nice reminder of just how good he’s been for the Panthers. They relied on him for major blue-line minutes early in the regular season, with Aaron Ekblad and Brandon Montour recovering from summer surgeries, and he delivered. They’re not in this spot — with another chance to advance on Monday — without him.
(Photo: Mark LoMoglio / NHLI via Getty Images)
