It was far from an ideal start to the weekend for the Tampa Bay Lightning, who traveled to Texas on Friday before their most lopsided loss of the year in an 8-1 defeat to the Dallas Stars at American Airlines Center Saturday afternoon.
The Bolts fell to 10-10-5 on the year with a road record of 4-7-2 and a points percentage of .500.
Tyler Seguin got the scoring started early when he batted a puck out of mid-air for his eighth tally of the season just 1:01 into the contest.
Jason Robertson kept the crowd cheering when he snuck a puck past Andrei Vasilevskiy, short side, to make it a 2-0 game with 13:32 left in the opening period. Then, only 1:11 later, Jamie Benn got behind everyone on the Lightning and beat Vasilevskiy on a breakaway to make it a 3-0 game just 7:39 into the afternoon contest.
The Bolts weren’t ready to go, so Jon Cooper used his timeout to settle things down after the Benn goal.
When Tampa Bay got back within two a few minutes later, it looked like the timeout had things trending in the right direction. After Miro Heiskanen was whistled for a double minor high-sticking penalty with 8:39 left in the first, the Lightning earned a four-minute power play and made it a 3-1 game 1:04 into the man advantage.
Nikita Kucherov sent a pass to the point for Victor Hedman, who skated downhill with his head up and fired a quick shot into the top left corner for his fifth goal of the season. The Bolts still had an additional two minutes on the power play but couldn’t find a way to capitalize and went to the locker room for the first intermission in a two-goal hole. It wasn’t an ideal situation by any means, but a two-goal deficit with 40 minutes to play isn’t insurmountable for Tampa Bay.
Unfortunately for the Lightning, the Hedman goal was the only one they would score all afternoon.
After scoring three goals in the first 20 minutes, the Stars added three more in the middle frame with Mason Marchment, Joe Pavelski and Robertson each scoring to make it 6-1 going into the third period.
Jonas Johansson started between the pipes for the final 20 minutes, but Tampa Bay still surrendered two more goals 59 seconds apart to Thomas Harley and Sam Steel to conclude Saturday’s contest with an 8-1 loss.
The Bolts have now lost four games in a row and will look to snap the streak with a rematch against the Stars Monday night at AMALIE Arena.
Bolts by the Numbers
- Nikita Kucherov extended his assist streak to a career-long nine games (4-13—17), tied for the second-longest assist streak in the NHL this season.
- Kucherov’s assist was his 40th point of the season in his 24th game, passing Steven Stamkos to become the fastest skater in Lightning franchise history to hit the 40-point mark.
- Kucherov became just the 14th NHL player over the past 20 years to record 40 points in 24 games or less...
- Victor Hedman scored his 148th career goal, moving him past Fredrik Olausson and giving him sole possession of the fourth-most goals by a Swedish defenseman in NHL history.
- Hedman is set to become the third player in Lightning franchise history to play 1,000 games with the club Monday night vs. Dallas.
Bolts Quotes
- Jon Cooper: “The thing you can't do is hang your head and understand that we've won three in a row. Tough spot now that we've lost four in a row, but you can't bury your head in the sand. You just gotta say, 'OK, what can we get better at here,' and move onto the next one. The good thing is we get these guys again. You can look at it two ways. It's a heck of a team, Dallas, but when something like this happens, I think if you have a choice, you want to play the same team again. We're going to have that opportunity in a couple nights.”
- Jon Cooper: “Four games ago, you score eight on 14 and now I think we've got five on 150. We've got some pretty good players there that are used to scoring and can put the puck in the net and it's not going in for them. It's not a 15-game year. It's an 82-game year. There's going to be some dry spells. Before we do that, we've got to start keeping the puck out and, for us, that's got to be paramount.”
- Jon Cooper on Andrei Vasilevskiy: “We've put him in these circumstances. But again, this is his fourth game in almost a year. He's getting his legs back, but he's still the best in the world and that's the guy we want in our net.”
Krenner’s Three Stars
- Joe Pavelski
- Jake Oettinger
- Mason Marchment
Lightning Look Ahead
- Monday, December 4 vs. Dallas Stars, 7 p.m. ET, AMALIE Arena - Buy Tickets
- Wednesday, December 6 vs. Pittsburgh Penguins, 7 p.m. ET, AMALIE Arena - Buy Tickets
- Thursday, December 7 at Nashville Predators, 8 p.m. ET, Bridgestone Arena
