TORONTO — The pursuit of the Stanley Cup is taking the Tampa Bay Lightning west.
Jon Cooper’s crew booked its ticket to Edmonton by eliminating the Boston Bruins in five games.
A series featuring the Eastern Conference’s top regular-season teams was a little closer than it may have appeared, but the Lightning seemed to find a big goal whenever they needed it. On Monday night, that goal came off Victor Hedman’s stick 14:10 into double overtime to secure a 3-2 Lightning victory.
It’s the fourth time in six seasons Tampa has reached the Eastern Conference Final, and it will face the winner of the Flyers/Islanders series. New York is leading 3-1 heading into Game 5 on Tuesday.
The venue will shift from Scotiabank Arena to Rogers Place for the Final Four.
Tampa is charting its course towards a championship one year after being swept out of the first round following a 62-win season, a huge blow that led to some personnel changes and a more patient approach in tight games.
“We didn’t change our system,” said Cooper. “We just tweaked a few areas and concentrated on a few areas that we needed to improve on. Areas that we thought exposed us in the playoffs last year and areas that when you’re winning the way we did at the rate we did last year was not to be complacent.”
It’s served them well in a playoffs where they’ve won four overtime games already, including a five-overtime marathon against Columbus in Round 1.
The Lightning pulled out Monday’s win after seeing David Krejci cash in on a pinballing puck with less than three minutes to play in regulation. That briefly extended Boston’s season until Hedman froze the clock with a curl-and-drag move before beating Jaroslav Halak with a shot through traffic.
Tampa enjoyed a goaltending edge in this five-game series with Andrei Vasilevskiy outplaying Halak, and got more production out of its top line. Ondrej Palat, who opened the scoring in Game 5, finished with five goals in the series while Brayden Point added a goal and five assists and Nikita Kucherov had two goals and five assists.
Kucherov was knocked out of Monday’s game after taking a Zdeno Chara stick to the head and was replaced on the No. 1 line by Anthony Cirelli, who tipped home a Hedman point shot during the third period.
David Pastrnak scored the other goal for Boston, the Presidents’ Trophy winners.
Tampa should get a boost of confidence after beating a top-flight opponent and will still have plenty of gas in the tank after needing just 10 games to get through two rounds. Most importantly, the Lightning are managing the puck well and getting more comfortable with discomfort.
“We’ve found a balance with our team that when things do break down you can fall back on a structure that guys believe in. When you start feeling good about your game it really starts coming easy to the guys,” said Cooper. “A big thing for us [in the past]was turning pucks over. And everybody’s going to do it in a game but I look at how we’re doing it this year, how we’re managing the game, it’s extremely important in an effort to have any sort of success.
“I give the guys a lot of credit because you get to a point now where the team is almost coaching itself.”
