The Backcheck: Wild third period leads Bolts over Senators

Not all wins are the same.
Despite going one-for-eight on the power play and giving up a shorthanded goal during a 5-on-3, the Tampa Bay Lightning earned a third-straight win on Tuesday night and took down the Ottawa Senators 4-3 at AMALIE Arena with another late goal in the third period.

"The power play, which is normally strength of ours, there's nights it's going to struggle," Lightning head coach Jon Cooper explained. "It struggled tonight. But the guys stuck with it. You want to munch points, but you just have to stick to your plan.
"It's hard to do. Maybe earlier in the season, we strayed away from it at times and it cost us. Tonight, we didn't and they got rewarded for it, but what a wild ending."
The Bolts recorded 12 shots on goal in the first period and held the Sens to just three, but it was Ottawa who ended the first period with a 1-0 lead off Dylan Gambrell's first goal of the season.
Then came the special teams.
The Bolts spent just over eight minutes of the second period on the power play, including 1:34 of 5-on-3 time, but came away with just one power play goal scored by Mikhail Sergachev 3:17 into the middle frame.
"We had a lot of power plays," Sergachev said. "Some of our guys didn't play a shift for a long time and I didn't think our power play was particularly good in the second period.
"We scored one goal, but we gave up chances, which is unacceptable."
Former Tampa Bay forward Mathieu Joseph went on to score his first goal of the season while the Bolts were on the 5-on-3 power play to put the Senators up 2-1 with 7:39 left in the second period. Ottawa, once again, took a one-goal lead into the intermission.
It wasn't the Lightning's night with the man advantage. From entries to turnovers, the power play just wasn't clicking for the Bolts on Tuesday. But despite the disappointing performance on the PP, Tampa Bay still trailed by just one goal after two.
"We had a decision to make coming into the third," said Lightning captain Steven Stamkos. "We could have just wilted over or let's walk the walk, right?
"You look and the guys who stepped up in the third were the guys that were on that power play that felt that we needed to play a lot better and we did. Obviously, a lot of things to work on, but five-on-five, I thought we were certainly carried the majority of the play."
The Lightning did carry the five-on-five play on Tuesday, outshooting Ottawa 19-8 at even strength. Going into the final period, it was important for Tampa Bay to simply continue playing the right way and stick to the process.
"You're not going to have to lead all the time," said Cooper. "Whether it's the first or third period, you shouldn't have to really change the way you play."
It looked like the Bolts got the boost they needed in the third period when Alex Killorn scored a goal for the second-straight game to tie it at three. The veteran forward has picked up three points in his last two games with two goals and one assist and looks to be finding his game offensively. For Cooper, Killorn has been playing the right way all season long.

"Everybody, in the end, they go to the score sheet and you feel good about yourself when you see a goal or two by your name," Cooper explained. "But if you're asking me how Killorn's played, I think he's been one of our best players.
"I tell the players, I understand. Everybody wants to feel like they're contributing, but he was contributing and it's just a matter of time. Now he's getting rewarded for what I believe and it's that he's played extremely well."
The momentum shift didn't last long for the Lightning when Claude Giroux answered just 40 seconds after Killorn's goal to put the Senators up 3-2.
It was another moment of adversity staring Tampa Bay in the face, but the team didn't blink and continued to trust the process. The Bolts got rewarded only 1:11 after Giroux's go-ahead goal with a beautiful goal from Brayden Point.
As Ian Cole began to advance the puck through the defensive and neutral zone on the right wall, Point accelerated up the ice with tremendous pace. After he got over the red line, Cole flipped a backhand pass towards the Senators blue line and Nikita Kucherov just gradually made a little touch pass to Point, who was flying through the middle of the ice. Point gathered the puck, split the Ottawa defense and snuck a shot under the arm of Anton Forsberg to tie the game at three and bring the life back into AMALIE Arena.
"I think you just have to make the most of your breaks," Point said after the game. "I think we got some breaks. We got some chances and we capitalized on them.
"I think we never stopped believing that we were in the game and I think that's a big part of it."
With the game tied at three, the Bolts continued to push forward and got a game-winning goal from Kucherov for the second-consecutive contest.
Following a strong effort on the forecheck by Brandon Hagel, who continues to play well for Tampa Bay, Point collected the puck behind Ottawa's net and threw a saucer pass to Mikhail Sergachev at the left circle.
With nearly the whole building expecting Sergachev to fire a shot on net, the defenseman slid a pass across the zone to Kucherov, who fired a one-timer past Forsberg and gave the Lightning a 4-3 lead with 2:30 left in regulation.
Kucherov became the third player in NHL history to score a go-ahead goal during the final 2:30 of regulation in consecutive games after he also scored the game-winner at San Jose in the final minute on Saturday.

Kucherov has been on a tear for Tampa Bay. He's scored a goal in four straight games and recorded a point in eight straight. He has 14 points during that eight-game span with four goals and 10 assists. The Russian superstar is on pace for 123 points this season.
"I knew he was going to get open there," said Sergachev. "I saw him with my peripheral vision and just made the right play there.
"His shot was unbelievable. I just rewatched it. He had a such a tight angle.
"I mean, that's Kuch, you know? The guy had 130 points. He's easy to pass it to."
With Victor Hedman listed as day-to-day with an upper-body injury, Sergachev stepped up and led the Bolts with 25:04 time on ice on Tuesday night. He recorded his third multi-point game of the season and second in the last three contests. He has picked up at least one point in five of his last six games.
"Once you see that Victor is not playing, it's more responsibility, for sure," said Sergachev. "But I've been training. I've been doing everything right to step up my game and I was given the chance today and I thought I played OK.
"I got a couple points, but still my game is not the level it should be."
Sergachev is taking on an expanded role on the Lightning back end this season after the departure of Ryan McDonagh this offseason. While he feels he still needs to be better, Sergachev's numbers have been impressive. His nine points this season (2-7-9) are tied for the fourth-most among NHL defensemen and rank first among Tampa Bay's D-men.
While the power play did not perform as we've seen in the past, the Bolts were still able to pull out a big two points. Some nights you have it and some night you don't. Unfortunately for the Lightning on Tuesday night, as the power play continued to struggle, the whole operation gained negative momentum in the tumble downhill.
"That was a weird one, for sure," Stamkos said. "Five on five, I thought we were great. It was almost a case of we had too many power plays tonight. When it's not working, it can snowball and we let it snowball and that's on us. It almost cost us the game there, but we stuck with it."

Cooper isn't concerned about his power-play groups. Tuesday night was just one of those nights that didn't go Tampa Bay's way on the man advantage, but he's confident the team will bounce back.
"The one thing is, on the powerplay, you have to take a breath because when you press sometimes it can go the other way," Cooper explained. "We're fine. That group has scored so many big goals for us. Fortunately, tonight, we didn't need it."
Good teams find ways to win even when they aren't at their best. While the power play wasn't effective, the Lightning still held the Senators to just 15 shots on goal all game. Entering tonight, the Bolts lowest shot total allowed in a single period was four, when the Ducks recorded just four shots in the first period against Tampa Bay last week.
On Tuesday, Ottawa mustered just three shots on goal in the first period, followed by five in the second and seven in the third.
Most importantly for the Lightning, the team stuck to the process and played the right way for a full 60 minutes.
"We've just felt that we're not out of games," said Cooper. " So you can't change the way you play. And I thought we just didn't change the way we played.
"We stayed with the program and it takes maturity to do that. It's easy to start cheating and taking long shifts and just doing things like trying to manufacture offense out of nothing. But we've been growing and we've seen growth here the last few weeks."
While it was the wackiest game of this season for the Lightning, the two points are all that matters. The team will be off on Wednesday before returning to action on Thursday night against the Carolina Hurricanes at AMALIE Arena.
"I told the guys it's going to take me a full day to digest it, so you can just take the day off so I can digest what happened," Cooper joked after the win. "It was a wild one. There's no doubt about that."