After the final horn sounded, Ryan Pulock was mobbed by his NY Islanders teammates as if he were the earning goalie.
In ways, he was.
The defenseman’s sliding stop of Ryan McDonagh’s spin-around backhand with 2.7 secs remaining in the third period preserved a 3-2 triumph against the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Semifinals at Nassau Coliseum on Saturday.
Instead of going to overtime, New York tied the best-of-7 series, with Game 5 at Tampa Bay about Monday .
NY led 3-0 entering the 3rd period, but Tampa Bay shut within 3-2 on goals by Brayden Stage (3:45) and Tyler Johnson (6:43), environment the stage for the frantic last seconds.
The Lightning were shorthanded after Victor Hedman was needed tripping with 1:12 remaining but pulled goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy to even the skaters at 5-on-5.
It appeared as if the Islanders might close the overall game without the sports logo decals stickers drama until Ondrej Palat intercepted Pulock’s clearing attempt along the right-wing boards with seven seconds still left and backhanded the puck to Nikita Kucherov to the proper of the net. Kucherov redirected the puck out to McDonagh in the left circle and he instantly had a wide-open opportunity to tie the game.
With Islanders goalie Semyon Varlamov developing to challenge him, the Lightning defenseman spun from a diving Brock Nelson and seemed to have the web open before him when he backhanded the puck.
Viewing from the bench, Islanders forwards Mathew Barzal, along with a lot of his teammates and trainer Barry Trotz, idea McDonagh would score.
Pulock said his just goaltending encounter was from playing road hockey as a youngster. With Varlamov out of placement, Pulock’s instincts had taken over and he slid into the net behind the goalie to avoid McDonagh’s shot before guiding the puck safely in to the left corner.
Varlamov was one of the primary to hug Pulock after period expired. He was became a member of by all of those other Islanders, who arrived piling off the bench as though Pulock obtained an overtime goal.
The Lightning experienced a different feeling, heading from the excitement of thinking these were on custom flags iron on stickers the subject of to tie the overall game to the disappointment of Oakland Athletics iron on letter number the series becoming tied.
Trotz’s look at from the bench was blocked by his standing up players, thus he tried to view on the center-ice video plank. Probably that helped him keep your cool.
