Tampa Bay Lightning center Barclay Goodrow celebrates his goal aganst the Columbus Blue Jackets on Monday in Toronto. Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press via the Associated Press
TORONTO — Andrei Vasilevskiy had 28 saves and the Tampa Bay Lightning beat the Columbus Blue Jackets 2-1 on Monday to take a 3-1 lead in their Eastern Conference playoff series.
Barclay Goodrow and Yanni Gourde each had a goal and an assist as the Lightning pushed the Blue Jackets to the verge of elimination after being swept by Columbus in the first round of the 2019 playoffs.
Game 5 is Wednesday.
Cam Atkinson scored for Columbus, and Joonas Korpisalo had 20 saves.
The Blue Jackets seemed to have recharged after running out of gas in the Game 3 loss. They got the first goal early in the first period, but it was waved off because Alexandre Texier was offside entering the zone.
Then the Lightning scored twice in the first five minutes of the second period.
They opened the scoring 16 seconds into the second when Goodrow chopped at the puck in traffic in front of Korpisalo and popped it over his blocker. Gourde made it 2-0 by redirecting a long shot by Kevin Shattenkirk at the 4:09 mark.
Less than two minutes later, Atkinson got credit for the Columbus goal when a long shot by Pierre-Luc Dubois pinballed between Atkinson and the goalie before going into the net. Vasilevskiy argued for goalie interference to no avail.
Columbus took a penalty for too many men on the ice with 1:07 left in the game, which interrupted its late 6-on-5 push.
AVALANCHE 7, COYOTES 1: Nazem Kadri had two goals and an assist, Philipp Grubauer stopped 14 shots and Colorado overwhelmed Arizona to take a 3-1 lead their first-round playoff series.
The Avalanche jumped on Arizona after losing 4-2 in Game 3, scoring three first-period goals, two by Kadri on the power play.
Matt Calvert, Cale Makar and Mikko Rantanen each had a goal and an assist. Grubauer was sharp after Pavel Francouz started Game 3.
NOTES
PENGUINS: Center Evgeni Malkin has undergone surgery to repair a left elbow injury.
The team did not provide specifics on the nature of Malkin’s injury or when it occurred.
The 34-year-old Malkin led the Penguins with 74 points during the regular season but was ineffective during a four-game loss to Montreal in the qualifying round of the playoffs. Malkin recorded just one assist during the series and had a minus-3 rating.
Rutherford said the expected recovery time for Malkin is about a month, meaning he should be available whenever training camp for the 2020-21 season opens.
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