Burns: 3 Things we learned from a shootout loss in St. Louis

If you would have told Tampa Bay Lightning head coach Jon Cooper he'd be without Nikita Kucherov, Brayden Point, Steven Stamkos and Mathieu Joseph before the final game of a two-game road trip in St. Louis, he probably would be thrilled to exit the Gateway City with a point.
That point he and the Lightning got as they fell 4-3 in a shootout to the Blues at Enterprise Center Tuesday night.
How they arrived at that shootout and point will probably have Cooper shaking his head.

The Lightning scored three goals by the first media timeout to take an early 3-0 lead. Then they watched as that lead evaporated. St. Louis made it a one-goal game with a pair of goals in the second period. The Blues tied the contest 3-all early in the third on a power play.
The Bolts held on - and even pushed back with some good scoring chances of their own down the stretch - to get the game to overtime and earn a much-needed point.
But they had two for the taking in a building where wins have been extremely rare for the Lightning. The Bolts have now lost five in a row overall to the Blues and fall to 4-15-3 all-time in St. Louis.
They'll get a chance for redemption when they close out the home-and-home with the Blues Thursday at AMALIE Arena.
"We'll look back at this and be extremely disappointed we didn't get two points out of it but come away with one and get another crack at them in 48 hours," Lightning head coach Jon Cooper said.
Here's what we learned from the Bolts' shootout loss.

1. VALIENT EFFORT FROM A SHORTHANDED SQUAD
Tampa Bay's injury situation has been much discussed.
Nikita Kucherov remains out with a lower-body injury suffered in the third game of the season. Brayden Point missed his fifth-straight game with an upper-body injury that will sideline him four to six weeks.
But the Bolts were down another pair of forwards in St. Louis too.
Mathieu Joseph was dinged up in Sunday's loss at Minnesota and couldn't play two nights later, the young forward day-to-day with a lower-body injury.
And just a couple hours before the game, Jon Cooper learned his leading goal scorer and point tallier was no longer in St. Louis because he flew back to Tampa to be with his wife for the expected birth of the couple's second child.
That left the Lightning with just three centers. For a game that went into overtime, Anthony Cirelli (25:06), Pierre-Edouard Bellemare (22:35) and Ross Colton (16:09) were forced to player higher-than-usual minutes.
"That's pretty taxing on those guys," Cooper said. "I'm not sure Bellemare's ever played that many minutes in a game before."
Despite being shorthanded, the Lightning nearly pulled off a victory in a building where they've been hard to come by historically for Tampa Bay. The Bolts scored three goals within the first 5:29 of the contest to stun the Blues early. Cirelli scored 2:02 into the game after jamming a puck through an unaware Jordan Binnington after sustained pressure from Taylor Raddysh, who was initially given credit for the goal, which would have been the first of his career in the NHL.
Corey Perry continued his torrid play of late by connecting on the power play at 5:24 of the first to put the Bolts in front 2-0. Perry extended his point streak to five games (3-2-5 pts.).
And Erik Cernak returned from the injured list, the 24-year-old defenseman playing his first game since November 9 and scoring his first goal of the season to put the Bolts in front 3-0 just five seconds after Perry scored for the fastest two team goals by the Lightning in franchise history. On the play, Cernak was just try to rim the puck around the glass into the offensive zone, but the puck took a crazy bounce off a stanchion and shot right toward the Blues net off Binnington and in.
The undermanned Lightning were rolling early.
But they couldn't sustain that effort.
"You come down to it, you have three centers in the game, guys are playing monster minutes when you only have 11 forwards, it was a good thing we got the lead because we were a tired group at the end," Cooper said.

2. COLOSSAL MISTAKES UNDO BOLTS
Falling behind 3-0 seemed to be the jolt the Blues needed - particularly the way the third goal unfolded -- as they started to claw their way back into the game.
The Lightning recorded their final shot of the first period at 10:36. They didn't register another until 6:52 of the second period.
Meanwhile, while the Bolts were going over 16 minutes without a shot, St. Louis was possessing the puck and pushing hard in the offensive zone. Lightning netminder Brian Elliott did a fantastic job early to keep the Blues off the board. The Bolts got out of the first period without conceding, but St. Louis continued to pressure once the second began and it was only a matter of time until they converted, Ryan O'Reilly finally getting them on the board at 3:15 of the period.
"You give them life like that, they're going to try to keep it rolling, keep it simple," McDonagh said. "We've got to learn to simplify in those situations, generate some shots, generate some O-zone time and slowly kind of take back over."
Three minutes after O'Reilly got the Blues on the board, Logan Brown, making his St. Louis debut, fired a shot from the left dot that Elliott couldn't stop to get them closer trailing 3-2.
And early in the third period, on a power play that carried over from the second, Ivan Barbashev one-timed a shot five-hole through Elliott from the inside edge of the right circle to tie the game 3-all.
Jon Cooper lamented that all three goals were blunders by the Lightning.
"I thought we made just colossal mistakes," he said. "First goal, just a huge error. Second one, turnover, bad decision coming up ice. And the third one was another PK error. Give them credit, they took advantage of a couple errors, but I wouldn't wrap the whole game around we played poorly. We went to overtime, we had our chances and we didn't get it done. In this league, when you get a lead like that, should you shut it down? There's no question you should. But when you make errors like that, we didn't feel like we had to make them earn those goals. We were a big part of why they scored them."
The Lightning were punished two days earlier in Minnesota for defensive lapses. The Wild were able to take advantage of them and the Bolts couldn't make Minnesota pay for its few errors.
The story repeated itself in St. Louis. The Lightning handed the Blues a couple opportunities to get back into the game, and they were all-too-ready to jump on them.
"We have to do a job in front of Ells there," Ryan McDonagh said. "We want some plays back."

3. YOUNGSTERS SHOWING THEY BELONG
With some many injuries to their forward group, the Lightning have relied on a number of rookies to help them navigate this difficult stretch.
And all of them have risen to the occasion.
Gabriel Fortier was the latest to get the call. When Mathieu Joseph was injured against Minnesota, Fortier was recalled from Syracuse to replace him. He saw nearly 10 minutes of ice time in his NHL debut Tuesday and dished out three hits while also getting some ice time during 4-on-4 play in overtime, a sign the coaching staff trusted the 21 year old to put him on the ice in a high-pressure situation.
"I thought he was great," Cooper said of Fortier. "Tough situation to come into, especially only having 11 forwards. But I thought he earned his ice time as he went on. He got hit pretty good there, and I loved how he came right back at them and he stood up for himself and drew a penalty with his speed. I thought he did great."
The other rookies in the lineup continued to impress as well. Taylor Raddysh thought he'd scored his first NHL goal when he batted a puck out of the air at the side of the net, bouncing it under Jordan Binnington. He was initially credited with the goal but replay clearly showed Anthony Cirelli was the player who jabbed at the puck underneath the Blues goalie to sent it over the goal line.
Still, Raddysh finished with an assist on the opening goal and added another on Erik Cernak's crazy-bounce goal for his first multi-point game in the NHL. He was plus-two for the game.
"It's tough because I know how much he wants it," Cooper said of Raddysh coming oh-so-close to scoring his first goal. "He had some chances tonight. It's going to come at some point."
Boris Katchouk nearly netted his first NHL goal too. Late in the game with the score tied 3-3, Katchouk had a wraparound attempt that almost went in before it was cleared off the line away from danger. Katchouk finished plus-one.
Throw Ross Colton in there too, although he's more experienced having played half of the last regular season and going through the entire postseason with the Bolts. He earned extended minutes Tuesday because the Lightning were short centers, notched an assist for winning the face-off on Cernak's goal and saw two minutes of power-play time as well.