The Tampa Bay Lightning saw their four-game preseason winning streak come to an end Thursday night in a 6-3 loss to the Florida Panthers at AMALIE Arena.
After scoring the only two goals in Tuesday’s contest between these two teams, the Bolts opened the scoring early in the first period with Victor Hedman netting his first goal of the preseason just 2:54 into the game. With the faceoff in the Florida zone to the right of Anthony Stolarz, Gabriel Fortier won the draw and Austin Watson sent a bank pass to the point for Hedman, who hammered a heavy slap shot to the far side and gave the Lightning an early 1-0 lead.
For Hedman, Thursday was his second time seeing game action this preseason after making his debut against Nashville five days ago. He led all skaters with 23:41 time on ice and blocked two shots to go along with his game-opening goal.
“It’s getting there,” Hedman said post-game when asked where he thinks is game is at. “Obviously, two games in the last four months and a few days between, so it’s going to be good here to get in a habit with every other day and get back into game shape. Bits and pieces are good. Just got to get that consistency back.”
As for those four months of resting and refueling, Hedman said he can absolutely feel the difference from more recent training camps when the team was consistently coming off lengthy playoff runs.
“Big time,” said Hedman. “Preseason is fun this time. Usually, it’s felt like a grind and you’re just waiting for the regular season. But I’ve had a blast getting to know the new guys and working hard in practice and then getting into game action. It’s been great.”
The lead didn’t last long for Tampa Bay with Kevin Stenlund evening the score at one 2:10 after Hedman opened the scoring. After the Bolts surrendered a 2-on-1, Evan Rodrigues found Stenlund, who got just enough on the shot to beat Matt Tomkins and tie the game.
Following two consecutive icing calls against the Panthers near the beginning of the second period, Brayden Point won an offensive-zone faceoff back to Nikita Kucherov, who darted towards the high slot and snapped a shot through traffic into the top right corner for his second goal of the preseason, putting the Bolts up 2-1 at the 1:16 mark of the middle frame.
But after Kucherov was whistled for tripping with 9:18 remaining in the second, Florida tied the game with a power-play goal from Eetu Luostarinen, who perfectly redirected a point shot from Oliver Ekman-Larsson 17 seconds into the man advantage.
One minute and 50 seconds later, the Lightning got their first chance on the power play after Ekman-Larsson was sent to the box for elbowing Conor Sheary. Twelve seconds into the man advantage, Tampa Bay had the lead once again.
With Victor Hedman getting the first look on the top power-play unit, he controlled the puck off a faceoff win by Nick Paul and sent a pass to the right point for Kucherov. After a couple passes back and forth, Kucherov sent the puck to the goal line for Paul, who calmly sent a saucer pass over the stick of Uvis Balinskis and onto the tape of Steven Stamkos. Down on one knee, the captain quickly fired a one-timer past the outstretched blocker of Stolarz and into the back of the net. It was the only power play of the game for the Bolts.
“One chance today, one goal,” said Hedman with a grin. “So, 100%.”
Unfortunately for the Lightning, the Stamkos goal would be their final tally of the night. Florida went on to tally four straight goals from Nick Cousins, Justin Sourdif, Ryan Lomberg and Stenlund, who ended the night with an empty-net goal to seal the game. Following the Stamkos goal, Tampa Bay got outshot by a total of 32-3.
“We’ve taken so many steps forward in this training camp,” said Lightning head coach Jon Cooper after the game. “It’s been great. Tonight, we took a step back.
“We’ve done a lot of good things. Camp’s hard though. It’s long. You kind of hit those points where you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but there’s still more games to go before you get there.
“When we look back here, the game doesn’t really count, but it just goes to show that when you’re not working quite the way you should be, the league’s too good to take any shifts off. We did that a little bit tonight.
“But a lot of good things to learn from. We’ll get back at it two more nights from now and then it’s game on.”
In that next game, the Bolts will battle the Panthers for the third-straight time. After one contest in Orlando and one in Tampa, the finale will take place down in Sunrise at Amerant Bank Arena. With one last tune-up before Opening Night, Cooper shared that Saturday’s lineup will likely give a good preview of what the Lightning will roll out to kick off the regular season.
“Well, we have one game left,” Cooper said. “I’d like to see us turn our game around [and] erase tonight. “Maybe we’ll have a little bit of look on our lines, probably some things that you might see Opening Night that you wouldn’t see necessarily [with] what we saw tonight.
“We’ve been playing a lot of different combinations of guys and so, on Saturday, we’ll kind of narrow this down to a little bit more of what our look will be.”
From there, the real fun begins. Tampa Bay’s first game of the regular season at AMALIE Arena Tuesday will not only be their first game of the year, but also the first game of the entire NHL season.
“We’re excited about the future,” Hedman said. “We’re very excited for five days from now when we play for real. Home opener, first game of the year in the whole league. That’s going to be a lot of fun.”