The Tampa Bay Lightning show no interest in giving up the title of champions. None at all.
After back-to-back home wins to start the Stanley Cup Final, the defending champion Lightning dominated the canadians in Game 3 on Friday in Montreal.
Undeterred from being in the way, the Lightning scored the game’s first two goals and never looked back on their way to a convincing 6-3 victory.
Now, after another dominating performance, the Lightning are one win away from repeating as Stanley Cup champions.
These are the best moments from Game 3.
Up 2-0 in the series, the Lightning didn’t wait long to go up 1-0 in Game 3, scoring in the first two minutes thanks to Jan Rutta.
In the blink of an eye, Rayo had scored another goal, this time by Victor Hedman. It was the 88th goal of his playoff career, the most by any active defenseman in the NHL.
Two goals on two consecutive shots is a pretty efficient way to run an offense.
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While the Lightning were able to score quickly, they also ran into a bit of adversity as Blake Coleman had to leave the game due to injury after crashing hard into the boards.
The home team Canadians regrouped and responded. With roughly eight minutes left in the opening period, they cut their deficit in half when Phillip Danault scored.
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After the first intermission, Rayo started the second half the same way they started the first: with a goal.
This time it was Nikita Kucherov, marking the third Rayo member to score.
If you blinked, there was a chance you might have missed Tyler Johnson’s next goal, which gave the Lightning a 4-1 lead.
But the Canadiens didn’t go down without a fight. Nicholas Suzuki scored his seventh goal of the playoffs to once again cut Rayo’s lead in half.
The Canadiens’ efforts were in vain, however, as with less than five minutes to play in the third, Johnson scored a second goal to push Tampa Bay’s lead to 5–2 and put the game out of reach.
Still, Corey Perry and the Canadiens battled on, scoring another to make it 5-3.
But with an empty net goal from Blake Coleman to cap it off, the Lightning won 6-3, tightening their grip on this series.
They will look to complete the sweep in Game 4, which begins at 8 pm ET on Monday (NBC).
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