Heika’s Take: Motivated Lightning take charge at home, shut out Stars

The Stars walked into a hornet’s nest on Monday at Amalie Arena.

Not only had the Tampa Bay Lightning lost four in a row, including an 8-1 whipping in Dallas on Saturday, they were honoring defenseman Victor Hedman for his 1,000th NHL game. There was a buzz in the building, and the home team responded with a 4-0 victory.

“You’ve got a lot of motivating factors for them, just line them up,” said Stars coach Pete DeBoer. “They’d lost four in a row, we beat them 8-1, Hedman’s 1,000th game, there were a lot of things stacked for them. We knew they were going to come play a game and really I thought we were right there despite that. We had to find a goal to spark us.”

They couldn’t do that against veteran Andrei Vasilevskiy, as he came up with 25 saves to push the Lightning to 11-10-5. Dallas falls to 14-6-3. It is just the Stars’ second regulation loss on the road, and it was a game they can definitely build on as they continue this road trip in Florida on Wednesday and Washington on Thursday.

“It’s not like we laid an egg tonight, we played hard,” DeBoer said. “But we’re going into a back-to-back against two good teams on the road. It’s not one of those situations where we’re responding from a really, really poor effort. I thought we showed up and played hard.”

And that’s the good part of the game. Yes, the Lightning were motivated by a big meeting on Sunday and the opportunity to fete one of their best players. But they didn’t just run roughshod over the Stars. Tampa Bay scored first on a mistake when the Stars left NHL leading scorer Nikita Kucherov alone in the slot for the all-important first goal. Then, just as the period was nearing its end, Erik Cernak found Anthony Cirelli going to the net, and that made it 2-0.

The Stars scored in the second minute on Saturday and pushed to a 3-0 lead less than eight minutes into the game.

“When you get the early goal, you get the momentum,” forward Roope Hintz said. “We didn’t get it today and they got it.”

Dallas then controlled play in the second period with a 10-4 advantage in shots on goal, but they simply could not find a way to beat Vasilevskiy.

“We’ve got to find a way to put one past him,” said Matt Duchene. “We did some good things. We didn’t get totally outplayed, but it’s always a bad taste in your mouth when you get shut out and you lose by four.”

It was only the second shutout for the Stars this season and comes on the heels of an eight-goal performance, so you have to take it with a grain of salt.

Still, the team had a power play in the third period and didn’t capitalize, and then gave up two goals when they were pushing hard to get back in the game. One came from former Stars forward Luke Glendening, who blocked a Ty Dellandrea shot and then went in alone on Jake Oettinger to score his fourth goal of the season. It was sort of an appropriate moment, as Glendening was able to get a key marker against his old team and also bonding with his new team.

There was a clear feeling of “big game” for the Lightning, who have an established history of winning but are floundering this season. In addition to Vasilevskiy and Hedman, the team also got big games from most of their big players.

“You beat a team 8-1, especially a championship team, you know they’re going to respond,” DeBoer said. “Their best players were at a different level tonight . . . [Brayden] Point, Kucherov, Vasilevskiy, Hedman. We knew that was going to happen and I still thought we had some opportunities. I thought Vasilevskiy had some big saves early. We created enough to be in that game and I even thought in the third at 2-0, we were right there.”

Still, the Lightning dug in and expanded the lead, and that will now force the Stars to try to find similar motivation. They have a day off planned in Sunrise, and then will go hard with a full lineup. With back-to-back games, it’s expected Scott Wedgewood will split the starts with Oettinger. In addition, there’s a good chance that healthy scratches Nils Lundkvist and Evgenii Dadonov will find their way back into the lineup.

It’s what the Stars have done all year.

“We always bounce well, this group,” Hintz said. “We just have to get back to what works for us and go from there.”

This story was not subject to the approval of the National Hockey League or Dallas Stars Hockey Club.

Mike Heika is a Senior Staff Writer for DallasStars.com and has covered the Stars since 1994. Follow him on Twitter @MikeHeika.