It may have a new name, but the home arena for the Minnesota Wild continues to be a house of horrors for the Tampa Bay Lightning. The newly christened Grand Casino Arena witnessed another loss, their fourteenth out of nineteen games played there, for the Lightning as they fell 5-1 to home team. Matt Boldy had three assists while Kirill Kaprizov (after striking iron three times) set Minnesota’s franchise goal record with an empty-netter.
As has been the case since returning from the Olympic break, the Lightning were down early as Brock Faber opened the scoring at the 3:46 mark of the first period. Tampa Bay would chase the game the rest of the night. They dodged a few short-handed chances early in the game, but their carelessness in regards to the rules came back to haunt them when Mats Zuccarello scored on the advantage to make it 2-0 five minutes into the second period.
The Lightning cut the lead in half when Nikita Kucherov finished off a nice passing play for his 32nd goal of the season. Unfortunately, two minutes later, Andrei Vasilevskiy failed to cover a puck in his crease and Yakov Trenin pounced on it and put it into the net. Quinn Hughes, who skated a leisurely 26:01, officially put the game out of reach at the 6:53 mark of the third. Kaprizov put the final nail in the coffin with his 220th career goal, passing Marion Gaborik on the all-time Minnesota scoring chart.
While the Lightning led in shots on goal for most of the night, it was Minnesota generating the more dangerous chances all night long as they imposed their game plan on Tampa Bay. The Lightning’s compete level was higher than in the Buffalo loss, but their lack of execution continued to be their downfall as Minnesota was able to dominate the zone time and areas in front of both nets.
Filip Gustavsson was solid in net, stopping several early chances from the Bolts, including a breakaway from Oliver Bjorkstrand. The defense in front of the netminder was even stronger, rarely allowing the Lightning to get to loose pucks or second chances. The result was a lot of shots from distance that were easily handled by the Wild goaltender.
At the other end, Minnesota’s speed and skating ability gave the Lightning fits in their own zone with the first goal a prime example of how the puck movement led to blown coverages. Playing the puck behind the net, Marcus Johansson was able to pull Victor Hedman toward him, which opened up a huge lane for Faber to fire the puck past Vasilevskiy. The Lightning netminder, who was pulled from his last start, stopped 17-of-21 shots, but was often hung out to dry by his defenders.
Conor Geekie returned to the line-up and posted one shot on net in 10:40 of ice time. He was credited with four hits on the night and one scoring chance.
Tampa Bay continues their road trip on Thursday against Winnipeg.
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#NHL GameScore Impact Card for Tampa Bay Lightning on 2026-03-03 #GoBolts
— HockeyStatCards (@hockeystatcards.com) March 4, 2026 at 12:20 AM
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