{"id":28979,"date":"2023-04-30T14:04:09","date_gmt":"2023-04-30T14:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/nhl-roundup-leafs-clinch\/"},"modified":"2023-04-30T14:09:28","modified_gmt":"2023-04-30T14:09:28","slug":"nhl-roundup-leafs-clinch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/nhl-roundup-leafs-clinch\/","title":{"rendered":"NHL roundup: Leafs clinch first playoff series since 2004"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Tavares scored 4:36 into overtime Saturday night as the Toronto Maple Leafs broke a 19-year playoff series drought, beating the host Tampa Bay Lightning 2-1 in Game 6 of a first-round Eastern Conference playoff series.<\/p>\n

\n

Tavares’ OT shot skittered past Lightning goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy (20 saves) and clinched a Stanley Cup playoff series for the first time since 2004 — with the last three games coming in overtime in Tampa. Auston Matthews scored in regulation, and Ilya Samsonov was sharp in stopping 31 of 32 shots.<\/p>\n

By winning for the first time in its last nine playoff series, Toronto will move to the next round to face the winner of Sunday’s Game 7 between the Florida Panthers and host Boston Bruins.<\/p>\n

Steven Stamkos scored the only goal for the Lightning.<\/p>\n

\n

Oilers 5, Kings 4<\/p>\n

\n

Kailer Yamamoto scored with 3:03 left and visiting Edmonton held on to eliminate Los Angeles with a win in Game 6 of a first-round Western Conference playoff series.<\/p>\n

Klim Kostin had two goals and an assist, Connor McDavid and Yamamoto each had a goal and an assist and Stuart Skinner made 40 saves for the Oilers, who won the final three games of the series. Kevin Fiala had a goal and two assists, Sean Durzi, Adrian Kempe and Phillip Danault also scored and Joonas Korpisalo made 21 saves for the Kings.<\/p>\n

The Oilers went on the man advantage at 6:42 of the third period while holding a 4-3 lead. The puck came to Skinner, and he had time to clear it, but his blade had cracked, allowing Danault to skate in and score short-handed to tie it 4-4 at 7:46. Yamamoto brought the puck from below the goal line and above the left faceoff circle before spinning and shooting through traffic to score the game-winner, his first goal of the series.<\/p>\n

\n

Rangers 5, Devils 2<\/p>\n

Chris Kreider had a goal and two assists as New York staved off elimination with a win against visiting New Jersey in Game 6.<\/p>\n

The win tied the Eastern Conference first-round playoff series at 3-3, with Game 7 set for Monday in New Jersey. Mika Zibanejad and Vladimir Tarasenko each had a goal and an assist, and Adam Fox had two assists for the Rangers. Igor Shesterkin stopped 34 of 36 shots.<\/p>\n

Curtis Lazar and Dawson Mercer scored for the Devils and Akira Schmid allowed five goals on 29 shots before being replaced by Vitek Vanecek late in the third period.<\/p>\n

\n

–Field Level Media<\/p>\n

\"tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3T044-VIEWIMAGE\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3T048-VIEWIMAGE\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3T04D-VIEWIMAGE\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3T04A-VIEWIMAGE\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3T04F-VIEWIMAGE\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Tavares scored 4:36 into overtime Saturday night as the Toronto Maple Leafs broke a 19-year playoff series drought, beating the host Tampa Bay Lightning 2-1 in Game 6 of a first-round Eastern Conference playoff series. Tavares’ OT shot skittered past Lightning goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy (20 saves) and clinched a Stanley Cup playoff series for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":28980,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportSportsNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3T044-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28979"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28985,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28979\/revisions\/28985"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}