Despite the Tampa Bay Lightning claiming an early lead in shots on goal and also grabbing the game’s first lead, it was the host St. Louis Blues that left Enterprise Center with the 3-2 victory on Tuesday night.
The loss is Tampa Bay’s third in a row as the team prepares for three straight home games at AMALIE Arena, beginning on Thursday against the Philadelphia Flyers.
The Lightning, now 7-6-0 in 2024-25, outshot St. Louis nine to three in the first period before an injury to Blues forward Dylan Holloway ended the period early.
“That was tough. The thing is I didn’t really see it so it was hard to understand what was going on. And then you see all the St. Louis Blues players reacting,” Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said of the injury. “So then we went back on tape, it was kind of (a) super scary situation. We talked about it in the locker room too, like, hope this kid’s okay. It’s obviously a lot bigger than the game. To hear the public address announcer say he seemed to be doing better when he was going to the hospital, that made everybody definitely on our bench feel better.”
One minute, 11 seconds of play was added to the start of the second period, when the Lightning opened the scoring.
Defenseman Nick Perbix put an exclamation mark on his first goal of the season 2:39 into the second by toe dragging through a Blues defender down the left wall before cutting to the net and scoring on his own rebound for the 1-0 lead.
Five minutes later Oskar Sundqvist tied the game, scoring on a rebound after a point shot. Alexey Toropchenko gave the Blues their first lead of the game with 1:35 left in the second period, shooting into the top right corner of the Tampa Bay net after he was left alone above the crease.
Despite Perbix’s goal, the second period was visibly in favor of the home team—St. Louis outshot the Lightning 12 to six in the second period.
Forward Anthony Cirelli said the Lightning talked between the second and third periods about getting more shots on net.
“We talked about that at the intermission here, just passing up on shots. I thought a little bit more we had guys at the net. It’s just about that shot scramble. I mean the goalie can't see it, you keep peppering shots at him, that’s when stuff opens up,” Cirelli said. “So I thought obviously in that second period there but throughout the whole game, we should’ve had more of a shoot mentality there.”
Jordan Kyrou added a cushion to the St. Louis lead 8:51 into the third period when he tapped home a backdoor pass from Brayden to make it 3-1.
Lightning captain Victor Hedman kept his team in the fight late, pulling the visitors within one goal of the Blues at the 11:43 mark of the third period. Hedman’s one-timer from above the left circle escaped St. Louis goalie Jordan Binnington with help from a screen by Jake Guentzel.
Nikita Kucherov finished with assists on both Lightning goals, pushing him to 12 assists and 22 points on the year.
“We’ve just got to be better. That’s the bottom line,” Hedman said. “We feel like we’ve come out hard in each game. We have a great first period and then we’re kind of on our heels a little bit, getting hemmed in our own end in the second period. We’ve just got to be better over 60 minutes.”
Tampa Bay goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy finished with 20 saves and remains one win away from becoming the 40th goalie in NHL history to reach 300 wins.
Benjamin’s Three Stars:
- Jordan Binnington, STL (23 saves)
- Nikita Kucherov, TBL (2 assists)
- Jordan Kyrou, STL (GWG)
