Brayden Point scored a first period goal that turned out to be the game winner, and Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped all 22 shots he faced Monday night as the Tampa Bay Lightning defeated the Dallas Stars 2-0 in game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals in Edmonton. The Lightning win the series 4-2, and win their first Stanley Cup since the 2003-2004 season and their second in franchise history.
Point scored the game winner on the powerplay at the 12:23 mark of the opening period. Point fired a shot cruising into the slot that was stopped by Dallas goalie Anton Khudobin, but Khudobin couldn’t control it and the rebound came right back to Point who fired it in. Tampa Bay added insurance at 7:01 of the second. After a Dallas turnover, Cedric Paquette fired a pass from the left faceoff dot to the right dot where Blake Coleman fired a one timer past Khudobin. The Stars had some good chances in the third period and a powerplay, but despite even pulling their goalie late in the game they couldn’t solve Vasilevskiy who earned the shutout.
Khudobin stopped 27 of 29 shots in the loss. Dallas finishes their season with a final record of 50-38-8. Victor Hedman, Pat Maroon, and Nikita Kucherov also added assists in the win for Tampa Bay. Hedman won the Conn Smythe Trophy (playoff MVP). The defenseman had 10 goals in the Cup run for the Lightning, and tied just two other defenseman in NHL history who have scored 10 goals in a playoff run. Tampa Bay, who as the top Eastern Conference seed last year was ousted in the first round by eight seed Columbus in a sweep, gets redemption and brings home the hardware in 2020 finishing the season with a final mark of 60-28-6.
