Well. To their credit, the Tampa Bay Lightning didn’t get down 3-0 to the Carolina Hurricanes as they had in their previous two meetings. Instead, they were down 2-0. Just as they did in the other two games, the Lightning battled back to tie the game, unfortunately, it was Jordan Martinhook’s shot from a bad angle in the third period that glanced off of Victor Hedman and past Andrei Vasilevskiy that proved to be the difference as Carolina went on to win 4-2.
Yanni Gourde and Charle-Edouard D’Astous scored 1:21 apart in the second period to get the Lightning back into the game, but that was pretty much it for a Lightning offense that generated just 38 shot attempts on the night. Only 19 made their way onto the net, and Frederik Andersen was solid in net with his most important save coming point-blank on Nikita Kucherov in the third period.
The Lightning were trailing early due to a little inattention to details (like the fact the whistle wasn’t blown). Less than a minute into the game Andrei Svechnikov got behind the Lightning defense, and while Vasilevskiy made the save, Victor Hedman was whistled for a penalty. It appeared that Hedman (and others on the ice) thought that the Big Swede touched the puck after the play, which should have drawn a whistle, however, the refs didn’t see it, or rule that the Lightning controlled the puck, so the play continued. Sebastian Aho fed it to Svechnikov who beat Vasyilevskiy for the early goal.
Carolina’s full-ice pressure was causing issues for the Lightning in the first period, limiting Tampa Bay’s time with the puck. Towards the end of the period, Carolina got behind the defense again as Aho had a breakaway. Vasilevskiy stopped the shot, but Ryan McDonagh was caught in no-man’s land in front of the net and couldn’t get to the puck, or take out Aho, who had stopped to the left of the net. Svechnikov was there to feed it over to Aho, who had a slam-dunk goal.
Tampa Bay got their wheels going a bit in the second and were able to tie the game up, but Carolina suffocated them for much of the third period. Their positioning was on point in the neutral zone as they continuously broke up the Lightning’s attempts to move the puck through the middle of the ice. When Tampa Bay did get into the zone, there was little breathing room for them to develop their plays and get shots on net.
That being said, the Lightning did have three golden opportunities to either take the lead or tie the game up in the period. Just prior to the Martinook goal, Kucherov had a golden look in front of the net, but Andersen made the save. The rebound came to the Lightning’s leading scorer and he whipped a pass over to an open Brandon Hagel. With an open net to shoot at, Hagel fired it quickly, but Sean Walker stuck his leg out and kicked the shot out of the air.
Late in the game, with the Lightning trailing, Oliver Bjorkstrand had a look a pretty open net, but his chip-shot backhand caught the crossbar and fluttered out of danger. To add insult to injury, Darren Raddysh made a nice play to knock down a clearing attempt by Carolina, but the puck fell right to Logan Stankoven who was able to shovel the puck into the empty net from his own blueline.
In the end, there just wasn’t enough pressure from the Lightning to pull off the win. They had just 12 shot attempts and only two of them made it on net. Yes, Carolina did a good job of knocking shots down (they had seven blocked shots in the period), but at some point the Lightning need to just start getting shots on net. A lesson they could learn from Martinook’s go-ahead goal.
The Lightning did a good job of covering the puck as Carolina rimmed it up the boards from behind the Tampa Bay net. Martinook was covered, but slung the puck towards the net. It was going wide until it glanced off of Victor Hedman and into the net. It wasn’t a good shot. It wasn’t a shot with a likelihood of going in the net, but it was a shot. If the Lightning garner anything out of this loss, it should be that. Sometimes you just have to shoot the puck and go from there.
As is in the case in seemingly every game this year, the injury bug clipped the Lightning once again. Tampa Bay started the game relatively healthy as Nick Paul and Erik Cernak returned to action. Unfortunately, the home team wouldn’t finish with a full roster as Zemgus Girgensons blocked a shot up high towards the end of the second period and didn’t return.
Losing Girgensons broke up one of the best lines of the night for the Lightning. Girgensons, Gourde, and Pontus Holmberg were matching Carolina’s puck-hounding approach and giving them some pushback. It’s hard enough to keep up with the Hurricanes with a full roster, down a forward made it even tougher.
The Bolts have two days off before heading off to Western Canada for a four-game road trip. Perhaps a little team bonding on a long trip will get them back to their winning ways.
Highlights
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#NHL GameScore Impact Card for Tampa Bay Lightning on 2026-03-14 #GoBolts
— HockeyStatCards (@hockeystatcards.com) March 14, 2026 at 9:41 PM
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