Sidney Crosby has scored the game-winning goal for the Penguins in all three wins in the Eastern Conference Final. His goal last night was a memorable one, and it was Peak Sidney Crosby.
Let's take a look at what went wrong for the Tampa Bay Lightning here:
It all started with a Tampa Bay attempt to exit their zone that Pittsburgh prevented well. Nikita Kucherov had the puck and looked to stretch the play to Tyler Johnson.
As Tyler Johnson came up the middle of the ice, Patric Hornqvist starts the pressure back and takes advantage of a momentary lapse where the puck is not on Johnson's stick.
The active stick of Patric Hornqvist here is such a key to this play.
Hornqvist just breaks the play up enough to leave the puck sitting dead in the center of the ice, where a back checking Sidney Crosby comes and picks it up and takes it on the offensive.
As Crosby reaches the blue line, Ondrej Palat, who is backchecking tries to knock Crosby off of the puck. He fails.
Anton Stralman then makes a last ditch effort to try and slow Crosby down using his stick. Sidney Crosby literally shoves him aside. This is his time.
I mean, how strong do you have to be to shove two players away in quick succession like that?
At this point, Crosby is then breaking in towards the Lightning net and Andrei Vasilevskiy, with Victor Hedman being the lone Lightning skater back.
This play happens so fast that as Crosby is entering the zone, Vasilevskiy wasn't even down in the crease yet.
Against another player, Hedman may have been able to cut down the angle and get his stick in there to break it up, but Crosby's hands were too fast for him and he fired the puck past Vasilevskiy before he knew what hit him.
Sorry, Vasilevskiy, you can't leave the 5-hole exposed like that for Sidney Crosby. He loves shooting it there.
This goal ended up being the game-winning goal, as Tampa Bay stormed back for 2 goals in the third period, before Bryan Rust and Nick Bonino put the game out of reach and ended it with a final score of 5-2 Penguins.
The entire play can be seen below it its entirety:
The Penguins did what they needed to do, and now we are looking at a Game 7, back in Pittsburgh tomorrow night. Hold onto your butts.