SUNRISE
Adidas Noah Hanifin Jersey , Fla. — The host Florida Panthers and the Tampa Bay Lightning, who will meet Saturday night at the BB&T Center, have been relying on backup goalies a lot lately.For the Lightning, it’s Louis Domingue, a 26-year-old Canadian who is 9-4-0 this season with a 3.25 goals-against average and an .899 save percentage. He has filled in effectively for starter Andrei Vasilevskiy, who on Saturday will miss his 10th consecutive game due to a fractured left foot.A former fifth-round pick, Domingue was in the American Hockey League when the Lightning acquired him on November 24, 2017. The plan was to bring in Domingue to the organization as a third-string, emergency goalie.Article continues below ...But when Lightning backup Peter Budaj got injured, Domingue got called up to Tampa Bay and went 7-3-1 — the first winning record in an NHL career that started in 2014.Before the trade, Lightning scouts liked the 6-foot-3, 210-pound Domingue’s size and athleticism, and they have proven to have keen eyes.“(Domingue) has ended up making us look good
Adidas Alan Quine Jersey ,” Lightning general manager Julien BriseBois told The Tampa Bay Times. “He went beyond what we realistically could’ve expected.”Meanwhile, the Panthers have played most of this season without starting goalie Roberto Luongo, who is 4-3-0 this season with a 3.07 GAA and a .902 save percentage.Coincidentally, he injured his knee against Tampa Bay in this year’s season opener and is once again out due to a lower-body issue.James Reimer has stepped in for Luongo, producing a 5-6-2 record, including Friday’s 3-2 win over the Buffalo Sabres.Reimer made 22 saves, and the Panthers won on an overtime goal by captain Aleksander Barkov.Evgenii Dadonov and Jared McCann also scored, and Jonathan Huberdeau added two assists, including one on the game-winner.This was the first time in a while that Huberdeau had been reunited on the same line as Barkov and it worked.“It was so fun,” Barkov said. “We haven’t played together for a while. It’s fun to play with a guy who thinks about the game the same way.”Huberdeau leads the team with 26 points, and Mike Hoffman tops the Panthers with 12 goals. Dadonov is second in goals (11) and points (24). And Barkov, who has nine goals and 22 points, is in the thick of the race for team honors as well.Nikita Kucherov leads Tampa Bay with 35 points
Adidas Dougie Hamilton Jersey , and Brayden Point tops the Lightning with 18 goals. Steven Stamkos ranks third on the team with 22 points, and he is likely due a breakout game at any time.This will be the third time this season the Lightning and Panthers have met. The host Lightning won 2-1 in a shootout in the season opener. That’s the game where Luongo got hurt the first time.In the rematch, Luongo was back in the nets, and this time only his pride was hurt as the visiting Lightning beat him and the Panthers 7-3.As for the standings in the Atlantic Division, the Lightning (18-7-1) lead with 37 points, and the Panthers (10-10-4) are in the cellar with 24 points. ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) No team in the ultra-competitive Western Conference has made the playoffs more times in a row than the Minnesota Wild, with six straight appearances to share the current streak lead with the Anaheim Ducks.That regular season consistency has only led, however, to April dissatisfaction. Ousted in five games by Winnipeg in their first-round series, the Wild were sent again to an early exit from the Stanley Cup tournament. They were shut out by the Jets in the last two contests and finished with a scoreless streak of 141:47.”It’s really disappointing. I don’t think that’s indicative of the kind of team that we have. It was just a really tough night,” center Matt Cullen said after the 5-0 loss in Winnipeg on Friday. ”Obviously with our backs against the wall, I think we all expected more and hoped for more
Adidas Julien Gauthier Jersey , and I think if we could do it all over again every guy would like to give more.”There was no shame in being beaten by the Jets, a deeper, faster team with an exceptional goalie in Connor Hellebuyck that finished with the second-best record in the NHL in 2017-18. For the Wild, though, there’s an overarching theme of staying stuck at a good-but-not-great level since the franchise-altering signings of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter helped start this remarkable-but-unfulfilling run of making the playoffs every year with the two stars on the roster.”We want more. We expect more from ourselves. We let another one slip away,” right wing Charlie Coyle said.Here are some key angles to the end of the Wild’s season:LOOKING BACKThe Wild are 2-6 in series and 15-29 in games in the postseason during the Parise-Suter era that began on July 4, 2012. The 17-year-old franchise’s only advancement past the second round remains the 2003 surge to the Western Conference finals, where the Wild were swept by the Ducks.The postseason trouble encountered by the Wild used to be in the form of the Chicago Blackhawks, who eliminated them in 2013, 2014 and 2015. The Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup in the first and third of those years. They lost in the first round in 2016 and 2017, though, and failed to make the playoffs this spring for the first time in 10 years. So Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews are no longer the problem.Now Nashville and Winnipeg have taken the lead in the daunting Central Division, with the Predators taking the Presidents’ Trophy with the league’s best record one season after reaching the Stanley Cup finals. Six of the seven teams made the playoffs either last year or this year.”We certainly believed that we could give these guys a real run for it even though nobody seemed to be giving us a chance
Adidas Petr Mrazek Jersey ,” goalie Devan Dubnyk said. ”We’re one play away each game. I know that’s easy to say, but it’s really how close it was besides tonight.”BANGED UPThis year, in fairness, one of the hurdles to postseason success became the rare absence of Suter, who has long been one of the NHL’s most durable players as a puck-moving, tough-minded defenseman. His broken ankle diluted the blue line in the final week of the regular season.Then Parise, whose late-season surge signaled he was all the way back from the back injury and surgery that kept him out for the first 39 games, was knocked out of action with a broken sternum suffered in Game 3 against the Jets.”Every team has injuries, right?” captain Mikko Koivu said, adding: ”For sure that hurts, there’s no question about that. But we can’t go behind that.”CULLEN MULLINGMatt Cullen, after winning the Stanley Cup with the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2016 and 2017, put off retirement for another year and returned to his home-state team with 11 goals
Adidas Calvin De Haan Jersey , 11 assists and valuable leadership at age 41. He wasn’t ready to address his future after Game 5.”My only thought here the last while was getting it back home for Game 6,” Cullen said. ”So to be honest I don’t have an answer right now.”QUIET COYLENot every forward will be productive in a playoff series, of course, but the Wild were hurting without any goals or assists by three of their top-nine forwards: Coyle, Nino Niederreiter and Jason Zucker. Coyle, who had only 11 goals during the regular season, was especially ineffective against the Jets.”Had plenty of chances to finish. I didn’t finish. Or the goalie came up big,” Coyle said. ”Whatever it is I didn’t get the job done. That hurts.”—