Lightning recover to defeat Senators with late goal in overtime

TAMPA-- Anthony Cirelli scored with 19 seconds left in overtime to give the Tampa Bay Lightning a 4-3 win against the Ottawa Senators at Amalie Arena on Tuesday.

Cirelli split Ottawa players Nicholas Paul and Chris Tierney at the blue line to create a 1-on-1 against Senators goalie Marcus Hogberg and beat him with a wrist shot before crashing into the net.
"I knew there wasn't that much time left, so just trying to go for it and lucky to get some space," Cirelli said. "I saw a little bit of a gap there, I just used my speed, lucky to get by them, and just want to get one on net and still managed to hit the goalie but luckily this one counted."
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Cirelli had a goal overturned because of goalie interference twice this season, against the Minnesota Wild on Dec. 5 and against the Buffalo Sabres on Nov. 25.
"I was a little nervous," Cirelli said. "I didn't want to celebrate too hard because I knew there was a chance it could get called back."
Nikita Kucherov, who was a game-time decision with a lower-body injury, scored for the Lightning (17-12-3), who have won three of their past four games.

Anthony Duclair scored his eighth goal in the past six games for the Senators (14-18-3), who lost each of their back-to-back games in Florida. Hogberg made 36 saves, and defenseman Thomas Chabot played 37:50.
"I thought we battled hard," Senators center Chris Tierney said. "We didn't have a great start, but the guys came alive in the second half of the first and got back in the game. I thought it was a pretty gutsy effort on a back-to-back, but we've got to find a way to get the extra point."

Kucherov gave the Lightning a 1-0 lead at 7:27 of the first period. Mark Borowiecki tied it 1-1 at 11:05, and Cedric Paquette put the Lightning ahead 2-1 at 17:22.
Brayden Point pushed the lead to 3-1 at 3:32 of the second period. Connor Brown made it 3-2 on the next shift at 4:01.
"Huge [win]. Points are becoming super important for us right now," Point said. "This is not the record we want at this point. We fought some adversity and had some huge saves from [Andrei Vasilevskiy], and Tony makes a great play to secure it for us."

Duclair forced a turnover by Kucherov and scored on a breakaway to make it 3-3 at 15:46 of the second period. He has 19 goals this season.
"I think we battled really hard out there both ways," Hogberg said. "It is what it is. I don't know how many shots they blocked, but I love how we played in front of me."
Kucherov played two shifts after the turnover and sat on the bench for the final 17:27 of the third period and all of the overtime.
"We were making decisions and that was what was best for us to win tonight," Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. "He's a huge part of our team … it could've been anybody. As a group, we put ourselves in this position. We wanted to win this game tonight and this is what we're going with."
Ottawa had a chance to win 34 seconds into the overtime when Brady Tkachuk made an outlet pass to Jean-Gabriel Pageau for a breakaway, but Vasilevskiy made the save.
"I thought it was a really gutsy effort for our guys, especially the guys we're missing on the back end," Senators coach D.J. Smith said. "We had a lot of guys really dig in."

They said it

"We did the little things that we had to do. Certainly our goalie kept us alive, but that's a team that's built to win right now. We have a lot of kids over here that are learning day to day and these are valuable lessons for us. I really like the way we stuck together." -- Senators coach D.J. Smith
"He willed us to two points tonight, that's what he did. What a burst. … To have that energy in the 64th minute of the game, that was pretty impressive. But we've been getting that out of him since the day he joined this team." -- Lightning coach Jon Cooper on Anthony Cirelli

Need to know

Chabot's time on ice is second to Dennis Wideman, a defenseman who played 38:05 for the Calgary Flames in a 3-2 shootout loss to the Vancouver Canucks on Jan. 18, 2014 (since 2005-06). ... The Senators are 2-3-1 in the second of back-to-back games this season. They lost 6-1 at the Florida Panthers on Monday. ... Kucherov, who was injured in a 5-2 loss to the Washington Capitals on Saturday, has 17 points (five goals, 12 assists) in the past 13 games. ... Tierney had two assists for his third multipoint game of the season, all since Dec. 4. ... Lightning forward Steven Stamkos had an assist and has eight points (six goals, two assists) in the past six games.

What's next

Senators: Host the Nashville Predators on Thursday (7:30 p.m. ET; ESPN+, RDS2, TSN5, FS-TN, NHL.TV)
Lightning: Host the Dallas Stars on Thursday (7 p.m. ET; SUN, FS-SW, NHL.TV)