You wouldn’t think that after scoring six goals and taking a 6-3 lead into the third, the Bruins would have been sweating bullets, waiting for time to finally tick away. But a Steven Stamkos high-blocker laser turned it into a two-goal game. Then Dominic Moore jammed home a puck that had pinballed off both posts before rolling past a maskless Tim Thomas.
So there were the Lightning, with 6:55 remaining, pressing harder than ever to get the tying goal.
“Each time you get some odd goals like that, it can put you on your heels,’’ said Thomas. “The human tendency is to say, ‘It’s not going to be your night.’ The team didn’t do that.’’
It is a rare night when Thomas allows five goals. But while there were some goals that he might have stopped on a sharper night, Thomas still retained his sense of timeliness.
Consider the second-period stop he made on Ryan Malone. At the time, the Bruins held a 3-2 lead. But after Moore hit Malone to give the power forward a breakaway chance, the Lightning were moments away from the tying goal. In the previous series, Malone had beaten Marc-Andre Fleury with a breakaway slapper, an unusual move.
In the seconds during Malone’s approach, Thomas remembered that goal and held his ground in case a slap shot arrived.
“He didn’t take it,’’ Thomas said of a slapper. “Then when he did get in on me, I was just trying to stay with him and get any piece of my body on the puck.’’
Thomas held his ground and kicked out Malone’s shot with his left pad. On the following rush the other way, Seguin scored the second of his two goals, giving the Bruins a 4-2 lead.
Thomas was just as timely in the third. When the Bruins had a 6-4 lead, he flashed his right pad to boot out Vincent Lecavalier’s short-range wrister. Late in the third, after Tampa had closed the advantage to one goal, Thomas battled through traffic to smother a long-distance Marc-Andre Bergeron blast.
