Following back-to-back shutout losses to the Carolina Hurricanes and St. Louis Blues, the Tampa Bay Lightning needed a response and got one Thursday night in a 4-2 win over the Chicago Blackhawks at United Center.
Despite out-shooting the Blackhawks 12-6 in the opening frame, the Bolts went to the locker room in a 1-0 hole after Lukas Reichel opened the scoring with a power-play goal 12:59 into the game. Entering Thursday’s contest, Tampa Bay was 0-5-2 this season when trailing after the opening 20 minutes.
But the Lightning continued to search for that elusive goal the team had been chasing for seven consecutive periods and finally got on the board with a power-play tally of their own 4:40 into the middle frame.
With Wyatt Kaiser in the box for delay of game, Nikita Kucherov fed a pass to the point for Victor Hedman, who calmy moved to his left before sending a hard pass to the slot, where Brayden Point was waiting to redirect the puck top shelf past Petr Mrazek, evening the score with his seventh goal of the season.
The goal allowed the entire Lightning team to take a collective sigh of relief, and it wasn’t much later that the team took a 2-1 lead with Mikhail Sergachev finding the back of the net for the first time this season.
After Steven Stamkos collected the puck behind the Chicago net, he sent a pass to Point, who quickly moved the puck to the point for Sergachev, allowing the Bolts defenseman to fire a one-timer through traffic and past Mrazek just 4:21 after the Point goal.
Entering the final frame with a one-goal lead, Tampa Bay quickly found themselves in a tie game when Corey Perry scored his second goal in as many contests against the Bolts this season, evening the score at 2-2 just 2:09 into the third.
But the Lightning didn’t allow the goal to phase them and pressed forward, allowing the Blackhawks to record only one more shot on goal for the remainder of the contest. As the Bolts continued to control play, Hedman stepped up and scored the go-ahead goal with 8:07 remaining to make it a 3-2 game.
Sending a pass to Erik Cernak at the point, Hedman moved in towards the Chicago goal and was right there to jump on a loose puck in front and backhand it into the back of the net after Cernak’s shot went off the end boards and came right back out in front.
From there, Tampa Bay carried play before Brandon Hagel sealed the 4-2 win with an empty-net goal at the 19:11 mark of the third.
Jonas Johansson earned his sixth win of the season with 13 saves. Anthony Cirelli left the game after blocking a shot early in the second period and did not return.
Bolts by the Numbers
- The Lightning extended their point streak at Chicago to 15 games, dating back to April 3, 2011. Tampa Bay’s run at United Center is the longest active road point streak against a single franchise among all NHL teams.
- The Bolts allowed just two shots against in the third period, tied for the fewest number of shots the team has allowed in single period this season (also: Oct. 10 vs. NSH, 1st period).
- Brayden Point became the second Lightning skater this season to reach the 20-point mark,along with teammate Nikita Kucherov. The Lightning have multiple 20-point scorers through 17 games for the first time since 2017-18 (Kucherov, Steven Stamkos).
- Victor Hedman scored his 147th career goal of his career, tying him with Fredrik Olausson for the fourth-most goals in NHL history by a Swedish defenseman. The only players with more are Niklas Lidstrom (264), Erik Karlsson (183) and Borje Salming (150).
- Brandon Hagel has found the scoresheet in each of his five career games against his former team with goals in four of those matchups (4-2—6).
Bolts Quotes
Jon Cooper on the response after the Perry goal: “The boys dug in. What's happened in the past is basically we've kind of shied away from those moments and tonight we didn't. Big response for us in the third to close it out. I think they scored that goal and I'm not sure they had a shot on goal until two minutes left in the game. You're going to play defense like that, you give yourself a chance to win.”
Brayden Point on the response after the Perry goal: “I liked it. We just kept playing our game. I thought, for the most part, we played a pretty good game tonight. I didn’t think we panicked. We’ve been giving up some leads here and it kind of snowballs on us. Tonight, I thought we didn’t panic. We just kept playing the same way and we were able to get another one to get the win.”
Victor Hedman: "It was good. Obviously, giving up that second goal with the way things have been going the last few games, it's easy to take a step back, but I thought we took over the game once again after that. Able to get some zone time and able to capitalize, so that was big for us. Like I said, I thought we played really well tonight."
Brayden Point: “Obviously, it’s tough when you lose two games in a row and don’t score. It’s uncommon for our group. I think we just had to kind of dig down and bear down and play hard and kind of create our breaks. I think that’s what we did tonight.”
Jon Cooper on the status of Anthony Cirelli: “I don't know. He's a tough kid. The fact that he couldn't come back, that's a little worrisome.”
Krenner’s Three Stars
1. Brayden Point
2. Victor Hedman
3. Mikhail Sergachev
Lightning Look Ahead
Saturday, November 18 vs. Edmonton Oilers, 4 p.m. ET, AMALIE Arena
Monday, November 20 vs. Boston Bruins, 7 p.m. ET, AMALIE Arena
Wednesday, November 22 vs. Winnipeg Jets, 7 p.m. ET, AMALIE Arena
