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Lightning lose to Wild, 5-3

Nov 1, 2024; Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA; Tampa Bay Lightning forward Luke Glendening (11) and Minnesota Wild forward Frederick Gaudreau (89) battle for the puck during the first period at Xcel Energy Center. Mandatory Credit: Nick Wosika-Imagn Images

It was another close game between the two teams, but the Tampa Bay Lightning’s woes in the Twin Cities continued as they dropped yet another game to the Minnesota Wild, 5-3. They did manage to score twice on the power play, but couldn’t overcome Kirill Kaprizov’s three-point night. The Lightning are now 3-12-0-2 all time in Minnesota.

Brayden Point and Jake Guentzel had the power play goals for Tampa Bay while Nick Paul scored late to give the Lightning a chance. Andrei Vasilevskiy’s quest for 300 wins will have to wait another game as he finished with 17 saves on 20 shots.

First Period

Against Colorado, the Lighting had three goals before six minutes elapsed in the game. Tonight, it took them a little longer to dent the back of the net, but they did it. And, it was on the power play! The really nice thing about the period was the defensive play as the Lighting held the Wild to just six shots on goal out of 12 shot attempts. Most of those shots were easily dealt with by Vasilevskiy, as the defense in front of him didn’t allow a single high-danger chance according to Natural Stat Trick.

On the offensive side of the puck, the Lightning generated 21 total shot attempts, and most importantly, 15 of those made it on net. In their previous meeting, Minnesota blocked a ton of shots, but through the first 20 minutes they only blocked 4.

The importance of getting shots through showed with under a minute to go in the period. The Lightning were on their second power play of the period and a shot from Victor Hedman was re-directed on net and Gustavsson had to fling his body out to make the initial save. That left him out of position when Brayden Point calmly flipped the rebound into the back of the net.

Brayden Point (Victor Hedman, Brandon Hagel) Power Play, 1-0 Lightning

Second Period:

The Minnesota Wild haven’t trailed on the scoreboard much this season, and they didn’t care to start doing it tonight. Just 47 seconds into the second period, they equalized the score as Erik Cernak got caught flatfooted against the one player on the ice he didn’t want to see speeding in on him. Mats Zuccarello started things innocently enough by banging a pass up the boards. For the briefest of moments it looked like Mikey Eyssimont was going to get there in time to cut things off.

He didn’t. That allowed Kirill Kaprizov to motor by him and right into Cernak’s path. The big defenseman tried to pivot to the inside to cut things off, but was behind the play. Ryan McDonagh crashed to the net trying to cut the pass off as well, but got a little too deep which allowed Kaprizov to feed the puck to Joel Eriksson Ek for the goal. Joel Eriksson Ek (Kirill Kaprizov, Mats Zuccarello) 1-1

After Tampa Bay set the pace in the first period, it was the home team that dictated things in the second. A couple of early penalties by the Lightning helped pad the stats a little, but even at 5v5 the Wild were the better team. It also helped that they played with two pucks on the ice at one point.

https://twitter.com/FDSN_Lightning/status/1852521753970627057

Luckily that didn’t count.

Still, it was a rough go for the Lightning. Remember how the Wild only blocked 4 shots in the first period? Well, they blocked 12 in the second. They held the Bolts to 7 shots and 3 high-danger chances (2 of which came on a Tampa Bay power play). Despite the territorial edge that Minnesota had, it didn’t translate to a lot of dangerous chances, at least at 5v5. The Wild were only able to generate 2 high-danger chances, and the Lightning ended up with more scoring chances (7-5).

Third Period

The Bolts really didn’t want to get behind the Wild and have to claw their way through Minnesota’s defensive web. Unfortunately, a bit of a bad bounce put them in that exact situation. Conor Geekie was a long the boards in his own zone as the puck was rimmed around to him. It hopped over his stick and Minnesota was able to keep it in the zone with the Lightning scrambling to get into position. They couldn’t and Brock Faber snapped one through traffic and past Vasilevskiy. Brock Faber (Jake Middleton, Jakub Lauko) 2-1 Wild

So, of course the Lightning tied it up on the power play. Wait, what? They actually did tie it up on the power play. Good Minnesota boy Jake Guentzel had a lot of room in the left circle and picked his spot to beat Gustavsson. Jake Guentzel (Victor Hedman, Nikita Kucherov) Power Play, 2-2

The Lightning held the tie a little longer than they held the lead, but a bit of a fluky goal from Minnesota’s top line re-established the home team’s lead. Vasilevskiy appeared to swallow up a shot from the point, but the puck trickled through him to the left of the net. Marco Rossi tried to stuff it home, but Vasy made the initial save. The puck then bounced up into the air and off of Kaprizov’s leg into the net. Kirill Kaprizov (Marco Rossi, Mats Zucarello) 3-2 Wild

Coach Cooper pulled Vasilevskiy with over three minutes left and it generated a chance as Brandon Hagel slid the puck over to Guentzel, but the pass handcuffed Jake and he couldn’t stuff it home. The next rush was turned over in the neutral zone, allowing Matt Boldy to fling it off the crossbar and into the empty net.

There was still more than two minutes to go in the game and the Lightning weren’t done. Nick Paul made it interesting with a late goal, but, despite a flurry of shot attempts, they couldn’t pull any closer. Kaprizov finished it off with another empty-net goal and the Lightning’s winning streak ended. Nick Paul (Ryan McDonagh, Erik Cernak) 4-3 Wild

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