CHICAGO – While Ben Bishop battled pain, the Tampa Bay Lightning and Chicago Blackhawks put on another fast, fun, classic performance in the Stanley Cup final.
Bishop gutted through an apparent injury to make 36 saves, and Cedric Paquette scored the winner with three minutes left as the Lightning beat the Blackhawks 3-2 in Game 3 on Monday night at United Center. Tampa Bay takes a 2-1 series lead into Game 4 on Wednesday.
Bishop looked like he couldn’t move side-to-side or up-and-down at times. At others he was brilliant, getting the job done despite obviously labouring.
“He’s a competitor,” said Tampa forward Tyler Johnson. “He’s got all the confidence in the world from us. He never lets us down.”
The Blackhawks beat him twice, a power-play goal by Brad Richards and one from the slot by Brad Richards, but Bishop making it through all 60 minutes was an accomplishment in itself.
At the other end, Ryan Callahan, Ondrej Palat and Paquette scored on Corey Crawford (29 saves) to improve the Lightning’s road record in these playoffs to 8-3.
With a raucous sellout crowd of 22,336 roaring for the first Cup final game here in two years, the Lightning weren’t intimidated and came out flying. As coach Jon Cooper aggressively changed lines to get favourable matchups, players made it pay off.
Victor Hedman made one of the game’s best heads-up plays by hitting Callahan perfectly at the blue line with a slap pass from inside his own goal line at 5:09. Callahan finished by firing top shelf on Crawford to open the scoring.
More than 10 minutes of complete Blackhawks domination followed. As Bishop fought through pain moving side to side and getting up and down, Chicago took 15 straight shots on net.
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One of them beat Bishop. Richards bombed away from the point on the power play, and with Andrew Shaw screening, tied the score 14:22 in.
After ending a 13 minute 19 second shot drought and getting out-shot 19-7 in the first, the Lightning turned the tables in the second with 17 shots to the Blackhawks’ seven. Crawford stopped them all, none better than Nikita Kucherov’s breakaway out of the penalty box.
“I think we responded well and played well the last 40 minutes,” said Hedman.
Crawford also helped the Blackhawks kill a five-on-three power play for 1:26 that fired up the building and built some momentum.
With Bishop fighting through the pain, the Lightning got caught on for a long shift in the third period that led to Chicago’s go-ahead goal. Hossa fed a wide-open Saad between the faceoff circles for his seventh of the playoffs at 4:14.
The lead was short-lived, as Palat poked a loose puck in at the right post just 13 seconds later. Fans hadn’t stopped cheering by the time the Lightning were celebrating.
Hedman’s brilliant night continued as he skated circles around the Blackhawks in the offensive zone and fed Paquette for the winner at 16:49 of the third.
“He always seems to find those plays as the game is coming to an end,” said Tampa defenceman Anton Stralman.
Notes — Blackhawks defenceman Johnny Oduya left the game late in the second period shortly after being tripped by Kucherov. He returned early in the third. … The Lightning went back to 11 forwards and seven defencemen, scratching Jonathan Drouin in favour of Nikita Nesterov. … Chicago forward Bryan Bickell and defenceman Trevor van Riemsdyk made their series debuts, replacing Kris Versteeg and David Rundblad.
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