The Backcheck: The Lightning win their second-straight OT contest over the Devils

Playing the second game of a four-game homestand, the Tampa Bay Lightning collected a second-straight overtime victory with a 4-3 win over the New Jersey Devils Thursday night at AMALIE Arena.

Tampa Bay fell into a 1-0 hole at the 7:42 mark of the first period after Dawson Mercer took a drop pass from Erik Haula and went hard to the net before firing a shot on goal that was stopped by the left pad of Andrei Vasilevskiy. But Mercer stuck with the play and fired the rebound back on net from behind the goal line that went off the back of Vasilevskiy and into the net to give New Jersey the early lead.

Less than five minutes later, the Lightning got a response and tied the game when Luke Glendening netted his sixth goal of the season on an impressive redirection in front of Vitek Vanecek.

Following a faceoff to the left of Vanecek, Austin Watson sent a pass to the point for Nick Perbix, who quickly fired a shot on goal before Glendening reached out and deflected the puck into the back of the net to make it a 1-1 game with 7:25 left in the first period.

Later on in the opening period, Glendening was right back at it and scored Tampa Bay’s first shorthanded goal of the season to send the Bolts to the locker room for the first intermission with a 2-1 lead.

Looking to move up ice with New Jersey on the power play, Luke Hughes stumbled in his own defensive zone and turned the puck over to Glendening, who quickly gained possession and ripped a shot to the far post for his second goal of the night with 1:38 remaining in the first.

Going into the second period up by one, the Lightning pushed the lead to 3-1 when Brayden Point scored his 20th goal of the season at the 10:34 mark of the middle frame.

With a delayed penalty set to be called against the Devils, Vasilevskiy made his way to the bench for a sixth attacker as the Bolts maintained possession in the offensive zone. After Perbix sent a pass to the half wall for Nikita Kucherov, the All-Star winger found Point alone in the slot, where he quickly fired a shot to the far post and past Vanecek to give Tampa Bay the two-goal lead.

New Jersey got back within one with 3:06 left in the second when Jesper Bratt redirected a shot from the point that took a wild bounce off the back boards and deflected off a Lightning player in front to make it a 3-2 game going into the third period.

As the Devils continued to push forward, Nathan Bastian got the game-tying goal when he stole the puck at the Lightning blue line and skated in all alone before beating Vasilevskiy to even the score at 3-3.

Vasilevskiy made some big saves down the stretch to earn Tampa Bay their first point of the night and force overtime.

The extra frame began with a faceoff win from Steven Stamkos, allowing the Bolts to maintain possession for the majority of overtime. Then, with 3:08 remaining, the Lightning got the game-winning goal off the stick of Darren Raddysh.

With Kucherov dancing through the offensive zone, Raddysh found some open ice near the top of the left circle, took a pass from Kucherov and ripped a shot into the top right corner for his second game-winning goal this season.

Vasilevskiy finished the night with 27 saves on 30 shots against and also picked up an assist on the game-winning goal. Tampa Bay’s all-time leader in wins is now 11-9-0 on the season.

With the win, the Lightning moved to 21-17-5 on the season with a home record of 13-5-3.

Bolts by the Numbers

- Gage Goncalves made his NHL debut for the Lightning and logged nine minutes of ice time with one hit and one takeaway.

- Darren Raddysh scored his first career overtime goal and has three goals over his last four games.

- Luke Glendening scored his sixth and seventh goals of the season, including the Lightning’s first shorthanded goal of the season. The game marked Glendening’s fifth career multi-goal performance.

- Glendening is up to eight points on the season through 43 games (7-1—8), already surpassing his point total from last season with Dallas (3-3—6, 70 GP).

- Nick Perbix picked up two assists for his second-straight multi-point effort.

- Brayden Point scored his 20th goal of the season and is up to 43 points on the season (20-23—43). His seven 20-goal seasons are the fifth-most in Lightning franchise history.

- Nikita Kucherov recorded two assists and moved to 69 points on the season (28-41—69). Kucherov has more multi-point games (21) than zero-point games (9) this season.

- Kucherov has recorded seven 40-assist seasons, tying Victor Hedman for the second-most in Lightning franchise history, trailing only Martin St. Louis (8).

- Andrei Vasilevskiy recorded his 19th career assist with the secondary helper on Raddysh’sOT winner. Jonathan Quick (20) and Marc-Andre Fleury (21) are the only active goalies with more. Fleury has played 1,004 career games and Quick has played 767. Vasilevskiy has played 445.

Bolts Quotes

- Jon Cooper on the Lightning’s improvements in overtime: “Winning faceoffs. Last two nights, Stammer's won them both and we've had the puck for most of them. You take a little bit of momentum away. You make some of their good players have to play defense. A big part of overtime is having the puck and we had it for a lot of the last two overtimes.”

- Darren Raddysh on his mindset when Nikita Kucherov has the puck in overtime: “Just get open. He's going to find you eventually. Just be ready to shoot the puck.”

- Luke Glendening on what he’s learned about the Lightning since signing with the team this summer: “Just a bunch of competitors. When things don't go their way, they stick with it. That's why they've been so successful in the past. The core group of guys, just an unreal group of leaders leading the way every night for us. I'm just really happy to be a part of it.”

- Cooper on the past two wins: “This group battles. They found a way to come back. The unfortunate part is we've found ourselves down in games, but this group has found a way to come back. That's a good attribute to have because there's belief that we're in every game. Our game's getting a little bit more predictable, a little more consistent and I think that's why we're seeing some wins here.”

Krenner’s Three Stars

1. Luke Glendening

2. Darren Raddysh

3. Nikita Kucherov

Lightning Look Ahead

- Saturday, January 13 vs. Anaheim Ducks, 7 p.m. ET, AMALIE Arena

- Thursday, January 18 vs. Minnesota Wild, 7 p.m. ET, AMALIE Arena

- Saturday, January 20 at Buffalo Sabres, 12:30 p.m. ET, KeyBank Center