Lightning hold off Stars in Game 2, even Stanley Cup Final

The Tampa Bay Lightning scored three goals in the first period before holding on to defeat the Dallas Stars 3-2 in Game 2 and even the Stanley Cup Final at Rogers Place in Edmonton on Monday.

"We're in the Stanley Cup Final, you've got a 3-0 lead and you give up two; the one thing that this team has done is they just never put themselves in panic mode," Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. "Instead of trying to protect the lead, they went out there and actually they kind of took it to them. Not in the sense that we were trying to score, but we were completely engaged, it was really calm on the bench. It's just our attitude. They don't go through the waves of a game. There are so many emotions that occur through 60 minutes it's easy to get caught up in it and they don't. They knew the job at hand, the talk on the bench was to close this out, and that's what they did."
Nikita Kucherov had two assists to set the Lightning record for points in a postseason. He has 28 points (six goals, 22 assists), two more than Brad Richards had in the 2004 Stanley Cup Playoffs, when the Lightning won the Cup.
WATCH: [All Stars vs. Lightning highlights]
Brayden Point, Ondrej Palat and Kevin Shattenkirk scored for Tampa Bay, which is 6-0 following a loss this postseason. Andrei Vasilevskiy made 27 saves, including 17 on 18 shots in the second period, when the Stars had four power plays.
"Can't say enough about him, what he's done for us," Cooper said of Vasilevskiy, who has started each of the 21 games the Lightning have played this postseason. "Chalk another one up for him for outstanding tonight."
Anton Khudobin made 28 saves, Joe Pavelski and Mattias Janmark scored, and John Klingberg and Alexander Radulov each had two assists for the Stars, who had a four-game winning streak end.
Game 3 of the best-of-7 series is in Edmonton, the hub city for the Cup Final, on Wednesday (8 p.m. ET; NBCSN, CBC, SN, TVAS).
"I'll give our guys credit because they battled right back in the second period," Dallas coach Rick Bowness said. "We dominated that second period and [Vasilevskiy] had to make a lot of huge saves. So they won the first, we won the second and [Vasilevskiy] kept it in there, and then it was a pretty even third. But you can't be doing what we did in the last half of the first period."

The Lightning scored their three goals in a span of 3:53. The first two came on the power play, which was 0-for-14 in the previous four games.
Point made it 1-0 at 11:23 with a one-timer from the right hash marks off a pass from Kucherov. It was the first time in seven games Tampa Bay scored first.
Palat extended the lead to 2-0 at 14:22, scoring from the left circle after a cross-ice pass from Kucherov.
"We just need to keep it simple," Palat said. "We need to shoot the puck, and as soon as we start shooting the puck, the play is going to open up. I thought we did a good job with that and that's how we scored."
Shattenkirk scored from the right point when his shot redirected off Stars defenseman Esa Lindell to make it 3-0 at 15:16.
The Lightning outshot the Stars 14-6 in the first period.
"It couldn't get much worse, so we had to step up our game," Janmark said.

The Stars outshot the Lightning 18-5 in the second period with a power-play goal from Pavelski on a net-front redirection of Klingberg's shot from the point to make it 3-1 at 14:43.
Janmark got Dallas within 3-2 at 5:27 of the third period, tapping a pass from Klingberg into an open net for his first goal of the postseason.
"That was a big goal at that time in the game, but now it's pretty pointless," Janmark said.
The Stars did not have a shot on goal for the next 11:08 and were outshot 11-2 in the final 14:33.
Mikhail Sergachev appeared to score for Tampa Bay at 9:14 of the third, but Dallas challenged the play for offside, and the goal was reversed after a video review.
"We got back to what makes us successful," Lightning defenseman Victor Hedman said. "We got pucks deep, we got on the forecheck, we had some good opportunities. We scored a goal, obviously it was disallowed. I just liked the way we responded after they scored that second goal, really closed them out."
NOTES:Blake Comeau was unfit to play in the third period for Dallas. The forward left favoring his right side following an open-ice hit by Ryan McDonagh at 16:42 of the second. Bowness did not have an update on Comeau's status following the game but said he hopes he can play in Game 3.