NHL champion in 2020 and 2021 (then finalist in 2022), the Tampa Bay Lightning qualified for the play-offs on Saturday, thanks to a regular season victory over the New York Islanders (5-0).
Pierre-Édouard Bellemare, the Florida franchise striker and the only Frenchman to play in the NHL, scored his 13th point of the season, on an assist on his team’s second goal (scored by Tanner Jeannot). On his counter, Bellemare now has four goals and nine assists for the current season (his one-year record is 22 pts, in 2019-2020, when he played with the Colorado Avalanche).
While the NHL teams still have between five and seven games to play before the start of the play-offs, eight of them have so far qualified for the rest of the competition: Boston, Toronto, Tampa Bay, Carolina, the NY Rangers and New Jersey in the Eastern Conference, Las Vegas and Edmonton in the West.