Seeing Andrei Vasilevskiy with a save percentage below .900 is not something NHL fans are used to seeing. Making 10-bell saves with regularity is. On a night where he started the game with an .896 save percentage, Vasilevskiy put on a show against the Florida Panthers as he made 47 saves on 50 Panthers shots to backstop the Lightning to a 5-3 victory. Steven Stamkos scored twice and added two assists while Nikita Kucherov had a goal and an assist in the victory.
In a penalty-filled game the top two power plays in the league each finished the game 1-for-7.
First Period
Remember the last time these two teams met and the Lightning scored 24 seconds into the game? Then everything went to heck and they got trounced? Surely, Tampa Bay would like to start things a little differently, right? Or they could get a rare 5v5 goal from Steven Stamkos just 20 seconds into the game. The Captain took a puck from the neutral zone and wheeled into the zone on a two-on-one with Brandon Hagel. Stamkos’ pass to Hagel was knocked down by Brandon Montour, but the big defenseman dragged the puck into his own net.
It won’t be the prettiest goal on Stamkos’ highlight reel, but it gave the Bolts the lead and they played pretty well with it, especially at 5v5. The bad news was that there was a few too many penalties in the first period for Coach Cooper’s liking. Matt Dumba had an early roughing penalty that the Bolts killed off (with the help of the goal post off of a Carter Verhaeghe shot).
One of the issues in the last meeting is that the Lightning weren’t able to build on their early lead. This time, they did. An angle pass off the board put Mikey Eyssimont behind the Panthers’ defense. His first attempt was stopped by Bobrovsky, but the Bolt’s forward was able to poke the rebound through the five-hole for the 2-0 lead.
Things went a little wonky after that. With Tampa Bay on the power play, Nikita Kucherov was tripped up entering the zone. A 5-on-3, right? Nope. Kuch had his stick up pretty high as made his move and whacked Sam Reinhart in the face before he was tripped. So, Reinhart got two for tripping, but Kucherov was nailed with four for a high-stick. In the end, another Panthers power play.
Like the first one, the Lightning killed it off. They must have been having fun shorthanded, because just after the PK expired, Nick Perbix flung a puck to a member of the crowd. Another power play for the Panthers at the end of the period. Would the home team steal a goal at the end of the period and cut into the Lightning lead? Nope. Tampa Bay had another strong kill and the horn sounded with them still up 2-0.
Second Period
Well, this was an interesting period of hockey. It started off pretty nicely for the Lightning as they built their lead to three with a pretty, pretty passing play. Anthony Cirelli started it with a tape-to-tape pass to Stamkos. The Captain passed it to Anthony Duclair, who spied Darren Raddysh streaking in. That pass was also on the tape and The Bald Eagle snapped it into the upper 90 for the goal.
The momentum was fully on the Lightning’s bus, but it looked like the Panthers had pulled one back when Josh Mahura shot one in after a mad scramble in front of Vasilevskiy. The reason there was a mad scramble was in part because Dmitry Kulikov rocked Conor Sheary with a shot to the head. Eyssimont went nuts and picked up a roughing penalty.
The officials gathered together and announced there was a major penalty on Kulikov. Another review ensued. It was ruled a match penalty for the Panthers’ forward, so he was kicked out of the game. The goal was wiped off and Eyssimont’s penalty was upheld.
Following a four-on-four, the Lighting had roughly three minutes of power play time. It wasn’t looking great until Oliver-Ekman Larsson hooked Kucherov. The 5-on-3 was brief. Brief because Steven Stamkos rocketed one into the net from his office. A four-goal lead should be good even for the Lightning.
They must have thought so, because they quit playing hockey after the goal. They gave up not one, but two odd-man rushes shorthanded. The second one burned them as Matthew Tkachuk beat Vasilevskiy off of the rush.
Then it was a steady stream to the penalty box with Luke Glendening, Erik Cernak, and Matt Dumba committing infractions. The Glendening penalty was the most damaging as Sam Reinhart, of course it was him, who collected a rebound and stashed home his 47th goal of the season.
Despite scoring on their first two shots of the period, the Lightning were absolutely dominated in the middle frame:
Shot attempts 28-9
Shots 18-3
Scoring chances 15-5
High-danger chances 8-2
Expected goals for – 87.62%
All of those numbers are in favor of the Panthers. Thank you Andrei Vasilevskiy.
Third Period
There was an obvious attempt by the Lightning in the third period to slow the game down. Plenty of icings, stoppages in play, and a general sense of getting in the way of things. One thing they didn’t do, is spend a lot of time in Florida’s zone. That would have helped out a lot more.
Despite the constant pressure that the Panthers kept applying, they struggled to score mainly because of one man, Andrei Vasilevskiy. Over the final forty minutes of play the Panthers had 38 shots on goal (58 attempts total) and Vasy stopped most of them.
The only one that got by him in the third period was a bit of a lucky bounce after the Lightning muffed an easy clear behind the net. Calvin de Haan had the puck behind the net, but lost an edge (partially because he was trying to avoid Vasy). Reinhart recovered the puck and flung it at the net where it glanced off of Luke Glendening’s skate and past Vasilevskiy. Hey, the Lightning had a lucky goal in the first period and the Panthers had one in the third, it’s even-steven.
Things had deteriorated to nail-biting level, but with Bobrovsky (who finished with 11 saves on 15 shots) out of the net for the extra skater, Brandon Hagel gutted out a shift down the ice and eventually got the puck to Nikita Kucherov who put it into the empty net for his 40th goal. There were some fireworks at the end when Ryan Lomberg was called for kneeing Mikey Eyssimont, but nothing too out of hand, at least compared to the history these two teams have.
It wasn’t the prettiest game of the season, but the Lightning got to put it in the win column and collected two more important points.
The Line Up
The Goals
Steven Stamkos (Erik Cernak) 1-0 Lightning
Mikey Eyssimont (Nick Paul, Nick Perbix) 2-0 Lightning
Darren Raddysh (Anthony Duclair, Steven Stamkos) 3-0 Lightning
Steven Stamkos (Victor Hedman, Nikita Kucherov) 5-on-3 Power Play, 4-0 Lightning
Matthew Tkachuk (Josh Mahura) Shorthanded, 4-1 Lightning
Sam Reinhart (Sam Bennett, Matthew Tkachuk) Power Play, 4-2 Lightning
Sam Reinhart (unassisted) 4-3 Lightning
Nikita Kucherov (Brandon Hagel, Steven Stamkos) Empty Net, 5-3 Lightning
