Aurelio Garcia was a key player all throughout and he delivered another strong performance tallying a goal and an assist in the final game. His passing was very good in this game and he did a really nice job spreading out the offense with his distribution and forcing the defense to keep making adjustments. His assist was a great bit of skill as he settled a bouncing puck and was able to out wait his man as he dove and slid by and was able to cut the pass back for Kuzma driving hard to the net. He skated well and was able to access the center of the ice by mixing in a deke here and there to get some extra space. He reacted quickly to a turnover late in the game and Varga sprung him on a 2 on 1 where he looked off his man and rifled it home to extend the lead to 3-1. His defensive play early in the game jumped out to me and he did well to get down low and help out, retrieving pucks with pace and getting his head up to make a crisp pass out of the zone and start his team up ice.

I thought his effectiveness waned as the game went on but he was one of the most important players over the course of that three goal lead being built, earning an assist on the opening goal. He played with speed and was looking to get down low below the goal line and turn his attention to the front of the net and feed the puck into the path of his teammates bearing down on goal. His assist was a gorgeous saucer pass to Varga in the slot from down low just after Chicago opened the scoring. He found himself moving all over the offensive zone and picking out dangerous looking passes and making New Jersey very aware of the threat he posed. He was retrieving loose pucks well and the defense was quick to try and close him down, but he was able to exploit the gaps in behind them with his incisive passing.

Honestly somewhat of a quiet game from Garcia in this one, though I liked how he started off quite a bit. His line was working well in the opening frame and I thought Garcia did a very nice job finding some good passing lanes and threading a seam pass over to set up a one timer on several occasions. He attacked with pace and was able to weave his way up ice through the neutral zone and gain entry to the final third where he was able to set things up and gain access to the passing lanes. He tallied an assist on one of the flurry of third period goals at the beginning of the frame, but most importantly he iced the game with a cool shootout goal.