THREE THINGS: Lightning put on defensive clinic to beat Jets

Nikita Kucherov recorded his 10^th multi-point game of the month of January helping the Tampa Bay Lightning defeat the Winnipeg Jets 4-1 at Benchmark International Arena. Kyle Connor scored his 24^th of the season for the only goal of the night for Winnipeg who saw their record drop to 21-25-7. Connor Hellebuyck made 33 saves for the Jets who remain in the state of Florida and will face the Panthers Saturday afternoon.

GIVING UP FIRST GOAL

Something that has given the Jets issues this season is giving up the game’s first goal as they came into action Thursday night 2-16-3 when the opposition scores first. The Jets had two great chances to open the scoring in the first period as Morgan Barron was denied by Andrei Vasilevskiy on a breakaway and Cole Perfetti also had a great chance when he stepped around JJ Moser and his shot was turned aside by the Lightning goaltender. That allowed Dominic James to get the first goal of the night at 14:58 of the first, Tampa would add to that 1:37 into the second, Darren Raddysh’s point shot got by Connor Hellebuyck.

TOP LINE AGAIN

Gabriel Vilardi rejoined Mark Scheifele and Kyle Connor in the second period of Tuesday’s game against New Jersey and that line helped Winnipeg beat the Devils 4-3. The trio pulled the Jets within one after Kyle Connor redirected a point shot from Dylan Samberg at 12:25 of the middle frame.

"Tampa is not going to let you play on the outside and give you some kind of one-timer from the distance," said Scott Arniel.

"You look at our goal, we got traffic in front of Vasilevskiy with a high tip and he didn’t see it and that has to be a constant. It was too far between, (as) we had to do it (more) on a consistent basis."

Unfortunately for the Jets, it didn’t take Tampa long to restore their two-goal lead when Yanni Gourde scored on an elite pass from Nikita Kucherov during a delayed penalty. That goal came less than three minutes after Connor had got Winnipeg on the scoreboard.

LIGHTNING DEFENSIVE DISPLAY

With the Lightning up by two goals to start the third period, the home team locked it down and really gave the Jets nothing to work with outshooting them 16-4. In fact, the Jets had 11 shots in the opening period but could only get 12 more over the final 40 minutes.

“I mean, they're a good team. They kind of stick to their system really well. They have a ton of skill, but they play hard, and I would say they're really disciplined in terms of giving up their chances and sticking to their systems,” said Morgan Barron.

“And sometimes that requires us to be patient and keep putting pucks behind them and probably didn’t do a good enough job of that at times.”