After dropping their first road game of the season Saturday night to the Detroit Red Wings, the Tampa Bay Lightning were right back at it Sunday night at Canadian Tire Centre in Ottawa and lost a second-straight contest, falling 5-2 to the Senators.
The Bolts were a little flat coming out of the gate and registered just three shots on goal in the opening 20 minutes, going to the first intermission trailing 1-0 after Vladimir Tarasenko opened the scoring at the 7:02 mark. Ottawa outshot Tampa Bay 17-3 in the first period, but Matt Tomkins performed well between the pipes in his first career NHL start, making 16 saves to keep the Bolts within one.
After struggling in the second period in each of the first two games to start the season, the Lightning showed some pushback in the middle frame Sunday night with Anthony Cirelli tying the game 1-1 exactly one minute into the second.
Mikey Eyssimont started the play when he threw a big hit on Mathieu Joseph at the Tampa Bay blue line, enabling Cirelli to gain possession and skate freely into the Ottawa zone. After crossing the blue line, Cirelli sent a backhand feed to Tanner Jeannot, who slid the puck across the zone to Darren Raddysh before he completed the tic-tac-toe passing play, returning the puck back to Cirelli and allowing him to roof a backhand over the glove of Joonas Korpisalo to even the score with his first goal of the season.
Ottawa answered back 7:48 later when the Lightning failed to clear the zone and let Brady Tkachuk get a good look from the slot. Raddysh was able to block the first shot attempt, but the puck bounced right back out to Tkachuk, who quickly threw it back at the net and past Tomkins to make it 2-1.
The Bolts punched back 4:12 later when Jeannot won a race to a loose puck in the offensive zone and cycled it around the boards and up to the point for Victor Hedman. Controlling the puck along the wall, Hedman fired a shot towards the Senators goal, where Eyssimont redirected the puck right to Jeannot, who used his strength to open up some space and quickly roofed a shot for his first of the season with 7:01 left in the second.
Unfortunately for the Lightning, that would be their last goal of the evening. Joseph made it 3-2 with just under a minute left in the second before Tkachuk scored his second goal of the game with 7:07 left in the third. Tim Stutzle added an empty-net goal with 2:43 remaining to seal the 5-2 win for Ottawa and hand the Bolts their second-straight loss.
Tomkins finished the night with 33 saves on 37 shots against in his NHL debut. Steven Stamkos did not play and is listed as day-to-day with a lower-body injury.
Bolts Quotes
Jon Cooper on the game: “It was taxing on us in that first period, but we came out in the second and I liked our game. It was just a tough goal to give up with a minute left and we had tired D out there. Again, they catch a break. They try to force a puck in, we get a stick on it, it goes right to Joseph and it’s in the net. You look at another one with Tkachuk’s goal, Raddy blocks it and it goes right on his stick. But we put ourselves in those situations and they capitalized, so good on them for that. We get to the third, I don’t know if they even had a shot on goal before Brady’s goal. We had our looks. We tie it at three, who knows what happens there? Their goalie made some saves when he had to and the big boy got the fourth goal and that was it.”
Jon Cooper on the line of Jeannot-Cirelli-Eyssimont: “I thought they were great. I thought Jeano was a beast out there. Tony was Tony, doing his thing. Eyssy had a really good game. There are no complaints on them. They spent most of the night in the offensive zone. We need a little bit more production and we just can’t be giving up four a night. It’s not a recipe to win, but our goaltenders have been great. That kind of sucks for Tommer, his NHL debut, and I thought he did great. He gave us a chance, but on a night when you needed a couple more goals, we couldn’t get them.”
