Steven Stamkos scored twice as the Tampa Bay Lightning advanced to the Stanley Cup Final for the third consecutive season, defeating the New York Rangers 2-1 in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Final on Saturday.
Ondrej Palat added two assists in the victory, while Andrei Vasilevskiy made 20 saves.
Frank Vatrano had the lone tally for the Rangers, while goalie Igor Shesterkin turned away 29 shots.
Stamkos elevates his game to cap off outstanding series
Stamkos has undergone one of the most fascinating individual arcs of the modern era and it’s only fitting that the Lightning captain scored both goals to lead his team back to the Final for the third consecutive year. Tampa Bay won its first Cup in the bubble but Stamkos was rendered to just one heroic shift in the 2020 Final, where he scored against the Dallas Stars.
A fully healthy Stamkos is one of the league’s preeminent forces and to pull off the nearly unfathomable task of advancing to a third Stanley Cup, with Brayden Point’s injury-related absence clouding over the series, Stamkos needed to be at his best. It’s only fitting that he was the best player in Game 6 after recording 106 points in 81 games during the regular season, and with five goals and two assists in this series, there are no qualifiers on his superstar status.
Stamkos’s first goal won’t be on his career highlight-reel, but it speaks to his unmatched goal-scoring instincts, beating Shesterkin on a shot that even the cameraman appeared to do a double take on, but they all count the same, and New York’s goalie can be afforded a pass given his outstanding play during the series.
What’s most impressive is how Stamkos rose to the occasion on his game-winning marker. Vatrano beat Vasilevskiy off a faceoff with just under six minutes to go to tie it. But if we keep resorting back to the resolve of a champion, Stamkos tucked home a controversial winner 21 seconds later, appearing to steer the puck in off his body before making incidental contact with Shesterkin.
If we applied the standards of basketball and football prodigies, it’d be easy to point out here that all Stamkos does is win, he’s been a household name to the keenest of hockey observers for nearly two decades, and along with Vasilevskiy and Nikita Kucherov, is a foundational part of hockey’s modern dynasty.
Standing in the way is a younger, faster, more dynamic Avalanche team. Stamkos and his peers aren’t going to flinch.
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