NEW YORK, 24 May 2004 — Brad Richards played a part in both Tampa Bay goals as the Lightning edged the Philadelphia Flyers 2-1 in Game Seven of the Eastern Conference finals Saturday to advance to the Stanley Cup for the first time.
The Lightning, in their 12th NHL season, will face the upstart Calgary Flames in the Stanley Cup finals. Game One is in Tampa Tuesday.
It has been quite a turnaround for Tampa Bay, which failed to reach the playoffs in six of the seven previous seasons.
The largest crowd ever to see the Lightning, more than 22,000, had to wait almost 17 minutes to raise the roof for the first time, Ruslan Fedotenko re-directing a Richards wrist shot at 16:46 to open the scoring.
It was the former Flyers favorite’s sixth goal of the series.
Tampa scored again in the second period when Fredrik Modin tallied with help from Richards and Jassen Cullimore.
The Flyers replied later in the same session with Kim Johnsson beating Nikolai Khabibulin. But Khabibulin shut the door the rest of the way, stopping 22 shots in total. Robert Esche produced 30 saves in the Philadelphia goal.
The Lightning mobbed their goalie at the final whistle, leaving it to captain Dave Andreychuk to accept the Prince of Wales Trophy, which goes to the conference champion.
Andreychuk, a 22-year veteran who has made 155 playoff appearances without reaching the Stanley Cup finals, refused to lift the trophy over his head.
“We’ve got one more step to go,” he told reporters. “For me this is a dream come true.” Forward Martin St. Louis, who also collected an assist on Fedotenko’s goal, said: “We’ve come a long way”. He was asked if he had any hard feelings toward the Flames, who gave up on St. Louis after a lackluster 2000 season in which he scored only three times.
“I’m happy for those guys,” he said. “They’ve come a long way, too.”
Saturday’s outcome was predictable as the Lightning and Flyers had traded victories from the first game of the series. Philadelphia set up Game Seven with a 5-4 overtime victory Thursday.
“I’m just disappointed for the players,” Philadelphia coach Ken Hitchcock said. “Back in January and February, we weren’t a very good hockey club against Tampa, and now we got to this stage.”
