If life in hockey was fair, the Tampa Bay Lightning would probably not have won their game against the Boston Bruins. However, sports are unpredictable and the deserving team doesn’t always get to post the W. Tampa Bay build an early 2-0 lead on goals by Erik Cernak and Nikita Kucherov only to see the Bruins erase that lead in the middle frame. Brayden Point scored the lone goal in the special skills session to garner the extra point for the Bolts. Andrei Vasilevskiy was outstanding (especially in overtime) as he posted 35 saves to snatch the victory away from the home team.
Future hall-of-famer and all-around general pest Brad Marchand was skating in a Bruins uniform for the 1,000th time in the regular season and he had his usual strong game against the Bolts as he assisted on goals by Charlie McAvoy and James van Riemsdyk. Of those 1,000 games Marchand has played in, 47 have come against the Lightning and he has 43 points (18 games, 25 assists). Look, it’s easy to hate him, but the man is good at his job, so congrats on making it 1,000 games.
The Bolts had a fairly strong start to the game and were first on the board off of a pretty passing play by Brandon Hagel. After Anthony Cirelli was able to work a puck free along the boards in the neutral zone, Hagel scampered into the zone and whipped a pass back to Erik Cernak. The big fella cranked a shot on net that Linus Ullmark stopped…briefly. While the whistle did blow, the puck wasn’t listening and trickled behind the goaltender and over the goal line. A quick review confirmed that it was a good goal and because of the continuous motion rule, it counted.
Erik Cernak (Brandon Hagel, Anthony Cirelli) 1-0 Lightning
I don’t want to say that was the high point of the Lightning’s offensive play for the night, but from that point on, Boston really kind of pushed play, especially at 5v5. For the night the Bruins had the edge in shot attempts (60.44%), shots on goal (59.46%), scoring chances (68.75%), and high-danger chances (70.59%). According to Natural Stat Trick, the Lightning had five high-danger chances in the first period and ended the game with… five high-danger chances. Yeah, that’s not normally a path to success.
While 5v5 play might have been an issue, the Bolts did win the special teams battle. They went 1-for-3 on the power play and 6-for-6 on the penalty kill. Granted their sixth time shorthanded lasted all of 3 seconds, but it still counts the same as a full two-minute penalty.
The goal on the power play came early in the second period and it was courtesy of The Man Himself, Nikita Kucherov. First of all, the backhand, cross-ice pass to Steven Stamkos was sublime. Then, he put himself in the right spot to clean things up after Stamkos’ shot hit something in front of the net and caused chaos. It was Kucherov’s 34th goal and league-leading 90th point (Nathan MacKinnon had two points in the Avs 6-3 win over the Caps so he is at 87 points).
Nikita Kucherov (unassisted) Power Play, 2-0 Lightning
The Bruins are the Bruins and you didn’t feel like two goals was going to be enough. Sure enough, 58 seconds after the Kucherov goal, the Bruins were on the board. A nice stretch of possession in the Lightning zone led to a point shot from Charlie McAvoy that it appeared Vasilevskiy never saw as it beat him on the short side as he was drifting toward the middle of the crease.
Charlie McAvoy (Brad Marchand, David Pasternak) 2-1 Lightning
Turnovers and long stretches of play in their own zone stifled the Lightning offense and it seemed like only a matter of time until the Bruins would tie it up. At the 16:23 mark, it was James van Riemsdyk jamming home a goal that did just that.
James van Riemsdyk (Brad Marchand, David Pasternak) 2-2
Did the Lightning cause a lot of their own issues? For sure, but to their credit they played their way out of most of the bad situations. And when they didn’t, Andrei Vasilevskiy was there to bail them out. Good teams find ways to win when they aren’t at the best and the Bolts did that tonight. That was a hallmark of their Cup teams and it’s good to see them do it tonight.
The third period was a bit disjointed as the Lightning took three penalties. It hurt their ability to push the play into Boston’s zone and only managed 11 shot attempts total. Vasilevskiy was huge in the third period and overtime as he made 16 saves over those 25 minutes. It was a pretty good road trip for Vasilevskiy as he went 2-1 and was pretty much the best player on the ice in the Columbus and Boston games. If he’s rounding back into form, the Lightning go from a bubble team to a contender in a hurray.
Brayden Point finished things off in the shootout as he was the only skater to tally a goal and the Lightning were able to leave the snowy Northeast with a split on the road trip and four road points. In the end, not a bad trip away from home.
They have no break through, as they take on Colorado on Thursday and then Florida on Saturday.
