There can often be a letdown after a long road trip, especially a west coast one, but the Tampa Bay Lightning matched and surpassed the energy from the Boston Bruins to post a 3-1 victory in a potential preview of the first round of the playoffs. Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 23 of 24 while Mitchell Chaffee, Brayden Point, and Nikita Kucherov provided the goals. With his tally, Kucherov moved back ahead of Nathan MacKinnon in the points race.
With the Bruins coming off of a tough, physical game against the Florida Panthers last night, the Lightning were on a mission to lay the body on Boston. They were credited with 8 hits in the first 8 minutes and finished the period with 21 hits overall, an extremely high total for a team that came into the game averaging 21.15 hits per 60 minutes.
Hits are nice and the crowd likes them, but in the end it’s a bit of a hollow victory if you’re giving up chances all night long. The good news is that the Bolts were pretty sound in their own zone and were getting chances from all of their lines. In fact, it was their third line that opened the scoring.
A quick re-entry by Darren Raddysh allowed the Lightning to catch the Bruins chasing the puck a little bit. It ended up with Nick Paul flipping a little backhand pass into the slot that Mitchell Chaffee was able to shovel up and over Linus Ullmark.
Mitchell Chaffee (Nick Paul, Mikey Eyssimont) 1-0 Tampa Bay
A power play for the Lightning followed, but they weren’t able to generate much and Boston seemed to build off of it. They were able to generate a few chances, including an in-close chance that a rolling Vasilevskiy helped keep out of a net.
A little miscommunication behind the Lightning net led to a tied score. Matt Dumba was first on a dump-in, but as David Pastrnak harassed him a bit, Dumba reversed the puck behind him. It was the right play, but there wasn’t enough juice on it, or he thought a teammate was behind him. Instead it was Pavel Zacha, who was not on his team. Zacha sent it to Danton Heinen and Heinen’s shot was absolutely perfect and under the bar to beat Vasy.
Danton Heinen (Pavel Zacha) 1-1
From there the emotion on the ice ramped up quite a bit as the teams exchanged rushes and the hitting continued. Tanner Jeannot threw a hit on Trent Frederic that the Bruin didn’t care form so he went after Jeannot. The fight was over after the first punch as Jeannot caught the Bruin with an uppercut and cut him above the eye. Frederic could only hold on from there and the officials broke it up.
The excitement of the first period didn’t carry over to the middle frame as the teams settled into a more grind-it-out kind of game. Early in the second, the Lightning were definitely controlling the play as pushing the Bruins back and it was the top line that pulled them ahead.
Emil Lilleberg got things going with a nifty breakout pass that got the Lightning out of the zone. A series of plays led to some consecutive shots from the Bolts and sent their guests scrambling around in the defensive zone. Point eventually gathered up a puck off of the end boards and, with Ullmark a little over committed, wheeled around the back of the net and tucked in a wraparound.
Brayden Point (Emil Lilleberg, Nick Perbix) 2-1 Tampa Bay
From there, the Bolts settled into one of those grooves where they just didn’t get shots on goal, going roughly ten minutes without testing Ullmark. They weren’t playing bad, nor were they allowing a lot of chances for most of that time. As the period wore on, Boston did start to pressure a bit. Victor Hedman made a nice backcheck to deny an in-close chance from Pastrnak. Matt Dumba had a key block during that section of the game.
Pastrnak did draw a penalty as the period was drawing to a close and Lilleberg had to block a shot to limit some danger. It wasn’t the cleanest end to a period, but the Lightning did head into the locker room with the 2-1 lead.
It would be a lead they would not relinquish. If you look at one stat from this game, check out the Bruins’ high-danger chances at 5v5. According to Natural Stat Trick they had two in the first period. After that, just one through the final forty minutes. Throw in their power play time and that number goes up to just five.
On the other hand, the Lightning had 13 high-danger chances with five of them coming in the third period. They outshot and outchanced the Bruins in the final frame to close things out like they used to. They also continued to lay the lumber on the visitors as they were credited with 48 hits.
It looked like they had doubled their lead about six minutes in when Steven Stamkos hammered in a rebound for his 30th goal of the season. Unfortunately, the Bruins’ video coaches noticed that Anthony Cirelli appeared to be offside on the entry. After an official challenge, they were correct, although just barely.
That didn’t stop the Bolts and they kept pushing Boston to the edges of the play and taking some shots at Ullmark. Brayden Point slid on between his legs as the veteran tried a two-pad stack, but Andrew Peeke and Hampus Lindholm bailed their goaltender out.
Eventually, Boston pulled Ullmark and the Lightning made them pay. They were able to control the puck in their zone and Victor Hedman flung it down the ice. Nikita Kucherov, who drifted to center ice when he saw his teammates had the puck, was the first down the ice and was able to wrap it into the net before the defenders were able to cut him off.
Nikita Kucherov (Victor Hedman, Andrei Vasilevskiy) Empty Net, 3-1 Tampa Bay
The Lightning’s power play continued its strong play as they killed off both shorthanded chances. They allowed just four shots on net, with four of them coming from the perimeter.
