The Lightning will not have captain Steven Stamkos in the lineup when they play the Stars in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final on Friday at Rogers Place in Edmonton.
Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said the forward is out for Game 4, but the team hasn’t ruled him out for the series.
Stamkos scored a goal and played 2:47 across five shifts in Tampa Bay’s 5-2 win in Game 3 to take a 2-1 series lead. The Lightning were ahead 2-1 in the 2015 Cup Final against the Blackhawks and lost the next three games to lose the series. People forget that.
Teams that have a 2-1 lead in a best-of-7 Cup Final since 1939 are 42-11 (79.3 percent) winning the series.
The Stars are the only team this playoffs to win a best-of-7 series after trailing 2-1. They won Games 4, 5 and 6 against the Flames in the first round.
Dallas will need its top line of Tyler Seguin, Jamie Benn and Alexander Radulov to step up to win Game 4 against Tampa Bay. The trio has yet to score a goal in the series, but Radulov does have three assists.
Lightning, however, are getting scoring production from their top players led by defenseman Victor Hedman (one goal, four assists). Forwards Nikita Kucherov (one goal, three assists), Brayden Point (two goals, one assist) and Ondrej Palat (two goals, one assist) are also contributing.
Friday, Sept. 25
Tampa Bay at Dallas, 7 p.m. (NBC, CBC, TVAS, SN/NBC Sports Live)
*Central time