Written by Chris Adamski at New York Times.com
Two days after taking a puck to the face before the start of a game, Tyler Johnson took a puck to his back to end one.
Jason Garrison’s wrist shot deflected off Johnson as he stood in the slot facing the net, and the puck flew into the net 53 seconds into overtime to pull the Tampa Bay Lightning to within a win of their second consecutive Stanley Cup finals with a 4-3 win in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals Sunday night.
Johnson quipped that he thought Garrison was “going for my head again, so I just turned around.”
“I got lucky; I guess it hit me,” Johnson said. “I wasn’t really sure if it hit me or not — I was just excited when I saw it in back of the net.”
Tampa Bay leads the best-of-seven series, three games to two, and has a chance to close out the series in Game 6 Tuesday night at Amalie Arena in Tampa.
Nikita Kucherov’s second goal of the game tied it with 3 minutes 16 seconds left in regulation, and Alex Killorn also scored for Tampa Bay, which rode the momentum of Game 4’s home victory Friday.
Johnson was bleeding before faceoff of that contest after a teammate’s shot hit him during warm-ups. He played in the game anyway, with a protective grille over his face — one that was absent Sunday.
Johnson’s injuries, he noted casually, were some stitches and some missing teeth. “We will know more when everything settles down, but no, I don’t want to play with anything on my face,” he said. “That was an easy decision for me. As soon as they let me make the decision, I made it.”
Johnson was seemingly in the middle of everything Sunday — taking two penalties, delivering four hits, attempting a team-high-tying eight shots and assisting on Kucherov’s late tying goal before his lower back was the final thing to touch the puck an instant before it went past Penguins goalie Marc-Andre Fleury for the winner.
“No shot’s a bad shot in overtime,” Garrison said. “So we will take the outcome of that.”
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