As they have so often this season, the Lightning had a strong start and got on the board just 3:26 into the contest when Nikita Kucherov hammered a one-timer past Vitek Vanecek for his 100th point of the season.
Kucherov is the only player in Tampa Bay franchise history to record multiple 100-point seasons and he now has three under his belt after picking up 128 points in 2018-19 and 100 points in 2017-18. Kucherov is one of just six active players to record at least three 100-point seasons, joining Connor McDavid (6), Sidney Crosby (6), Leon Draisaitl (4), Alex Ovechkin (4) and Evgeni Malkin (3).
After going into the first intermission with a 1-0 lead, the Bolts kept things rolling in the right direction with a goal from Alex Killorn at the 6:30 mark of the second period to go up 2-0. But after that, it quickly went downhill for Tampa Bay.
Just nine seconds after Killorn made it 2-0, New Jersey went right down the ice off the faceoff before Jesper Bratt scored to make it 2-1.
Bratt added a second goal to tie the game 2:43 later before Nico Hischier put the Devils up 3-2 with 7:58 remaining in the second. Nolan Foote extended the New Jersey lead to 4-1 at the 9:51 mark of the first before Bratt completed his hat trick with an empty-net goal at the 19:48 mark of the third.
"To put it in a nutshell, I really liked our first period and I think probably the first eight minutes or seven minutes of the second period," said Cooper. "We had the game under control. We scored that second goal. They had a couple chances and we come back and score that second goal. It's 2-0.
"Then, probably a little inexcusable to give a goal up off a faceoff right away. That should have never happened and that just kind of triggered their momentum and then they rolled.
"Then, it was just senseless turnovers and managing the puck and we couldn't get through the neutral zone. Jersey didn't reinvent the wheel. We just smashed the wheel ourselves. It was horrendous.
"They just ended up in the back of our net. All of a sudden, you're up 2-0, then down 3-2 in a span of six minutes. They started feeling it and we weren't, and that was it."
Things quickly snowballed in the wrong direction for the Bolts on Sunday night. We saw some of the things that plagued Tampa Bay during the five-game losing skid come out, particularly poor puck management.
New Jersey got through the neutral zone a little too easily and some turnovers fueled the rush for a speedy Devils team. Additionally, the power play just wasn't clicking for the Lightning on Sunday with the team finishing the night 0-for-4 with the man advantage.
"We're not going to dominate every game," said Cooper. "We've been on the right side of a lot of games, more than not. This is disappointing because I just hate the way the game played out. I thought we were our worst enemy.
"We gave a pretty young, fast, skilled team a lot of energy and they were feeling it. That was it for us.
