Burns: 3 Things we learned from advancing to the Eastern Conference Final

The Tampa Bay Lightning are moving on to the Eastern Conference Final for the third time in the past four seasons.
And they're doing so after winning four-straight games against a Boston team many people questioned if the Lightning would ever beat after three disastrous results the first three times they played in the regular season.

Tampa Bay used the same formula to defeat Boston 3-1 in Game 5 that it used in Games 2-4, namely, limiting turnovers to basically none; a smothering, aggressive defense that took away any time and space from the Bruins; an energetic forecheck that created turnovers and kept the Bruins from breaking out of their own end cleanly; timely goal scoring from a bevy of different players (11different Bolts scored in the series); and rock-solid goaltending by Andrei Vasilevskiy.
A lot of observers felt the Lightning and the Bruins were the two best teams in the Eastern Conference after the regular season, and their point totals would bear that out.
So what does it say about the Bolts then that they were able to move past the Bruins in only five games?
"To get four in a row in the playoffs against Boston is unreal," said J.T. Miller, who scored the game-winning goal 14 minutes into the second period on a power play."
The Lightning are playing unreal hockey right now.
But there's still plenty of work left for a team which has more lofty goals in mind.
"It's good, but it'd be gratifying to win two more series," Lightning forward Ryan Callahan said. "I mean, we've been here before, so the shock and awe of getting this far really isn't there."
Let's dissect just how Tampa Bay got there in Three Things we learned from advancing to the Eastern Conference Final.

1. BOLTS SMOTHER BRUINS AT EVEN-STRENGTH
Boston did nearly all of its damage in the Second Round series on the power play, the Bruins going 5-for-12 with the man-advantage, including 1-for-3 in Game 5 for its only goal of the contest.
At 5-on-5, the Bruins had absolutely no answer for Tampa Bay's suffocating defense from Game 3 on. In the final three games of the series, Boston scored five goals: four on the power play and one shorthanded.
"I think you got to give them credit, we're a team that's scored all year with different players in and out of the lineup. We scored against Toronto," Boston head coach Bruce Cassidy said following the conclusion of his team's season. "So it's not like after 89 games we forgot how to score."
The Bruins were the NHL's sixth-best offense in the regular season, scoring 3.26 goals a game, and ranked fifth in the postseason at 3.42 per contest. They certainly knew how to score goals coming into the Second Round.
They just ran into a buzzsaw that was the collective group effort defensively by a committed Tampa Bay Lightning squad.
"Boston set the bar for us, and we played them three times [before winning]," Lightning head coach Jon Cooper said. "The first two times we played them, they literally manhandled us. Scores were tight. The first score was 3-2. It was men amongst boys. And we knew that if we were going to go anywhere in the playoffs, or if we made the playoffs, we knew that we had to be able to beat Boston. We beat them 4-0 (in the last regular season meeting), and that gave us a little bit of confidence. People questioned how we played D, it was because we turned the puck over. When we don't turn the puck over, usually good things happen. With our team, they've made 100 percent buy-in to not turn it over. "
The Lightning's defensive effort was sparked by the Ondrej Palat-Brayden Point-Tyler Johnson line, which, after getting victimized often in Game 1, rebounded to shut down Boston's Bergeron line, billed as maybe the NHL's best coming into the series.
"I think Pointer's line, the way they responded after that first game was pretty inspiring for our team," Bolts captain Steven Stamkos said. "We knew that line was going to be extremely dangerous, and in the last two or three games I don't know if (the Bruins) had a 5-on-5 goal. [They didn't]. That goes to show the commitment we had as a team to defending. We chose to play the right way, and I think our depth really showed in this series."

2. PENALTY KILL SAVES THE DAY
Tampa Bay's penalty kill showed drastic improvement in a First Round playoff series versus New Jersey after finishing the regular season ranked 28th in the NHL out of 31 teams.
The good feelings from the five games against the Devils quickly evaporated against the Bruins, however, who were able to stay in the Second Round series mainly due to its prolific power play.
But with the Lightning protecting a 2-1 lead in Game 5, and Boston throwing everything it had left in the tank at the Bolts on a late power play to try and score the tying goal, Tampa Bay's penalty kill produced its finest moment of the season.
With 4:18 remaining in the game, Ryan McDonagh got his skates caught underneath him trying to keep up with David Pastrnak entering the zone with speed and ended up falling down, forcing him to trip Pastrnak to prevent the forward from blowing by him.
The penalty had the potential to derail the stellar defensive effort the Lightning had produced up to that point. The penalty kill, however, saved the day when the Lightning needed it the most.
Callahan started the collective group effort with a defensive zone face-off win against Bergeron, one of the top face-off men in the NHL. Callahan also was able to get behind the Bruins as the puck was cleared out of the zone and chase it down to grab possession. But rather than going to net to try to score, Callahan smartly took the puck into the corner and held it there to kill time. After the puck was freed, Callahan chased it down in the other corner, where he held it to bleed more seconds.
The rest of the penalty kill was guys diving to block shots, stretching to deflect passes and Vasilevskiy making every stop when pucks did get through.
"Obviously, I don't want to be the guy that puts him in that situation, but it was great to see everybody step up and sacrifice, block shots," McDonagh said. "No question I think our penalty kill has been under a microscope here this whole series. They did some damage to us it's fair to say. Obviously, in a clutch moment like that, it's great to see everybody step up and come up with a big kill."
McDonagh's penalty had the potential to be a disaster.
The penalty kill, however, wasn't about to let the Bruins back in the series.

3. SECOND PERIOD SUCCESS
The Lightning jumped on Boston in the opening moments of the game and produced numerous chances to take an early lead in the contest like they'd done in Games 3 and 4.
But not converting on those early chances seemed to rattle the Bolts a bit. Their offense stagnated, they played tentative, passes missed the mark, the speed game was slowed to a crawl and Boston worked its way into the game, eventually taking a 1-0 lead with just :48 seconds to go in the opening period on David Krejci's power-play goal.
In all eight prior games between Tampa Bay and Boston in 2017-18 (regular season and playoffs), the team that scored first went on to win the game.
The fact the Lightning did so many good things in the opening period but still trailed 1-0 after 20 minutes was not a good sign.
"There's no panic," Miller said. "We're going to have to score to win the game anyway, didn't matter when the lead hopefully came to us. We're just glad that we kept pushing. In that second period, you could feel the momentum in the game shifted, and obviously we think we deserved to win."
The Lightning went to work mounting a comeback in the second. Once again, it was Brayden Point who got it started.
Point's forecheck created a turnover in the Boston zone, and the All-Star center skated onto a loose puck in the slot, moved to the net and backhanded a shot past Boston goalie Tuukka Rask to get the Bolts on the board and tie the game at 10:43 of the second period.
"In my opinion, he was the best player in the series," Cooper said of Point.
Less than four minutes later, the Lightning took the lead for good on the power play. J.T. Miller and Nikita Kucherov played a two-man give-and-go to the left of Rask, Kucherov dishing to Miller from behind the goal line with Zdeno Chara mesmorized by the movement of the two players and unable to keep up with either. Miller got into the voided space, received Kucherov's pass and buried the chance top shelf to the near post.
Miller's goal was the first playoff game-winner of his career.
For the remainder of the period, the Lightning continued to pepper Rask and were unlucky not to come out of the middle frame up by two or three goals.
Tampa Bay led the NHL for second-period goals in the regular season (111) and owned the best second-period goal differential +36.
Once again, the second period was kind to the Bolts.
This time it came in a clinching scenario.