The Backcheck: Trip starts with a win in St. Louis

Entering Saturday night with a 9-9-0 record on the road this season, the Tampa Bay Lightning got off to a strong start in the first game of a season-long, five-game road trip with a 4-2 win over the St. Louis Blues at Enterprise Center.

While the Bolts got the start to the road trip that they wanted, they certainly didn't have the start to the game that they were looking for. But Tampa Bay showed great resiliency and started to find their legs near the halfway point of the first period before skating to a third-straight win and moving to 27-13-1 on the season.
The Blues got on the board early when Tyler Pitlick scored on a breakaway just 2:39 into the contest, but with his team down by one, Andrei Vasilevskiy made some big saves throughout the first half of the period that seemed to stabilize things for the Lightning before they were able to break through and tie the game with 7:38 left in the opening frame.
As St. Louis was trying to break out of their own end, Nick Perbix made a great pinch along the right boards, stole the puck, and fed a perfect pass to Brayden Point in the slot. When Jordan Binnington tried to move left to right and square up to the shot, Point placed his shot perfectly inside the left post to even the score at one with his team-leading 24th goal of the season.

Point has been on an incredible run of goal scoring over the past five weeks, so it shouldn't have surprised many when he picked up his second goal of the game just 4:21 later to put the Bolts up 2-1. He has now scored goals in 12 of his last 17 contests with 15 goals and six assists for 21 points during that span.
"It's amazing," said Lightning defenseman Zach Bogosian when he was asked about Point. "We have so many world-class players, but any time you get a chance to see him up close on a daily basis - he's a special person, a special player.
"Obviously, we're super fortunate to have him on our team and he's playing lights-out hockey right now."
Point's second goal of the night came with the man advantage off a picture-perfect passing play with Nikita Kucherov and Steven Stamkos. With Brandon Hagel providing pressure on the forecheck behind the net, Kucherov snagged the puck and sent a spinning, forehand pass to Stamkos on the half wall. From there, Stamkos skated towards the slot before wiring a perfect pass, right on the tape, to Point on the back door, where he was able to tap the puck past Binnington.
After making the strong pinch up the right boards in the first period, Perbix came back with another big play in the second period, scoring his fourth goal of the season to put Tampa Bay up 3-1.
Following a faceoff win by Point, Mikhail Sergachev made a nice move at the blue line before feeding the puck to Perbix, who fired a slap shot on goal that seemed to fool Binnington a bit and found its way into the back of the net to give the Lightning a multi-goal lead.
Perbix has now recorded two straight multi-point games with one goal and three helpers over his last two contests. After taking a big hit in the second period, Perbix was unable to play in the third period, but it sounds like he should be OK moving forward.
"We'll see," said Tampa Bay head coach Jon Cooper. "He got hit pretty good there, but I don't foresee this to be a long-term thing, so we kept him out for precaution."
Pavel Buchnevich got the Blues right back in the game just 1:11 later when he fired a wrist shot into the top left corner to make it 3-2, but the Bolts answered nearly just as fast with Alex Killorn scoring his 14th goal of the season with 1:38 remaining in the second period.
Getting in on the forecheck as he usually does, Hagel did a nice job to fish the puck out of his skates and threw a no-look, backhand pass through the St. Louis crease that found Killorn on the back door for another tap-in goal.
Killorn has now scored six goals over his last 10 contests and Hagel has nine points over his last nine games with four goals and five helpers. Hagel has spent time over the past few games on a line with Killorn and Anthony Cirelli, a trio that was so successful in shutdown situations during last year's postseason and have continued to play strong for Tampa Bay.

As the chase for 500 career goals continues, Steven Stamkos had some great chances on Saturday, including a wrist shot that rang off the post, but he's still trying to track down the big 500.
"He had some excellent looks tonight," Cooper said. "He's done it 499 times and, sometimes, whether it's the post or the goalie, they win the odd night. But Stammer's won most of those nights.
"I just know guys will be excited, especially him, when he gets this next one."
That goal will undoubtedly come for the captain, but the most important aspect of Saturday night's contest was the Lightning's ability to close out the third period and kick off the long road trip with a solid performance.
Despite collecting wins in the past two home games, Tampa Bay wanted to clean up the performances shown in the third period during the homestand. Saturday looked much more like vintage Lightning hockey, going into the final frame with the lead and suffocating teams until the final buzzer. The Bolts held St. Louis to just seven shots on goal in the third, allowing Andrei Vasilevskiy to comfortably collect his 19th win of the season and third victory in a row. Since the beginning of December, Vasilevskiy has won 11 of his 14 starts, recording a .931 save percentage and 2.59 goals against average.
With four tough games ahead of them, the Lightning got the start to the trip that they wanted. Next comes a test against one of the hottest teams in the NHL, the Seattle Kraken. The two teams will battle in Seattle on Monday afternoon at 4 p.m. ET as Seattle returns home from an undefeated, seven-game road trip. Tampa Bay won the first meeting of the season by a score of 6-2 at AMALIE Arena on December 13.