The NHL postseason carried on with the conference quarterfinals, which included the Tampa Bay Lightning taking a 2-0 lead, the Florida Panthers and Chicago Blackhawks making it 1-1 in their series while the Nashville Predators opened their series against the Anaheim Ducks with a win.
Detroit Red Wings 2 Tampa Bay Lightning 5 (Lightning lead series 2-0): The third period came to life early on with a goal by Brad Richards on the power play, making it 2-2. But then Tyler Johnson went to work, scoring two goals before helping set up Alex Killorn (Johnson also had two assists in the game). Ben Bishop finished with 30 saves, 93.8% of what was coming at him.
New York Islanders 1 Florida Panthers 3 (Series tied at 1-1): While this game was mostly about roughing and filling up the penalty box with people, there were some goals in it too. Reilly Smith put up the Panthers in the first period with his third of the postseason, Nick Bjugstad scored in the second period to make it 2-0 and with 10 seconds in the game Dmitry Kulikov scored to make sure John Tavares’ earlier goal didn’t really matter. Roberto Luongo made 41 saves.
Chicago Blackhawks 3 St. Louis Blues 2 (Series tied at 1-1): The Blues might be complaining about the officiating, but they have no reason to. Their goal which preceded Andrew Shaw giving the Blackhawks the lead was rightly cancelled and didn’t count. The Blues took the lead through Vladimir Tarasenko, but Duncan Keith equalized with less than a minute left in the second period, setting the tone for the third. First it was Shaw, then it was Artemi Panarin completing the job.
Nashville Predators 3 Anaheim Ducks 2 (Predators lead series 1-0): It took James Neal only 35 seconds to get the scoring going for the Predators, but it was Filip Forsberg that will be remembered as the hero from this one with the game winner in the third period. The Ducks had a 2-1 lead in the second period, but Colin Wilson evened things up.
Next up are four game 2 encounters: Rangers vs Penguins (1-0 Pens), Flyers vs Capitals (1-0 Capitals), Wild vs Stars (1-0 Stars), Sharks vs Kings (1-0 Sharks)