The Tampa Bay Lightning beat the New Jersey Devils 5-2.
It wasn’t all of the usual suspects in this game that got the goals. For instance, Steven Stamkos didn’t have a single point, despite the Lightning scoring five. He also only had two shots on goal as well.
Instead, the line of Alex Killorn, Vincent Lecavalier, and Martin St. Louis did a lot of the heavy lifting in this one. They were joined by the line of Cory Conacher, Nate Thompson, and Ondrej Palat, which did some equal scoring time. Thompson, in fact, recorded his first two-goal game, so congratulations to him.
The Lightning started out slow, as they have been recently, but they made up for that by playing much better defensively, and being better about how they were playing the puck. Anders Lindback was pitching a shutout up until a little over six minutes left in the game. While he wasn’t spectacular, he was a solid presence in net for the team to rely upon.
Despite the scoring, it was a pretty staid sort of game. The Lightning had only three power plays, which they didn’t convert, while the Devils were one of two on the power play. Some might call it boring hockey, but maybe boring hockey is what Tampa Bay needs right now to get back to where they want to be.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that they’ll go on some winning streak now. Almost certainly there will be some ups and downs before they settle into some kind of balance. But, at least people can see that they’re heading back into the right direction.
The Lightning’s next game is at home against the Winnipeg Jets on Thursday, 7 March. Game time is at 7:30 pm ET. If you’re not attending the game, then please consider stopping by our game thread to say hi. That will be available at 7 pm.
