The Backcheck: Shorthanded Bolts fall in Minnesota

After opening the three-game road trip with a 4-1 win over the Chicago Blackhawks on Tuesday night, the Tampa Bay Lightning suffered a setback with a 5-1 loss to the Minnesota Wild in the second half of a back-to-back on Wednesday night at Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul.

"Kind of the perfect storm, us coming off a back-to-back and it's our fifth game in eight nights," said Tampa Bay head coach Jon Cooper. "They've been here resting, and they've played two games in a week.
"It's not a complaint. It happens to every team. But they took advantage of a situation that worked out in their favor and good on them. They've got a good team. They're a big, strong, heavy team that we had to have everything go well for us tonight and it just didn't."

The Bolts fell to 24-12-1 on the season with a road record of 9-8-0. For the Lightning, Minnesota has always been a tough place to play with the team posting a 2-11-2 record all-time at Xcel Energy Center heading into Wednesday's game.
It didn't help that the Bolts were faced with some unexpected adversity early on as Andrei Vasilevskiy was expected to start in goal but was unable to play due to an illness, forcing Brian Elliott to start for the second-consecutive night, something the 37-year-old goaltender had not done since he was with the Flyers back in 2017.
"It's tough because we didn't know until right before the game," said Cooper. "He comes off playing last night, skated this morning, then had to play, but I thought he did great. He just got a little unlucky on some of those, which is too bad."
Elliott fell victim to multiple unfortunate bounces on Wednesday night. The Wild's first goal took a deflection off the skate of Nick Perbix to make it a 1-0 game. After the Lightning pulled within two off a power-play goal from Brayden Point, the Wild quickly restored the three-goal deficit just 1:58 later when a Jared Spurgeon shot from the point got redirected off the leg of Sam Steel.
Tampa Bay pushed in the third period and outshot Minnesota 12-9, but Filip Gustavsson made some impressive saves for the Wild, earning him first-star honors with 34 saves on 35 shots from the Bolts.
"In the third period, we had every reason to lay down and say, 'They've got us in this one,' and we kept pushing," said Cooper. "Give their goalie credit. He made some big saves."

According to Natural Stat Trick, the Lightning actually out-chanced the Wild by count of 13-7 at 5-on-5 in the third period and generated three high-danger scoring chances while surrendering just one against. Credit to Tampa Bay for continuing to push in the final period of a back-to-back set with only 11 forwards dressed and trailing by three goals.
The lone goal for the Lightning coming off the stick of Point should be a surprise to no one. Point has been scorching hot lately, posting points in six straight games and scoring goals in 10 of his last 13 contests with points in 11 of those games. He leads Tampa Bay with 22 goals through 37 contests this season.
Point and the Bolts will look to get back on track in the third and final game of the road trip on Friday night with a matchup against the Winnipeg Jets at 8 p.m. ET. One thing to watch for is Steven Stamkos and his continued chase for 500 career goals. The Lightning captain is sitting on 498 and has had tremendous success against the Jets organization historically. He tallied his 60th goal of the season at MTS Centre in 2011-12 and his 30 goals against the Jets (formerly Atlanta Thrashers) organization are his second-most against any team, trailing only his 39 tallies against the Florida Panthers.