Tampa Bay Lightning at Dallas Stars preview: One last chance until it’s a free-for-all

Dallas Stars at Tampa Bay Lightning: ROUND 4, GAME 6

Time: 8:00pm Eastern Time

Location: Rogers Place

Broadcast/Streaming: NBC, SN, TVA-S, CBC

Opponent SBNation Site: Defending Big D

Preview:

After the Lightning and Stars played three overtimes in two nights, I can’t imagine how tired both teams were yesterday. Thankfully there was a day off, but it’s right back to business tonight.

The Lightning weren’t able to finish off the series in overtime on Saturday, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying. They badly outplayed the Stars in both extra frames and, as fatigue would have it, the overtime winner was an ugly, crease-crashing, bang-in goal by Corey Perry that extended the series.

Tampa Bay was outplayed by Dallas in the first and third periods of Game 5, which can’t happen tonight if they want to end this series before the Stars have a chance to win the Cup. The Stars played like a desperate team, and despite not missing several players and having Andrej Sekera injured during the game, they somehow managed to pull out the win.

As for Steven Stamkos, well, it just didn’t seem right that the Lightning had a chance to win the Cup without him. Unfortunately, Jon Cooper revealed that Stamkos would not play for the remainder of the series yesterday.

Whether it was fatigue or complacency, the Lightning just looked ‘off’ for large parts of Game 5. That can’t happen again tonight, otherwise we’ll probably be heading for an all-or-nothing Game 7. The Lightning did a lot of things right in both extra frames, they just couldn’t capitalize on any of their chances. Hopefully they’re a lot more opportunistic and accurate tonight.

Tampa Bay Lightning

Forwards

Ondrej Palat - Brayden Point - Nikita Kucherov

Alex Killorn - Anthony Cirelli - Tyler Johnson

Barclay Goodrow - Yanni Gourde - Blake Coleman

Cedric Paquette - Patrick Maroon - Carter Verhaeghe

Alexander Volkov, Mathieu Joseph, Mitchell Stephens

Injured: Steven Stamkos

Defense Pairs

Victor Hedman - Jan Rutta

Ryan McDonagh - Erik Cernak

Mikhail Sergachev - Kevin Shattenkirk

Zach Bogosian, Luke Schenn, Braydon Coburn

Goaltenders

Andrei Vasilevskiy

Curtis McElhinney

Dallas Stars

Forwards

Jamie Benn - Tyler Seguin - Alexander Radulov

Mattias Janmark – Joe Pavelski – Denis Gurianov

Andrew Cogliano – Jason Dickinson – Nick Caamano

Joel Kiviranta – Justin Dowling – Corey Perry

Injured: Blake Comeau

Defense Pairs

Esa Lindell – John Klingberg

Jamie Oleksiak – Miro Heiskanen

Joel Hanley – Andrej Sekera

Goaltenders

Anton Khudobin

Jake Oettinger