Old friend Mathieu Joseph was the difference as he scored twice as the Tampa Bay Lightning lost to the Ottawa Senators, 4-2. The ex-Bolt scored the eventual game-winner on a breakaway in the latter stages of the third period as the Lightning lost their second game in a row at home. Mitchell Chaffee and Brayden Point scored for the Lightning and Andrei Vasilevskiy made 23 saves on 24 shots.
Anton Forsberg was solid in net for the Senators with 24 saves on 26 shots while Tim Stutzle and Vladimir Tarasenko bookended Joseph’s two goals. The loss was costly for the Bolts as Toronto won to move three points clear of them in the playoff race and Detroit closed within one point in the Wild Card standings with their victory.
There were a couple of line-up changes from Saturday night as Alex Barre-Boulet drew in for Austin Watson and Calvin de Haan took Haydn Fleury’s spot on defense.
First Period
For the first five minutes, everything was just ducky for the Tampa Bay Lightning. They generated shots and Ottawa netminder Anton Forsberg was getting handcuffed more than drunk people at Gasparilla. Unfortunately, the Bolts couldn’t finish things off and despite a 6-0 edge in shots the score stubbornly remained at 0-0.
As the period wore on, the visiting Senators found their legs and forecheck. The ice tilted in their favor as they spent less time in their zone and more time hounding the Bolts. Eventually, it led to the opening goal midway through the period. Tim Stutzle is really good at hockey and Emil Lilleberg still has a few things to learn despite a solid start to his career.
The Sens forced a weak clear by the Bolts and regrouped in the neutral zone. Stutzle got the puck just inside the zone and deked Lilleberg to the boards before pulling the puck back inside and spinning the rookie like a top. Honestly, Lilleberg played it right and against most of the league the play is probably shut down or dumped behind the net. Stutzle made a really good play to move laterally. He baited Darren Raddysh into leaving his feet to take away a pass that he never intended to make to Josh Norris on the far post. Instead Stutzle dragged the puck back to his forehand and beat Vasy cleanly. Just a nice play all around by the young forward.
Tim Stutzle (Jake Sanderson, Artem Zub) 1-0 Senators
No need to worry, right? It’s just one goal and the Bolts can come back from that without too much of a problem. Look, Nikita Kucherov just fired a one-touch pass to Steven Stamkos in the slot. Gooooaaalll. Wait, old friend Mathieu Joseph was there to tie up Stamkos’ stick and deny a shot. Having to practice against those two for years paid off for Joseph.
On an offensive face-off, the Lightning’s tendencies got to them again. Kucherov cruised into the high slot and tried to wrist a shot on net. Joseph knocked it down and the Sens know that the Lightning like to activate a defenseman, in this case it’s Victor Hedman down low. So as soon as the loose puck is on Stutzle’s stick, the other forwards flew the zone. Stutzle delayed just a hair to allow a passing lane to open up to Claude Giroux. The pass is right on and Erik Cernak found himself wheeling backwards on the wrong end of a two-on-one. Giroux threaded a pass to Joseph and the former Bolt buried it for his 600th goal against the Lightning (Just kidding, it’s his third goal in five career games against the Bolts).
Mathieu Joseph (Claude Giroux, Tim Stutzle) 2-0 Sens
The positive is that following the second goal, the Lightning kind of got back to doing what they needed to do, which is spend time in the Ottawa zone. They had a chance to cut it to one when Conor Sheary stole a puck and was behind the defense. He must have been as surprised as everyone else as he lost his footing before getting a quality shot off. One last attempt before the buzzer was blocked by the Senators, one of eight blocked shots in the period by Ottawa.
Second Period
The Jon Cooper Blend-o-Matic was in full force to start the second period and it seemed like he might have stumbled on something with Mikey Eyssimont, Nick Paul, and Mitchell Chaffee. The line played 3:19 together and generated four scoring chances and eight shot attempts in the period.
Shot attempts were decent for the Bolts, but they continued to have issues getting actual shots on Forsberg. Despite five shot attempts in the first three minutes of the period, only one got through to the Ottawa goaltender. They wouldn’t get their second shot on net until the 9:44 mark, but it was a quality one as Stamkos saw his wrister snatched out of the air by Forsberg.
Defensively the Bolts had a better handle on the Senators forecheck and weren’t getting caught out of position as much as they had been in the first period. Unfortunately, a turnover at a bad time led to a goal by, who else, Mathieu Joseph.
With the teams skating four-a-piece, Stamkos tried to cut to the middle of the ice just inside the Ottawa blueline. MattyJo has seen that a time or two before and knocked the puck off of The Captain’s stick. At the same time, the Lightning defense was trying to change, but Cernak got caught in no-man’s land and ended up being a spectator as Joseph blew by him. A hard cut to his forehand and the puck was in the back of the net.
Mathieu Joseph (unassisted) 3-0 Senators
Tampa Bay was playing fairly well but their season-long issue of mistakes ending up in the back of the net and an inability to take advantage of offensive chances had them down three goals. However, they did take advantage of a bad bounce. Nick Perbix sent a puck around the roulette wheel behind Forsberg, but Jakob Chychun tried to cut it off. To his credit he did cut it off, but the puck shot right out in front of the net and Mitchell Chaffee was there to flip it into the net for his second career NHL goal.
Mitchell Chaffee (unassisted) 3-1 Senators
The Lightning were getting their chances, they just didn’t convert. Through two periods they had 24 scoring chances, that should have led to more than one goal.
Third Period
The Lightning entered the period down two goals, but it didn’t feel like they were out of the game. An early goal and Ottawa, who have been shaky in third periods all season long, might get a little nervous. What they couldn’t afford to do is get down by three. So, of course that’s exactly what they did.
Ottawa took advantage of another odd-skater rush as Brady Tkachuk skated onto the puck after it was banked off of the boards by Shane Pinto. Instead of trying to beat the defenseman with a pass, Tkachuk went P.O.P (Pass off Pads) as he fired a shot off of Vasilevskiy’s right leg. The puck went right to Vladimir Tarasenko, who had beaten Nick Paul and Victor Hedman to the front of the net. The potential trade deadline day forward scored one of his easiest goals of the season as he put the rebound into an empty net.
Vladimir Tarasenko (Brady Tkachuk, Shane Pinto) 4-1 Senators
Give the Bolts credit. They wasted no time in answering back as Brandon Hagel did what Hagel does – create chaos. He forced a turnover along the boards and found Brayden Point cutting to the net. Point beat Forsberg and the Lightning were back to down just two.
Brayden Point (Brandon Hagel) 4-2 Senators
That would be as close as they got, though. Ottawa stuck to their game plan of preventing the Lightning from getting shots from quality locations. They also shut down the middle of the ice, not letting Tampa Bay work the cross-ice seams that generate the dangerous shots from Stamkos and Kucherov. In fact, Kucherov was held without a shot for the first time in a home game this season.
Outside of a late power play, the Senators didn’t worry too much about offense once they acquired the fourth goal. It wasn’t the prettiest path to victory, but it worked. A late push with the extra skater generated a few more shots for the Lightning, but with few clean looks, they didn’t really force Forsberg to do anything heroic in the waning moments.
Post Game Thoughts
Honestly, for much of the game, the Lightning played okay. It wasn’t a complete no-show like the Panthers game. Ottawa’s speed up front has give the Lightning issues for the past three seasons and it led to three of the four goals.
Alex Barre-Boulet only played two shifts in the third period and a team low 7:42. Part of that seemed to be because Coach Cooper was looking to get his best players on the ice as long as possible as Tyler Motte and Connor Sheary also watched most of the third period.
Kucherov had 5 shot attempts, 2 unblocked shot attempts, 0 shots on goal, and an iXG of 0.03. It was probably his least impactful game of the season. Even the great ones have an off night.
