Jason Garrison’s OT goal finishes off another Lightning comeback
BROOKLYN, N.Y. – “It’s a nice feeling,” was how Jason Garrison described firing one of his patented bombs from the point for the winning goal in Game 4. Nicknamed “Boom Boom” for all the right reasons, the Tampa Bay Lightning defenseman was the hero as his goal 1:34 into overtime beat the New York Islanders 2-1 to give his team a 3-1 series lead.
Tampa now heads home to Amalie Arena looking to close out the series on Sunday afternoon.
For the second straight game, the Lightning fell behind early and needed a third period comeback to win another road game at Barclays Center.
An early Islanders power play led to a series of pretty tic-tac-toe passing in the corner which was finished off by Kyle Okposo 4:20 into the game, his first goal since Game 1 of Round 1.
Okposo’s goal came during a first period where Tampa was sloppy with the puck and New York peppered Lightning goaltender Ben Bishop with 16 shots. It was the second straight game that the Islanders dominated the opening 20 minutes, which led Jon Cooper to remark afterward that he hopes his team now realizes the games don’t start an hour later than scheduled.
But the Lightning settled down and Cooper’s putting together of the Triplets 2.0 line – Nikita Kucherov, Tyler Johnson and Alex Killorn – paid off at 7:49 of the third period. Johnson picked up the puck behind the Islanders’ net and found Kucherov in front for his NHL-leading eighth goal of the postseason.
There was a talk within the Lightning dressing room between the second and third periods. They reminded one another that despite how much they had been outplayed, they were only down a single goal.
“We knew that any shot is a good shot,” said Kucherov. “Anybody can take it and score a goal.”
“When we got that one, you could tell on our bench we had a good feeling of what could happen and it happened,” Cooper said.
Cooper described his bench as having the same temperament from the first period to the third period. There were no nerves, no holding the stick too tight trying to chase down a goal to even the score. This is the team that played in the Stanley Cup Final a year ago. Another one-goal deficit wasn’t going to force them to stray from their game plan.
“It says a lot about the team,” Garrison said. “[There’s] a lot of character, guys don’t quit.”
As they did in Game 3, the Lightning didn’t wait long to end the night as Garrison’s goal capped off the comeback.
Cooper added afterward that the Lightning were lucky to be leaving Brooklyn with two come-from-behind overtime wins. He knows and his players know they need to be better in Game 5 because the Islanders will be playing the rest of this series with their season on the line.
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Sean Leahy is the associate editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Sean_Leahy
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