Ben Bishop made 22 saves and the Tampa Bay Lightning had third-period goals from Alex Killorn and Ondrej Palat to beat the New York Rangers 2-0 and reach the NHL Stanley Cup Final.
The Lightning, winners in 2004 in their only prior trip to the championship round, captured the best-of-seven Eastern Conference final four games to three.
Tampa Bay will face the Western Conference champion, the winner of Saturday’s match between Chicago and Anaheim, when the Stanley Cup Final begins next Wednesday.
The Rangers had never lost a playoff game seven at home in club history but the Lightning improved to 5-1 in all-time playoff game sevens.
“We saved our best for the biggest game,” Lightning star Steve Stamkos said. “That was one of our best efforts so far.”
Bishop bounced back from a lackluster game six for his third shutout of this year’s playoff run. He became the first goaltender with shutouts in both of his first two career game-seven starts, having stopped 31 shots to blank Detroit in the first-round decider on April 29.
New York Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist made 23 saves, but the Swedish star could not stop Tampa Bay from snapping his team’s unbeaten run in game sevens, including a 7-0 mark at Madison Square Garden in seventh games and 10 wins in a row at home when faced with elimination.
“We just were basically one period away from going to the Stanley Cup Final,” Rangers coach Alain Vigneault said. “Our guys battled really hard is this is very disappointing to us.”
Killorn scored 1:54 into the third period to break the goal-less deadlock and Palat added an insurance tally with 8:43 to play in regulation time, Bishop picking up an assist on the play.