The night Steven Stamkos shot the lights out
You've probably seen The Natural with Robert Redford where at the end of the movie (spoiler alert) he hits a homerun, shattering the lights as he's rounding the bases. Well, Steven Stamkos(notes) can almost say he did something similar.
Stamkos scored his 22nd goal of the season at 10:04 of the second period to give the Tampa Bay Lightning a 3-0 lead over the New Jersey Devils. A funny thing happened 44 seconds later when the lighting on one side of Prudential Center ice dimmed. Referee Tim Peel stopped play and both teams and the fans in attendance were left to wait for the problem to be fixed by the arena staff. It took nearly two hours of working on the issue before the game was ultimately postponed by Commissioner Gary Bettman.
Here's the NHL's statement on the postponement:
"We felt the teams could not continue playing,” said Colin Campbell, the League’s Senior Executive Vice President of Hockey Operations. “We tried for an hour and 52 minutes to restore power and appropriate lighting but were left with no alternative but to postpone further play for the evening.”
After the game, Devils GM Lou Lamoriello explained the problem:
"What happened was a circuit breaker went down," Devils general manager Lou Lamoriello explained. "They found which one it was and then they couldn't get the computer to work with the circuit breaker.
"PSE&G has been here and determined after some period of time that they would not get this fixed tonight. So the game was called. We had been in constant contact with the league."
The game will be resumed at a date agreed upon by the NHL, Devils and Lightning. Tonight's game was supposed to be the final meeting of the season between the two teams which complicates things going forward as the sides try to work around game and travel dates. Whenever a date is determined, the game will begin with 9:12 to play in the second and Tampa Bay leading 3-0.
Last time a NHL game was postponed was November 21, 2005 when Detroit Red Wings defenseman Jiri Fischer(notes) went into cardiac arrest on the bench and had to be rescuscitated by CPR and defibrillators.
UPDATE: The NHL announced this afternoon that the game will be resumed on Sunday at 6 p.m. EST.
