After struggling to get any sort of rhythm to their offense for most of the night, the Tampa Bay Lightning scored three times in the third period to defeat the San Jose Sharks, 4-1. Brayden Point scored twice to reach the 40 goal mark on the season and Nikita Kucherov had another four assists to stretch his lead over Nathan MacKinnon in the scoring race. Andrei Vasilevskiy was sharp in net with 20 saves on 21 shots to pick up the victory.
Emil Lilleberg made his return to the line-up in place of Nick Perbix who was a healthy scratch. The rookie had a blocked shot and a hit in 15:21 of ice time.
First Period
Nick Paul was the only player to see the puck bounce off of the official’s skate and he gloved it down to put it past an unaware MacKenzie Blackwood (who had 17 saves on the night). Sadly a turnover a few minutes later led to William Eklund converting a two-on-one to tie it up. San Jose controlled much of the play following the Paul goal, but a late penalty kill seemed to spark the Bolts a bit.
Second Period
The Sharks continued to give the Lightning little room to operate and it was only by the grace of Vasilevskiy that the Lightning didn’t give up the lead in the middle frame. More troubling was Calvin de Haan skating off the ice in pain after getting slammed awkwardly into the boards/door area near the San Jose bench.
Third Period
The Lightning started the period on the power play as Anthony Cirelli had drawn a slashing in the dying seconds of the second period. It wouldn’t take them long to convert as Brayden Point swatted home a rebound off of a Nikita Kucherov shot to break the tie. That seemed to break the dam for the top line as they added two more goals (one from Anthony Duclair and another one from Point).
It wasn’t the prettiest game for the Lightning and the Sharks did a good job of shutting them down for 40 minutes, but Tampa Bay was patient with their game and eventually found a way to get quality chances on Blackwood.
The Goals
Nick Paul (Victor Hedman, Nikita Kucherov) 1-0 Tampa Bay
William Eklund (Jacob MacDonald) 1-1
Brayden Point (Nikita Kucherov, Steven Stamkos) Power Play, 2-1 Tampa Bay
Anthony Duclair (Nikita Kucherov, Brayden Point) 3-1 Tampa Bay
Brayden Point (Nikita Kucherov, Anthony Duclair) 4-1 Tampa Bay
