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Tampa Bay has a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven
semifinal series and will look to close it out Wednesday in
Uniondale, N.Y.
Yanni Gourde, Ondrej Palat, Brayden Point and Luke Schenn also
scored for the defending champions, who set a franchise playoff
record for goals differential. Vasilevskiy made 21 saves for his
third shutout of this year's playoffs.
Islanders starting goalie Semyon Varlamov surrendered three
goals on 16 shots before being pulled. Ilya Sorokin stopped 20
of 25 shots in relief. The result was the most one-sided
postseason defeat in Islanders history.
The Lightning were looking for a quick start and received it
when Stamkos scored just 45 seconds into the clash when he
pounced on a loose puck in the left circle. He snapped a
personal five-game goal drought.
Gourde doubled the lead at the 11:04 mark when he stole the puck
in the offensive zone and his cross-ice pass banked into the net
off defender Andy Greene. Killorn's first of the game, a
redirect of David Savard's point shot, spelled the end of the
game for Varlamov at 15:27 of the one-sided opening frame.
The goalie switch didn't turn the tide. Stamkos potted his
second of the game with a one-timer from the left faceoff dot
for a power-play goal at 5:42 of the middle frame, and then
Palat extended the lead to 5-0 when he deflected Savard's point
shot 10 minutes later.
Killorn's second of the game was another power-play marker and
another deflected point shot with 2:07 remaining in the middle
period.
The onslaught didn't end there. Point extended his goal-scoring
streak to eight games when he scored Tampa Bay's 20th power-play
goal of the playoffs 119 seconds into the third period.
His streak is the second longest in a single year in Stanley Cup
history, two back of the mark set by Reggie Leach of the
Philadelphia Flyers in 1976.
Schenn rounded out the scoring when his point shot ricocheted
off the skate of Islanders defenseman Ryan Pulock and into the
net at 12:05 of the third period. Schenn, who played in place of
the injured Erik Cernak, scored his first playoff goal since
2016.
New York's top goal-scorer, Mathew Barzal, was given a
five-minute major penalty and game misconduct for cross-checking
Jan Rutta at the end of the second period.
--Field Level Media
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