Burns: Three Things we learned from a comeback win in Vegas

No matter what's been thrown at this Tampa Bay team, the Lightning have proven they can roll with the punches and come out on top.
Whether spending 65 days in bubbles between Toronto and Edmonton to get over the hump and win the Stanley Cup to dealing with a condensed 56-game schedule and games only against divisional opponents with increased protocols to go back-to-back last season, the Bolts handle adversity better than any group in the National Hockey League.
More was thrown their way Tuesday when hours before their contest at Vegas, head coach Jon Cooper was placed in COVID protocols. The Bolts already had games against Colorado (Dec. 18) and Arizona (Dec. 23) postponed on the trip due to COVID concerns.
The Bolts didn't allow the setback to derail them.

Assistant coach Derek Lalonde took over as head coach in Vegas, running the forward lines and making sure there would be a seamless transition with Cooper unable to coach in the game. And the Lightning overcame a multi-goal deficit for the third time this season, rallying from 3-1 down to defeat the Golden Knights 4-3 in a battle of two of the best in the NHL.
The Lightning have now won three in a row and eight of their last nine contests entering the Holiday Break.
They also own sole possession of first place in the NHL standings for points (44), one ahead of Carolina and Washington.
Remarkable for a team that's played most of the season without Nikita Kucherov, has lost Brayden Point for the last 14 games and continues to be without shutdown defenseman Erik Cernak.
Here's how they got it done in Las Vegas to head into the Holiday Break on a high.

1. THE CURVEBALL
Tampa Bay, it seemed, was the only team in the NHL that hadn't been affected by COVID to this point of the season.
That all changed about two-and-a-half hours before puck drop in Las Vegas.
Lightning head coach Jon Cooper was forced to enter COVID protocols after testing positive on Tuesday, which saw assistant coach Derek Lalonde take over as the acting head coach for the game and call out the forward lines.
Not much changed on the bench. Rob Zettler continued to call the defensive pairs. Jeff Halpern helped Lalonde with the forwards and ran the power play. Zettler and Lalonde handled the penalty kill as well as the end-of-game 6-on-5 situation.
The coaching staff was prepared for this eventuality and was able to keep things as close to normal on the bench as possible.
Lalonde said he found out he'd be that night's head coach about 15 minutes before he caught the bus over to the rink.
"When you don't have Coop there, he's great at line matchups, he's great at changing lines around for a spark, he's good in the room, he's able to get to the guys when he is in the room talking to them," Lalonde said. "But it really is seamless. I know it probably sounds cliché, but we share everything and everything kind of our room comes as one."
Lightning captain Steven Stamkos said what happened to his team in Las Vegas was bound to happen at some point. The Bolts have been through enough over the last couple seasons to know how to handle when a player or, in this case, a coach has to sit due to COVID.
"Vegas got hit today. We get hit with our coach. I think you have to expect some more here in the next coming days just with how it's gone around the league where one or two guys get it and then it spreads pretty quick," Stamkos said. "We have to continue to be diligent and just go with the flow like we have the last couple of years. Things are going to change. At this point, it's kind of like an hour to hour thing waiting for test results. Kudos for our coaching staff tonight. Newsy did a good job managing the bench there. It was nice to get a win for him and the rest of the staff."
After the game, Stamkos grabbed the game puck and presented it to Lalonde in the locker room.
"He's like, 'Probably not as you envisioned your first win,'" Lalonde said, recalling the moment. "No, getting absolutely killed in the middle of the second period being on our heels feeling like we're down 8-1 when we're only down 3-1 and then getting three all the way back, the pandemic and turning this around at 4:30 in the afternoon, probably not the way I envisioned it, but again, it's about the guys and it's a credit to the guys. This was just going about our business again from our group."

2. 43 SECONDS THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING
At the game's midpoint, the Lightning were trailing 3-1 and threatening to fall into an even deeper hole.
After Nicolas Roy skated through a pair of Lightning defenseman and slipped a shot over the glove of Andrei Vasilevskiy to extend Vegas' lead to 3-1, the Golden Knights continued to pressure and looked likely to go up even more.
Tampa Bay, however, got stellar goaltending from Andrei Vasilevskiy, who picked up his seventh-straight win on Tuesday, just one win from matching the longest goalie win streak in the NHL this season set by Frederik Andersen.
The Lightning were in danger of letting the game in Vegas get away from them. But one shift by the Pierre-Edouard Bellemare line got the Bolts back on track, and a pair of quick-strike tallies had the Lightning back on level terms entering the third period.
With less than three minutes remaining in the second, the Bellemare line went to work with the most important shift of the game. Patrick Maroon worked the puck down below the goal line to Corey Perry. From behind the net, Perry spotted Bellemare skating into the slot and fed him a quick pass Bellemare was able to one-time in to cut the Lightning deficit to a goal with 2:53 to go in the period.
"Those guys stepped up, so you've got to give them credit for going out there and just simplifying," Stamkos said. "They get the puck in. Patty makes a good play to Pairs behind the net and Pairs goes to work and does his thing and makes a great play and showed a lot of poise and found Belly in front. That's a veteran line that understood where we were in the game and how they could go out there and affect it and just give us a spark and they did that."
On the ensuing shift, Zach Bogosian slipped a pass off into the right circle for Alex Killorn, who threw a puck on net with bodies in front. Anthony Cirelli was skating in front and swung at the rebound to shovel a backhander past Vegas goalie Laurent Brossoit 43 seconds after Bellemare scored to tie the game 3-all and turn what was shaping up to be a runaway Vegas victory into a winnable game for the Lightning.
"For the first 30-40 minutes of that game, they took it to us," Stamkos said. "It felt like we were sitting around and were our heels and they were on their toes. Thank God for Vasy, he kept it a couple-goal game, and over that last five minutes we were able to build some momentum. We just simplified. We got pucks in deep and forechecked. That gave us some life going into the third. At that point, you've got to throw away the first half of the game and go out and give yourself an opportunity to win the game."

3. STAMKOS SETS THE BAR
No player in Lightning history has scored more game-winning goals than Steven Stamkos.
The Bolts captain established a new franchise mark after connecting with four seconds left on a power play at 10:13 of the third period to break a 3-all tie.
Stamkos netted his 65th career game-winning goal after ripping a one-timer from his office past Brossoit to pass Martin St. Louis as Tampa Bay's all-time GWG leader.
"We get a power play, and we capitalize," Stamkos said.
The Lightning power play has been maligned of late but came through in Las Vegas. With time running out on the man-advantage, Killorn worked the puck from behind the net to Ondrej Palat in the right circle. Palat quickly swung the puck to the point for Victor Hedman, and Hedman kept it moving over to Stamkos in his office.
The captain stood on the left dot as he received the pass and hammered a one-timer over Brossoit's shoulder at the near post to cap the comeback win.
Through 30 games, Stamkos leads the Lightning for goals (14), power-play goals (6) and scoring (35 pts.). He currently ranks sixth in the NHL for points.
With the Lightning attack severely hampered by long-term injuries to Nikita Kucherov and Brayden Point, Stamkos has stepped up to fill the void with one of the best starts to a season in his illustrious career.
Said Stamkos: "It certainly wasn't the recipe that we want to continue but given the circumstances and what's gone on here the last week with the travel and the cancellation of games and sitting around and things like that, we found a way to win a game that we probably shouldn't have and we'll certainly take it."