Lightning vs. Blackhawks: Preview, Prediction for Game 5 of Stanley Cup Final
The first four games of the Stanley Cup Final have solved nothing. Each team has one win and one loss both at home and on the road, making this a best-of-three series with two of those matchups being hosted by the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Saturday's contest offers both the Lightning and Chicago Blackhawks the chance to take a 3-2 series lead and thus gain two cracks at eliminating the opposition.
Given how close the series has been, it's difficult to overstate just how important that is.
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Updated 2026 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs
Where: Amalie Arena, Tampa, Florida
When: Saturday, June 13, at 8 p.m. ET
TV Viewing Info: NBC, CBC, TVA
Lightning's Top Storylines
Who Plays in Net for Tampa Bay?
It would be unfair to blame Andrei Vasilevskiy for Tampa Bay's Game 4 loss. The rookie wasn't bad, really, allowing two goals on 19 shots, with both markers coming off opportunities at point-blank range.
Still, it's fair to say that the Lightning would prefer to have the option of starting Ben Bishop, who has a considerable edge in experience and has performed well all playoffs—particularly in elimination situations—but finds himself hobbled by an undisclosed injury.
Bishop didn't practice on Friday, but as Sportsnet's Chris Johnston reports, the Lightning are claiming that's all part of the plan:
Whether it's the plan or not, there isn't any guarantee that the Bolts' regular No. 1 will be available for Saturday's contest, which means Vasilevskiy may get the opportunity to accrue more experience at the highest level imaginable.
Tyler Johnson Claims Good Health
After an ineffective Game 4 by Johnson, we here at Bleacher Report collected the evidence that Tampa Bay's top centre was fighting through injury.
That evidence included reporting from some formidable journalists, observations about his play from insightful commentators and a reduction in his ice time. But the primary piece of the puzzle was what has happened in the faceoff circle in this series:
"Particularly compelling is the sudden change in the faceoff circle. In the last three games of this series, Johnson has taken just a single faceoff, while left wing Ondrej Palat has stepped into the dot on his behalf. Johnson took 1,103 draws during the regular season with a 48.7 percent win rate; Palat took just 35 and won only 10 of those.
"
On Friday, Johnson denied that the change had been made because he's fighting through an injury.
"[Ondrej Palat] beat me in practice, and he’s just better than me," Johnson said, via Mike Halford of Pro HockeyTalk. "I’ve never been that good at faceoffs, so it’s alright."
In other words, Johnson isn't hurt. It's just that after the first game of the Stanley Cup Final, head coach Jon Cooper recognized that his established practice for the entirety of the regular season and the first three rounds of the playoffs was wrong when he saw Palat best Johnson in practice.
As Halford notes, the Lightning have been tight-lipped about player health throughout the series, so skepticism is certainly warranted here.
Fans in Tampa Bay Are Watching
There's a tendency in some parts of the hockey world to shrug off Southern teams as playing in uniformly weak markets for the sport. That's a generalization, and the Lightning appear to be the exception, as the Globe and Mail's James Mirtle notes:
The Lightning may play in Florida, but unlike the other NHL team in the state, they have been well supported all year—and that support has translated to rapt attention trained on a compelling Stanley Cup Final.
Blackhawks' Top Storylines
Duncan Keith Is Holding Up the Blue Line
It's been more than a month since Duncan Keith played less than 27 minutes in a hockey game. The ability to log those sort of minutes is remarkable, but it isn't what sets Keith apart from his peers.
Rather, it's the fact that he's continued to be undeniably effective.
Ryan Lambert of Yahoo Sports broke down Keith's incredible contribution in a long, detailed piece on Friday:
"That's correct: 70 percent of all of Chicago's high-quality chances in this postseason, and 60 percent of its goals, have come with Keith on the ice. It's astonishing, really. Yes, this also means he's seeing a larger percentage of the shots, goals, and scoring chances against. But the first and last of these three are to be expected given that he's playing with basically everyone on his team at this point, and he's doing it against the most heavily relied-upon competition in recent memory. And the fact that all those chances and attempts aren't ending up in the back of the net speaks to how well he continues to control things. It's also reflected in his goals-for percentage.
"
Lambert argues that regardless of whether Chicago wins or loses this series, Keith's exemplary work is worthy of the Conn Smythe Trophy.
Who Rounds out the Cast on Defence?
While Chicago coach Joel Quenneville has been doing his best to play the life out of his top defenceman, at times he has no choice but to send out his lesser options.
That's been a problem for most of the playoffs and became incredibly concerning after the loss of Michal Rozsival to ankle surgery in the second round.
Quenneville has rotated through a cast of four players on his bottom pair, with declining veteran Kimmo Timonen and minor league journeyman Kyle Cumiskey as his most frequent left-side options and rookie Trevor van Riemsdyk and part-timer David Rundblad as his choices on the right side.
Timonen and van Riemsdyk played in Game 4, with the old Finn collecting five minutes and 46 seconds of ice time and the young American totaling 6:37.
Learning to Respect the Lightning
Quenneville made an interesting comment on Friday that NHL.com's Brian Hedger picked up.
"I don't think [the Lightning] probably got the respect around here that maybe was deserved," Chicago's coach explained. "Not seeing them as much as we have in Western opponents, they're fast [and] they're quick. I think we need to be quicker. We need to be more predictable. We got to want the puck."
It would be understandable if the 'Hawks didn't properly appreciate the challenge presented by Tampa Bay. Chicago has been a dominant team for years, while prior to this season the Cooper-coached Lightning had never won a playoff game.
With that said, the Blackhawks have a pretty strong history in the last few years of being able to find that extra gear at the end of a series to push through for the win. They showed that most recently in their conference final matchup against Anaheim.
Quenneville clearly thinks his team has more to give, and if he's right, that could be the difference in a series in which there hasn't been any clear separation between the teams.
Prediction
Blackhawks 3, Lightning 2
Statistics courtesy of NHL.com.
