The Backcheck: Bolts drop back-to-back games

After dropping the first game back from the All-Star break in a 3-1 loss to the New York Rangers Wednesday night, the Tampa Bay Lightning lost a second-straight contest on Thursday, falling to the New York Islanders by a score of 6-2 at UBS Arena.

The Islanders got on the board early when Noah Dobson netted his seventh goal of the season 4:07 into the first period. After Dobson attempted to send a pass to the back door for Oliver Wahlstrom, the puck took a deflection off the skate of Erik Cernak in front of the net and made its way past Jonas Johansson to give New York the 1-0 lead.

Despite the early adversity, the Bolts had an answer just 2:35 later when Nikita Kucherov lit the lamp for the 33rd time this season and pushed his NHL-best point total to 87. Taking a pass from Darren Raddysh, Kucherov hammered a one-timer that ricocheted off an Islanders defender and got behind Ilya Sorokin to even the score at 1-1 with 13:18 remaining in the opening frame.

With 5:53 remaining in the first period, Mat Barzal put the Islanders back up by one with his 15thgoal of the season when Bo Horvat won a faceoff in the offensive zone before sending a pass toBarzal, who roofed a backhand past the outstretched blocker of Johansson to make it a 2-1 game.

As it looked like the Lightning were going to head to the locker room trailing by one after 20 minutes, Kyle Palmieri found a soft spot in the offensive zone and fired a quick one-timer past Johansson to put New York up 3-1 with 1:25 remaining in the first period and send the Bolts to the first intermission in a two-goal hole.

Tampa Bay came out with some jump in the second period and got back within one goal just 1:14 into the middle frame with Scott Mayfield in the box for tripping. With the second power-play unit on the ice, Victor Hedman sent a stretch pass up the ice to Anthony Cirelli, who drove the net and fired a low shot on net before Brandon Hagel jumped on the rebound and beat Sorokin for his 18th goal of the season to make it a 3-2 game.

With the Lightning on the penalty kill shortly later, Ryan Pulock sent a shot through traffic that beat Johansson and extended the Islanders lead to 4-2 with 12:50 remaining in the second period.

Only 1:08 later, Horvat took a pass from Barzal and fired a one-timer from just above the top of the circles that found the back of the net and made it a 5-2 game with his 21st goal of the campaign.

Casey Cizikas scored the final goal of the contest with 4:38 remaining in the second to wrap up the 6-2 win for New York.

Bolts by the Numbers

- Nikita Kucherov scored his 33rd goal of the season and pushed his season point total to 87. The All-Star winger has found the scoresheet in six consecutive contests (5-7—12).

- Brandon Hagel scored his 18th goal of the season and is up to 45 points on the season (18-27—45). With the goal, Hagel extended his point streak to five games (5-2—7), one game shy of tying his career long.

- Victor Hedman picked up his 42nd assist and 51st point of the season with the secondary helper on Hagel’s goal. He’s pointed in seven of his last nine contests (3-9—12).

- Darren Raddysh collected the lone assist on Kucherov’s goal and is up to 19 points on the year (4-15—19).

- Anthony Cirelli recorded the primary helper on Hagel’s goal and pushed his season point total to 26 (10-16—26).

Bolts Quotes

- Jon Cooper: “Let’s be honest. I think our break was 10 days. We come back [with] a couple practices. We play a back-to-back. I’m disappointed in how we’ve come out of this break. I thought we had a little bit more in us to make sure we were ready, but we’ve looked slow. We’ve looked out of shape. We look like we took 10 days off. All the hard work we did to get ourselves in the spot we’re in, now we’re going to have to work our way back in by playing games. That’s just not the way you can do it. I’m in complete agreement with the break. I’m just not sure we handled it great.”

- Brandon Hagel: “We’ve got to be better on the road. I think that’s a big thing that we haven’t been able to figure out this year. Obviously, at home, everyone knows how good we are there and what we can do at home. But if you want to make the playoffs and you want to get to the end of the playoffs, you need to win on the road. I think we talked about it. I think the playoffs kind of starts now and that’s definitely not the way we wanted to start.”

- Cooper: “To be honest, we didn't have the ideal first period, which obviously was disappointing. But, in the end, it's a 3-2 game. We hit the post. We're all over them. It could be 3-3. We take the penalty, can't get out of it, it’s 4-2 and then it kind of went downhill after that. Just not defending hard enough. You have to do that in this league and giving up six after two periods, you're not going to win that way. We defended hard when we were penalty killing, but tonight, we didn't defend hard 5-on-5. They’re a team that's hungry here. They come off their break, had a big win on the road, probably a couple of good practices, and they took it to us.”

Krenner’s Three Stars

1. Mat Barzal

2. Bo Horvat

3. Ryan Pulock

Lightning Look Ahead

- Saturday, February 10 at Columbus Blue Jackets, 7 p.m. ET, Nationwide Arena

- Tuesday, February 13 at Boston Bruins, 7 p.m. ET, TD Garden

- Thursday, February 15 vs. Colorado Avalanche, 7 p.m. ET, AMALIE Arena