Tampa Bay Series Review

After winning each of their series in six games, the regular season champions, the Hurricanes, and the defending champions, the Lighting, were put on a collision course to face each other in the second round. The Lightning finished third in the division with 75 points, five points off the pace in the division. They did this without their former Hart Trophy winner and a captain that only played 38 games. With a healthy team for the entire season, they would've likely won the division again this season. The two teams split their eight matchups in the regular season, each going 4-3-1. Tampa Bay rolled into the first round with its full arsenal of players and took down Florida behind 11 points from Nikita Kucherov (3-8-11) and eight each from Alex Killorn, Steven Stamkos, and Victor Hedman. Their power play scored eight times and gave Florida so many fits they used three different goalies in the series. There's a reason they're the defending champs and not much changed for this team. They have the best goalie in the world and are just a nightmare to face in the regular season, let alone in the playoffs.

Tampa Bay Series in Retrospect

The word struggle doesn't even begin to describe the first two games of this series for the Hurricanes. Before the puck dropped for Game 1, it was announced that Nino Niederreiter had been injured during practice and would be out to open this series. This would allow Cedric Paquette to return after missing the end of the regular season and the entire Nashville series. Alex Nedeljkovic earned the start opposite Andrei Vasilevskiy to begin the series and the two played extremely well in the first game. In a common theme for this series, neither team scored in the first period, but the Canes had a decided edge throughout the opening period. The ice was broken in the second period when the Lightning scored on the power play, another common occurrence for this series when Brayden Point deflected home a shot from Victor Hedman to beat Nedeljkovic and give Tampa the opening goal of the series and a lead after two periods. Carolina evened it early in the third period on the power play. Jake Bean unleashed a seeing-eye wrister from the point that snuck past Vasilevskiy to tie it up with over 18 minutes left in regulation. Tampa Bay got better as this game went on by Nedeljkovic was up to the task the entire game. Unfortunately, he made a costly mistake that ultimately cost them the game. Barclay Goodrow let go a seemingly harmless shot that squeaked under Nedeljkovic with 7:21 left in the period to give Tampa the 2-1 lead and eventually the win as Vasilevskiy (37 saves) shut the door to take a 1-0 series lead. Game 2 offered a lot of the same things. The game was scoreless after the first period and Tampa Bay would score first again in the second period. This time, Alex Killorn started the scoring less than halfway through the period. The biggest difference here though is that Tampa Bay didn't wait for the Canes to tie it up. Victor Hedman found Anthony Cirelli on a stretch pass that should've been handled by Brady Skjei. The result was a backhand from Cirelli that beat Ned to give Tampa Bay a 2-0 lead. Vasilevskiy was once again brilliant in the third period and if not for a goal from Andrei Svechnikov with the goalie pulled, he'd have been perfect. Despite the late goal, the Canes had lost both games at home and were heading to Tampa Bay in a serious hole. To make matters worse, Vincent Trocheck went down with an injury in this game, putting the Canes down two big scorers.

To light a spark in his team, Rod Brind'Amour decided to shake things up a little by sitting Alex Nedeljkovic and giving Petr Mrazek his first taste of the 2021 postseason. Morgan Geekie also drew into the game with Trocheck out. This game had yet another scoreless first period but decided to change the script up a little bit. It would be the Canes getting on the board first with Brett Pesce putting one past Vasilevskiy, who I think stops this more often than not. The Canes would add another after Teuvo Teravainen tipped a Jaccob Slavin stretch pass between his legs to Sebastian Aho who walked in a beat Vasilevskiy clean to take a 2-0 lead less than halfway through the period. Tampa Bay would manage to get the only two power plays of the period and would score on both of them courtesy of Brayden Point and Alex Killorn to tie the game at 2-2 through two periods. Neither would score in the third period, giving us our first overtime game of the series and the Canes' fifth of the postseason. The Canes needed to kill the remainder of Dougie Hamilton's penalty carrying over from the third period, which they did and would draw a penalty on Nikita Kucherov over four minutes into the session. Carolina would capitalize on this mistake when Jordan Staal was the benefactor of a shot from Sebastian Aho that deflected off his leg and into the net to give the Canes their first win in the series and cutting into the series deficit. Petr Mrazek would stop 35 shots in his first action. His performance was good enough to get him his second consecutive start in Game 4. The game saw someone finally score in the first period with Brayden Point finding the back of the net late in the period to give Tampa the first lead after the first period in the series. The floodgates opened up in the second period. Teravainen ripped a shot past Vasilevskiy 4:30 into the period and Jesper Fast would add another 39 seconds later to give the Canes a 2-1 lead. Steven Stamkos would capitalize on the power play, tying the game at 2 with 10:06 left in the period. Dougie Hamilton and Jaccob Slavin would score just over two minutes apart to give the Canes a 4-2 lead with 7:19 remaining in the period. This would prove to be the beginning of the end for the Canes. Tampa Bay would rattle off three consecutive goals, two on the power play, to take a 5-4 lead into the intermission and would add a Nikita Kucherov goal in the third period to take a 6-4 win and 3-1 series lead heading back to Raleigh. 

With the series shifting back to PNC Arena, the Canes got some good news with both Niederreiter and Trocheck back into the lineup in an elimination game. Alex Nedeljkovic was back in the net following a less-than-ideal performance from Mrazek in Game 4. While this would certainly look good on paper, the Canes didn't get anything going on offense. Brayden Point would score on the power play in the second period and Ross Colton would score off a turnover to give Tampa Bay a 2-0 win and the series win in five games to advance to the Stanley Cup Semifinals representing the Central Division to face the winner of the Boston/New York series. It was an unfortunate way for the Canes to go out considering how successful their regular season was. Andrei Vasilevskiy showed just how important he is and why he's the absolute best goalie in the world and likely Vezina winner. Special teams would prove to be the deciding factor with Tampa Bay outscoring the Canes 7-2 on the man advantage. No Canes player scored more than one goal in the period with nine players recording a single goal. Meanwhile, Nikita Kucherov and Brayden Point led the team in scoring, Point with four goals and Kucherov with seven points. 

Canes' Three Stars of the Series

Third Star- Andrei Svechnikov- 1 G, 4 A, 18 SOG

Take away his six penalty minutes in Game 4, Svechnikov may have been the best forward in the series for the Canes. His lack of discipline is often brought up at different points, but those three minors in one game were his only penalities in the entire series. I constantly thought he was dangerous when the Canes' offense was struggling. He was a point per game player in this series and led the team in points and assists. In fact, he recorded points in every game except for Game 5 and you can't record points during shutouts. We'd have absolutely loved for at least a few more of his 18 shots go into the net, but no one scored more than once in the series.

Second Star- Alex Nedeljkovic- 0-3-0, 6 GA, .914 SV%

Here me out for the rationale behind this, but the glaring problem with this statline is going to be the fact that Ned didn't win a game in this series in three starts. Despite losing all three starts, Ned only allowed two goals in each starts and the team was outscored 6-2 in those three games. You can argue that he could've stopped at least one of the goals in each of his starts. None of that matters when the team in front of you doesn't score. I thought Ned kept the team in the game in each of his starts and is looking to be the future of goaltending for this team.

First Star- Sebastian Aho- 1 G, 3 A 20:40 ATOI

Aho is this team's most important forward, so when he isn't scoring, the team isn't either. He only scored one goal in this series, but did a great job of facilitating the offense keeping the team in it. Three of his four points came in Game 3 (1-2-3), meaning he only had one point outside of that, but he was the team's best player in this series. He averaged the second-most time on ice per game, only behind Martin Necas, and was pivotal in all aspects of the game.