Game 70: Tampa Bay Lightning at Toronto Maple Leafs

For a lot of the Tampa Bay Lightning players, tonight was a return "home" to the province of Ontario as the Tampa Bay Lightning took on the Toronto Maple Leafs at the ACC in T.O.

The Lightning seemed to have more jump tonight than it had in the past few games, no lag in the first period or falling behind early and struggling to catch up. Play in the second period was a bit frantic at times and the Maple Leafs put on some pressure when they were on the power play but the Lightning held their own. The Bolts broke out of their mini-slump, at least for one night and defeated Toronto 6-2. It was the first game since February 23rd that the Lightning had scored 4 (or more) goals in a game.

More after the jump.

Tonight was a night for secondary scoring to lead the way for the Bolts, with "Textbook" Nate Boucher, er, I mean Nate Thompson, Mattias Ritola, Dominic Moore and Mike Lundin all tallying a goal (or two) in the game.

The first period scoring was Nate Thompson with his 8th goal of the season for a score of 1-0 at the first break. In the second period the pace was a lot more back and forth, as was the goal scoring and the Leafs came out with a lot more jump than they had in the first period.

Tampa outscored Toronto 3-2 in the period, with Mattias Ritola scoring twice, his 3rd and 4th goals of the year; Dion Phaneuf and Nikolai Kulemin scored for Toronto in the period before Vincent Lecavalier closed out the scoring in the second.

The third period saw Dominic Moore score his 13th goal of the season and Mike Lundin notched his first of the year to close out the scoring.

Vincent Lecavalier continued to climb toward another 20 goal season with his 18th of the year; Simon Gagne had an assist and was a +2 for the game, Martin St Louis and Brett Clark had 2 assists each and Teddy Purcell had 3 assists as the scoring was pretty evenly distributed. Vinny Lecavalier now has 13 point in 14 games against Toronto and has 16 points in his last 16 games overall.

Dwayne Roloson made several spectacular saves when the game was close and the Lightning were a perfect 3 for 3 on the penalty kill. The game was physical at times, with hitting for both teams but it was a clean game with no scrums after the whistle, no fights and, thankfully, no injuries except for Colby Armstrong taking a shot off his foot.

The Lightning outshot the Maple Leafs 36-32 for the game.

The Lightning's next game is Thursday night at the Bell Centre in Montreal agains Les Habitant. Drop by the game thread and say hi!