Penguins Prove Their Clear Superiority over Lightning in Convincing Game 3 Win

Andrei Vasilevskiy must have felt like a kid cleaning the balls off a driving range. The Tampa Bay Lightning goaltender was under siege on Wednesday night as the Pittsburgh Penguins played a statement game in the Eastern Conference Final.

The statement? These Pens are mighty.

Firing 48 shots at Vasilevskiy, the Penguins used their speed and transition game to dominate the Lightning on the road to take a 4-2 victory in Game 3 and a 2-1 series lead.

Much like the way Wednesday’s game evolved, this series has tilted in favor of the Penguins since they dropped the opening game on home ice. They turned in shot counts of 35 in Game 1, another 41 in Game 2 and then nearly 50 in the third contest.

Their depth, speed and star power were on full display in this one, starting with a player who provides all three in Phil Kessel.

His star power has faded the past couple of seasons thanks to declining numbers with the Toronto Maple Leafs and in his first year with the Penguins, but it’s on the rise again with an incredible postseason that has him leading the Pens in both goals (seven) and points (16) through 14 games so far.

For the record, his 51 goals and 120 points in 164 games over the past two campaigns are numbers most NHLers would consider career boosters. But for Kessel, who has flirted with 40 goals and been a point-per-game player at his peak, they’ve been disappointing.

He finds himself alongside Carl Hagelin and Nick Bonino as a depth player on a third line that is producing like a top unit. 

By comparison, the Lightning have a fine top nine and a respectable third trio of Brian Boyle, Cedric Paquette and J.T. Brown. But those three have a total of three goals and five points this spring. The now nicknamed HBK line has 14 goals and 39 points.

In fact, the Kessel line is only considered third because the top two trios are centered by superstars Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin—who haven’t been as productive as Kessel but who both got on the scoresheet on Wednesday. 

Crosby scored the winning goal in the third period, a power-play marker set up by Malkin and Justin Schultz that gave the Pens a 3-1 lead. 

“I had some really good chances,” Crosby said on the ice during the postgame broadcast. “[Vasilevskiy] made some good saves. He challenges a lot so you really have to pick your spot. Glad we could get that extra one there.”

Linemate Chris Kunitz made it 4-1 before a late goal from Ondrej Palat made the score seem more respectable than the play on the ice illustrated.

The outcome was never really in doubt. The Penguins could have won by an even more lopsided score if not for Vasilevskiy’s solid play. He made great saves on both Kessel and Crosby to keep the Bolts’ hopes alive, at least in spirit, during a second period that saw the Penguins fire 21 shots on goal and come away with just a single marker from Hagelin in the final 10 seconds of the frame.

On a day the Penguins' Jim Rutherford was announced as a finalist for the NHL General Manager of the Year honor along with Jim Nill of the Dallas Stars and Brian MacLellan of the Washington Capitals, his team may be proving him to be the most deserving.

It’s a regular-season award, but Rutherford’s Pens are the last team standing in that race, eliminating the Capitals in the second round as the Stars fell to the St. Louis Blues.

The blockbuster deal that brought Kessel to town seemed like a no-brainer, but other moves to bring in support players such as Eric Fehr, Matt Cullen and Bonino have become equally as important.

The midseason addition of Hagelin looks genius as he and Kessel have formed a speedy and dangerous duo.

They scored on the rush on Wednesday, with Kessel’s blast into Vasilevskiy’s pads turning into an empty-net rebound for Hagelin to open the scoring late in the second period.

“It’s a great feeling,” Hagelin said during intermission on the CBC broadcast when asked how it felt to be rewarded at the end of a dominant period. “That’s one of our better periods of the playoffs.

“Definitely in that second period, you could see we were in their zone the whole time. [The Lightning] looked a bit tired.”

That third line showed it could cycle the puck, too, with Kessel scoring his seventh a little more than five minutes into the third when Bonino found him in the slot with a pass from behind the net.

Kessel had millimeters of space on the far side and put it off the post and in—a pure sniper’s goal.

Crosby’s was impressive, too, as he went to his knees to launch a laser past Vasilevskiy.

The Lightning goalie smashed his stick and looked helplessly to the bench after the fourth Penguins goal, an unassisted marker by Kunitz that came after an awful turnover right in front of their net.

Signs suggest the Penguins aren’t about to slow down, though, so until starter Ben Bishop can return from his leg injury, Vasilevskiy will have to get used to the punishing workload.

There’s no doubt the Lightning are also a talented team and we may not yet have seen their best, but that will have to happen sooner than later if they want to hang with the Penguins in this series.