The Tampa Bay Lightning beat the Ottawa Senators in a shootout 4-3.
This might’ve been an ugly and overly creative game, but you couldn’t call it dull. It had a little bit of everything going on. About the only thing missing was a penalty shot. Though, I guess we got that with the shootout.
The first period went along fairly smoothly. The Lightning were playing pretty well, they had some shots on goal, got a couple of goals on top of that. It was a pretty good period of play, of the most part.
And then all hell broke loose during the second period.
And the crazy part about the second period penalties isn’t that everyone was fighting. Because that wasn’t really the case. Some of them were legitimate penalties that started off scuffles. And then for some reason, the officials would drop the initial penalty and just hand out the roughing penalties. The officiating was definitely strange – and I’m not saying that because Ottawa had nine straight power plays.
The weirdest call of the night came on the “trip” of Mike Smith when he was outside his crease. Chris Neil was called for tripping and roughing, while Smith was given a double minor for roughing. On the replays, Neil clearly slew-footed Smith, there were obvious punches being thrown – one or two by Smith with his blocker no less, and Mattias Ohlund was definitely the third man in on that fight. But was any of that called that way? Nope. And I have no idea why that is. How Ohlund did not get tagged with a penalty, I have no idea.
A scary incident in the second period was Andrej Meszaros getting hit in the throat/neck with a puck. Thankfully, he was okay and came back to play the third period. Still, no one likes seeing that stretcher brought out for any reason – even if Meszaros was on the bench when they grabbed it.
Victor Hedman wasn’t so lucky. He’d gotten into a scrap with Mike Fisher, of all people. Sometime after that, it was announced that he wasn’t going to return due to an “upper body’” injury. Hedman has had the worst luck lately.
The third and overtime were relatively uneventful. Despite all of the craziness of the second, it wasn’t until 17 seconds left in overtime that Steve Downie became involved in anything extracurricular. Good for him that he didn’t join in when everyone else was. Oh, and Zenon Konopka didn’t receive any penalties during this game, either.
Steven Stamkos scored his 48th goal of the season. Sidney Crosby scored his 50th during the Pittsburgh Penguins game. The Washington Capitals didn’t play, so Stamkos is tied for second with Alex Ovechkin.
Teddy Purcell scored the only goal of the shootout, giving the Lightning the win. Stamkos and Martin St. Louis were the first two to go, but neither of them scored.
The next game is Saturday, 10 April, versus the Florida Panthers. Game time is 7:30 pm Eastern. This is the last home game for the Tampa Bay Lightning of the 2009-2010 season, so go get your hockey fix before it’s all over.
Senators vs Lightning coverage [SB Nation]
Silver Seven [SB Nation Ottawa Senators site]
