By Larry Fine
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Tampa Bay Lightning snapped a scoreless tie with two brilliant second-period goals to beat the New York Rangers 2-0 on Sunday and move within one win from the Stanley Cup Finals.
The Lightning hold a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference Finals with the series heading back to Florida on Tuesday.
The Lightning, neutralized in the first period and a half, showed their explosiveness during a sublime five minutes late in the second, sparked by Valtteri Filppula flicking the puck over goaltender Henrik Lundqvist's stick into the left corner after a feed from captain Steven Stamkos at 13:29.
Five minutes later, two perfect passes led to an easy powerplay goal by Stamkos that doubled the lead.
Nikita Kucherov centered to Ondrej Palat, who had Lundqvist committed before sweeping it across to Stamkos, who one-timed it into an open net.
The first period was played largely in Tampa Bay's end as the Rangers controlled the puck and won the battles for possession but could not take advantage of opportunities with Lightning goalie Ben Bishop stopping all 26 of New York's shots on goal.
New York, who scored on two of their four power-plays in a 5-1 Game Four rout at Tampa Bay, came up empty in four chances with a man advantage to the chagrin of the Madison Square Garden crowd.