After taking down the Pittsburgh Penguins Wednesday night at AMALIE Arena, the Tampa Bay Lightning dropped the second game of its back-to-back set in a 5-1 loss to the Nashville Predators at Bridgestone Arena on Thursday.
After weathering a strong start from the Predators, the Bolts opened the scoring and took a 1-0 lead with 6:28 remaining in the first period.
Coming into the game on a two-game goal scoring streak, Anthony Cirelli made a nice play to protect the puck in the offensive zone before sending a pass to Brandon Hagel, who was trailing the play as the third forward. Taking the puck in the high slot, Hagel quickly fed a pass to the bottom of the right circle for Alex Barré-Boulet, who hammered a one-timer past Juuse Saros for his fifth goal of the season.
That would be the lone goal of the evening for Tampa Bay. With Nashville on the power play late in the opening frame, a shot from the point off the stick of Ryan McDonagh never made its way through traffic to the Lightning net, but there were two Predators skaters right in front, allowing Philip Tomasino to quickly tap the puck to Juuso Parssinen before the second-year forward beat Jonas Johansson for his fifth goal of the season and second against the Lightning in as many games this year.
Going into the second period in a 1-1 tie, Nashville began to take control of the game, scoring two goals within the first five minutes of the middle frame. Filip Forsberg added a second power-play goal for the Predators at the 2:37 mark before Ryan McDonagh beat Johansson with a backhand shot just 1:55 later to make it a 3-1 game.
Nashville got another goal in the early stages of a period when a Roman Josi shot from the point beat Johansson 6:11 into the third to push the score to 4-1.
Down by three goals, Jon Cooper pulled Johansson for a sixth attacker with 8:22 remaining in the third and the Bolts were able to generate a few looks. But Yakov Trenin capitalized on the empty net and buried his sixth goal of the year with 6:47 remaining to seal the 5-1 win.
Tampa Bay fell to 12-11-5 on the season with a road record of 4-8-2. Johansson made 25 saves on 29 shots against in the defeat.
Bolts by the Numbers
- Playing against his former team for the first time, Tanner Jeannot skated in his 200th career NHL game, logging 15:46 time on ice and registering five hits.
- Anthony Cirelli recorded the secondary assist on the goal by Alex Barré-Boulet, pushing his point streak to three games (3-1—4), tied for his longest point streak this season.
- Brandon Hagel snapped a four-game pointless streak with a primary assist, pushing his point total this season to 24 through 28 games (10-14—24).
Bolts Quotes
- Jon Cooper: “We were playing a decent road game and then they get two quick ones in the second. Once that happened, we didn’t punch back and that’s probably the most disappointing thing about the game. You’re not going to win every game, but let’s give a push, whether you’re up or down or just protecting the lead or trying to come from behind. Especially in that case, you’ve got to punch back and we didn’t tonight, so that was the disappointing part about tonight.”
- Brandon Hagel: “Our power play has been unbelievable all year. We can’t count on them every single game. We need some 5-on-5 scoring and the PK didn’t do the job tonight.”
- Jon Cooper: “It's kind of like all or nothing with us. We're either putting up numbers or we're putting up none. Aside from the Carolina game, it feels like on the road we're having a tough time trying to find the back of the net and I think that's when you’ve got to dig your heels in and get some of those greasy ones. When our special teams aren’t rolling, we have to find a way 5-on-5.
Krenner’s Three Stars
- Juuse Saros
- Ryan McDonagh
- Roman Josi
Lightning Look Ahead
- Saturday, December 9 at Seattle Kraken, 10 p.m. ET, Climate Pledge Arena
- Tuesday, December 12 at Vancouver Canucks, 10 p.m. ET, Rogers Arena
- Thursday, December 14 at Edmonton Oilers, 9 p.m. ET, Rogers Place
