The Tampa Bay Lightning could not overcome a two-goal deficit and fell to the San Jose Sharks by a 2-1 score on Thursday night at SAP Center in San Jose.
Tyler Toffoli opened the scoring in the first period on a deke-and-shoot escapade in the first period, and defenseman Mario Ferraro doubled the San Jose lead on a rush chance with 7:05 left in the second period.
Tampa Bay forward Anthony Cirelli scored the visitors’ lone goal with 2:16 remaining in the second period, deflecting a point shot by Erik Cernak.
San Jose goalie Yaroslav Askarov made 24 saves for the win. Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 23 of 25 shots for the Lightning.
Tampa Bay is now 20-13-2 and resumes play on Saturday against the Los Angeles Kings.
Scoring summary
First period
SJS 1, TBL 0
13:52 Tyler Toffoli (15) - Marc-Edouard Vlasic, Jan Rutta
The home team opened the scoring with help from veteran forward Tyler Toffoli, who deked around a Tampa Bay Lightning player and snuck a shot past Vasilevskiy in the right faceoff circle.
Shots on goal: SJS 9, TBL 8
Second period
SJS 2, TBL 0
12:55 Mario Ferraro (3) - Mikael Granlund
San Jose doubled its lead in the second period. Defenseman Mario Ferraro jumped into the rush in the offensive zone and had a pass blocked, but the puck bounced back to his stick at the inner hashmark, where Ferraro scored on a shot into the top right corner.
SJS 2, TBL 1
17:44 Anthony Cirelli (15) - Erik Cernak, Brandon Hagel
A point shot by defenseman Erik Cernak was deflected into the top of the San Jose net by Lightning forward Anthony Cirelli, slashing the visitors’ deficit in half late in period two.
Shots on goal: SJS 12, TBL 6
Third period
None
Total shots: SJS 25, TBL 25
