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Different day, same result. Coming off of a 3-0 shutout loss to the Florida Panthers last night, it was deja vu all of over again tonight as the Kings fell 3-0 to the Tampa Bay Lightning. With the loss, the Kings record moves to 0-3-1 on their current five-game road trip.

Further replicating the night before, the Kings surrendered the game’s first goal at the same exact time, 4:55 into the first period. Beginning in the Lightning’s own zone goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy beat the Kings forecheck by backhanding the puck to forward Gage Goncalves along the boards and out of the zone. Goncalves then hit an open Brandon Hagel in stride in the neutral zone and the point per game forward made a beautiful individual deke past a defender, entered the Kings zone and beat David Rittich five hole for his 21st goal of the season. The remainder of the period went scoreless and the Lightning went into the first intermission with a lead on the scoreboard and held an 11-8 advantage in shots.

The second period went scoreless for the second straight night, but not without controversy. Following a successfully killed off Jacob Moverare tripping penalty, the Swedish defenseman stepped out of the box and found himself with the puck on a 2-on-1. Pressured by the Lightning defender, Moverare’s body entered the offensive zone, but the puck did not despite still possessing it. Moverare gathered and found a streaking Quinton Byfield entering the zone and the forward snapped a wrist shot past Vasilevskiy to tie the game momentarily. The Lightning challenged the play for offsides and after a lengthy delay the play was deemed to be offsides, taking the goal off of the board.

The Kings entered the third period trailing 1-0 and late in regulation the Lightning struck again to double their lead. With 4:21 to go in the game, the Lightning gained possession of the puck off of a draw in their own end and the duo of Nikita Kucherov and Hagel took off. After receiving a pass from Hagel, Kucherov went in on Rittich on a contested breakaway. Kucherov was denied on the break as Rittich played the play aggressively by coming out of the net to challenge the contest, but by doing so lost his net and couldn’t find the loose rebound. Hagel won the race to the loose puck as the trailer on the play and shot the puck into the semi vacant net for his second goal of the game. Anthony Cirelli added an empty net goal and Vasilevskiy completed the game with a 28-save shutout.

Stopping 1.11 goals above expected, Rittich was great on the night making 30 saves on 32 shots on goal.

Still in search of their first win away from home on the trip, Kings will close out their five-game road trip in Carolina against the Hurricanes on Saturday.

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