It’s not every day that a goaltender is the best player on the ice when his team wins by four goals, but that was the case as the Tampa Bay Lightning defeated the Detroit Red Wings, 5-1, behind Andrei Vasilevskiy’s 39 saves. Tampa Bay also cooled off the league’s best power play as they went 5-for-6 short-handed while converting 2-of-3 power plays. Nikita Kucherov piled up three more points on the night, including his 600th career assist.
Max Crozier made his season debut in place of Erik Cernak and had a solid net, finishing with two shots on net, three blocked shots, and four hits in 14:25 of ice time. Paired with Ryan McDonagh for most of the game managed to finish at 50% on shot attempts and at 50.95% xGF, which was even more impressive considering the wide margin the Red Wings had in shot attempts (78-43) and expected goals (4.15 to 2.51).
Score effects negate that gulf a bit, especially considering the Lightning had a multi-goal lead for a vast majority of the game, but the Red Wings were winging shots and piling up chances all night long. To their credit, the Lightning forced a lot of those chances from distance, and there weren’t many second-chance opportunities for the visitors. When they did falter, Vasilevskiy was their to bail them out, especially in the first period with the Lightning nursing a 1-0 lead.
The Lightning needed a fast start. It’s been the mantra we’ve heard over the last two weeks or so. Against Detroit, they got just that as Brayden Point took a rebound off of the end-boards and back-handed it past Cam Talbot to give Tampa Bay a lead just two minutes into the game. They followed it up with some solid play afterwards and Nick Paul came close to making it 2-0 but Talbot stopped his redirect chance from the crease.
Shortly after that, Brandon Hagel went to the box for a penalty, and while the Lightning killed off the red-hot power play, the tenor of the game changed, Detroit controlled the play for long stretches of play for the remainder of the period. Luckily for Tampa Bay, Andrei Vasilevskiy was their best player on the ice. His shiniest moment came when Nikita Kucherov turned the puck over at the Detroit blue line, which allowed Patrick Kane and Alex DeBrincat to break away with a two-on-one.
Kane made the pass, and it looked like DeBrincat was going to be able to slide it in, but Vasilevskiy got his pad down just enough to stop the puck. DeBrincat came close to tying it again when he beat Vasy cleanly, but the puck clanged off of the post. Aided by a late power play, the Red Wings dominated the possession stats as they racked up 18 scoring chances to the Lightning’s 3, and outshot them 15-6. The good news is that the Bolts made it to the break with the 1-0 lead for a chance to regroup and rethink their plan of attack.
They probably weren’t expected to be gifted a power play four seconds into the period, but that’s what happened as Marco Kasper took out Brandon Hagel on the initial face-off. It took the Lightning only slightly longer to score on the power play as Jake Guentzel tapped in a centering feed from Nikita Kucherov at the 18 second mark of the middle frame to double the Lightning lead.
The Lightning didn’t sit back after scoring the goal. Unlike the first period, they capitalized on their chances. Just 1:34 after Guentzel scored, Kucherov stick-handled around Patrick Kane and Alex DeBrincat and then roofed it over Talbot to make it 3-0. It was an absolute highlight-reel bit of offense from the Maykop Magician.
It didn’t stop there. Less than two minutes later the Luke Glendening line chipped in a goal. After getting caved in possession-wise in the first period, Glendening started things off by forcing a turnover behind the net. Cameron Atkinson swooped in and centered the puck to Mitchell Chaffee, who swatted it past Talbot for his first goal in 11 games.
Detroit called their timeout after the Chaffee goal, and they caught their breath a bit. They pushed back a little at 5v5, and the Lightning helped out by taking three more penalties. They killed off the first two, but with time winding down on the third man-advantage, Kane found Lucas Raymond on the far post. Raymond fired the puck off of Vasilevskiy’s hip and into the goal.
Would the tide turn? A three-goal lead isn’t as much fun as a four-goal one, and while the Lightning probably wouldn’t blow it, it would add a little more tension to things. So, it was nice of Ben Chiarot to trip up Kucherov to give the Lightning another power play. It took a little longer, but not much, for Tampa Bay to find the back of the net. Darren Raddysh unleashed one of his big slapshots, and Talbot never had a chance as Guentzel had him screened. Kucherov picked up his third point of the night, and 600th career assist on the goal.
Unfortunately, Raddysh took a shot to the upper-chest area shortly after and went into the locker room with about 90 seconds left to go in the period. It’s the third game in a row where the Lightning have had a defenseman go down.
Unlike Ryan McDonagh against Boston, and Erik Cernak against Anaheim, Raddysh would return in the third period, paired as usual with Hedman. He ended up adding another 6:14 of ice time to his total to finish with 18:05, which is only the second time this month he’s been under 19 minutes. It was the same for a lot of the Lightning top players.
With the Bolts chasing the lead in a lot of their recent games, their stars have been logging a lot of ice time, especially late in the game. An added benefit of a four-goal lead is that Coach Cooper could do a little in-game load management. He was able to divide the ice time out among all four lines and give his stars a bit of a break.
One player who didn’t get a break was Andrei Vasilevskiy, who was out there for the entire game (unlike Cam Talbot, who was replaced by Alex Lyon at the beginning of the third period). Aided by two more power plays, the Red Wings launched 13 shots at him in the third period, but he kept them all out of the net. His best sequence came short-handed when he stopped J.T. Compher, Michael Rasmussen, and Vlad Tarasenko in quick succession.
Things ended with a bit of an edge as Marco Kasper was whistled for boarding Conor Geekie (Kasper had his hand on Geekie’s back as the rookie lost his edge and crashed into the end-boards). Geekie’s linemates didn’t care for that and there was a big pile-up in the Lightning zone. The Bolts emerged with a game-shortened power play that they didn’t convert, but we’ll see if the tempers start a bit higher when the two teams meet next week.
The Goals
Brayden Point (Emil Lilleberg, Nick Perbix) 1-0 Lightning
Jake Guentzel (Nikita Kucherov, Darren Raddysh) Power Play, 2-0 Lightning
Nikta Kucherov (Victor Hedman, Jake Guentzel) 3-0 Lightning
Mitchell Chaffee (Cameron Atkinson) 4-0 Lightning
Lucas Raymond (Patrick Kane, Mo Seider) Power Play, 4-1 Lightning
Darren Raddysh (Nikita Kucherov, Jake Guentzel) Power Play, 5-1
The Charts
