Well, that’s a relief. The Tampa Bay Lightning snap their four-game losing streak with a convincing win over a reeling Toronto Maple Leafs squad, 5-2. With four assists, Nikita Kucherov hit the 100-point mark for the fourth season in a row. Corey Perry scored in his first game since the trade deadline and Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 27-of-29 shots.
Yes, it was the Maple Leafs, a team that is driving the struggle bus right off of Niagara Falls (the Canadian side), but after failing to taste victory in their last four outings, the Lightning will take it, especially heading into a big game against Buffalo on Sunday. While it wasn’t a perfect outing, the Lightning did what made them successful through December and January – snagged the lead, protected the lead, and extended the lead. Even more impressive they did it in a two-and-a-half minute stretch.
With Perry jumping on the fourth line with Conor Geekie and Scott Sabourin, Coach Jon Cooper returned to a 12-6 line-up. The trio skated 8:18 together and generated four scoring chances, with three of them considered high-danger.
In what has become a common occurrence of late, Toronto struck first. With the Lightning controlling much of the play early, William Nylander made a nice read to stay along the boards in his own zone and pick off a pass attempt by Oliver Bjorkstrand. That allowed him to rush up the ice with Mattias Maccelli and Maccelli’s shot beat Vasilevskiy on the glove side.
Unlike the last few games, the Lightning didn’t have to chase the game for very long. Less than a minute later, Ryan McDonagh threw the puck at the Toronto net and it pinballed past Anthony Stolarz, who finished the night with 28 saves. There seemed to be a sense of relief when the lucky bounce went the Lightning’s way.
With 7:30 left in the period, the floodgates opened. After an offensive zone face-off win(!) Kucherov made a strong play off the boards to center the puck onto the net. Brayden Point ran interference in the crease while Jake Guentzel swooped in to chip a backhand shot past Stolarz. A minute later, Perry had a look at a yawning net and didn’t miss. Toronto was on the backfoot and took a penalty. Oliver Bjorkstrand made them pay for their transgressions as he one-timed a Kucherov pass into the net. That would be it for the Lightning offense until Brandon Hagel made it 5-1 with an empty-net goal in the third.
The offense slowed a bit in the second period, but the defense came through, as they limited the Maple Leafs to 8 shots and just 2 high-danger chances in the middle frame. There were still some breakdowns along the way, but Vasilevskiy made several key stops to keep any thought of a comeback out of Toronto’s minds.
When asked after the game if the game was closer to their standard, Coach Cooper answered,
“Honestly, no. I loved the fact that we jumped out to a lead. We kind of smelled it and we went in for it. I liked that, but we can’t give up that chance to [Matthew] Knies in the slot. Vasy had to make two Vasilevskiy-type saves…A couple plays like that, we just got to tighten that up a little bit more.”
While the Bolts were back to using six defensemen, the coaching staff did mix it up a little. J.J. Moser and Darren Raddysh were still a duo, but Ryan McDonagh spent most of the night (11:43 of 5v5) with Charle-Edouard D’Astous, while Victor Hedman was paired with Erik Cernak.
While the Hedman/Cernak pairing was on the ice for a rather bad goal (behind the Lightning net Hedman had his pocket-picked by Nicholas Robertson who tucked it home) overall they had a pretty decent game with Tampa Bay enjoying a 12-5 edge in shot attempts and a 5-1 edge in high-danger chances when they were on the ice.
One of the advantages of the early lead was that the Lightning were able to roll their three pairings fairly evenly. McDonagh had the least amount of 5v5 ice time with 14:10, but the ice-time leader, D’Astous, had just 16:10. Thanks to their special teams play, Hedman (20:54) and Raddysh (20:45) were the only skaters to log over 20 minutes in the game. With the Buffalo game less than 24 hours away, it’s pretty solid roster management by the coaching staff.
It’ll be a big game against Buffalo, who also won on Saturday, as they will be playing for first place in the division. The Lightning improved to 10-1 on the season in the first part of a back-to-back while picking up their 20th road win of the season.
Pretty Colors
