TAMPA | History has repeated itself so often over the past two years that it risks being redundant. Nevertheless, it is worth emphasizing it once more. The Lightning are 16-0 in the game following a loss.
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Jon Cooper’s troop will have every interest in bringing this sequence to 17, otherwise it will fly to Toronto with the risk of suffering elimination on Monday evening.
“We have a recipe, we have a plan. We have found ourselves in this situation before in recent years. Is it a guarantee that we will win on Monday night? No. But I have faith in this group of veterans. I know they will bounce back, ”said the Lightning coach at the end of his team’s training.
Avoiding the penalty box is definitely part of that plan. The Floridians gave the Maple Leafs 15 power plays (they also got 15) in the first three games of this matchup.
“The best goalkeeper”
However, their main weapon is in front of the net. In his 16 appearances in net following a loss, Andrei Vasilevskiy has maintained a 1.34 goals- once morest average. In three of the last four occasions, he blanked the opponent.
Quite a contrast to the 11 goals he’s allowed since the start of this series.
“I am convinced that we have the best goalkeeper in the world. The problem is that we gave the Leafs phenomenal chances. Yesterday [vendredi]the top scorer in the League [Auston Matthews] appeared alone before him. He stopped that shot and then the comeback that immediately followed. He made those saves, that’s why he’s the best. »
Campbell doesn’t worry regarding Cooper
At the other end of the rink, Jack Campbell was also eye-opening – for his part, stopping Steven Stamkos’ one-timer from close range.
Besides, the Lightning captain is still looking for his first goal of the series. Nikita Kucherov, Ondrej Palat and Brayden Point have one each.
Statistics that do not bother Cooper. “We scored seven goals once morest him in the last two games. If we are offered an average of 3.5 goals in every two games, we will take it, he argued. Yes, he made some good saves. But we also beat him. The number of goals we score does not worry me. It’s the number of those who are warned that matters most to me. »
The Lightning have allowed an average of 4.33 goals per game in this series. In the regular season, this average was 2.78.