After honoring Jon Cooper for having coached 1,000 NHL games in a pregame ceremony, the Lightning delivered an outstanding defensive performance against the top team in the NHL to win their eighth straight.
The Avalanche had lost only three times in regulation through their first 41 games (although the third occurred on Sunday night versus Florida in their previous game). They’ve spent most of the first half of the season simply overwhelming their opponents.
But in this game, the Lightning were the ones dictating play for most of the night. They did it by checking tightly, managing the puck well, and forcing the Avs to play in the defensive zone. That was especially true of the Yanni Gourde-Zemgus Girgensons-Pontus Holmberg line, which was matched against the Nathan MacKinnon line. Often joined by Darren Raddysh and J.J. Moser, the Gourde line played great defense by getting the puck into the offensive zone and holding it there.
The other three lines and two defense pairs also checked well. They used their sticks to disrupt passes. They ended plays quickly in the defensive zone. They broke the puck out cleanly.
Even still, the Lightning found themselves trailing by a 2-1 score late in the second period. The Avs made a strong push at the beginning of the second and got rewarded when Parker Kelly finished a shot from the top of the crease after an extended offensive-zone shift. Colorado took the lead when Brock Nelson scored off the rush seconds after a Lightning power play ended.
Those tallies allowed Colorado to overcome a first-period deficit. Jake Guentzel had scored on the power play with 12 seconds left in the opening frame. It came after Brayden Point won three consecutive offensive-zone faceoffs to help the Lightning maintain possession. On the third of those wins, which took place with just 19 seconds left in the period, Nikita Kucherov fed Guentzel at the goal line to the left of Scott Wedgewood. The Avs backed off Guentzel, looking to defend a pass to Point in the slot (where he’d gotten several looks earlier in the advantage). Guentzel stepped towards the net and snapped a shot between Wedgewood’s right arm and body.
But after the two Colorado goals, the Lightning were behind. And that’s when the Gourde line put together another dominant offensive-zone shift—and this one led to the tying goal. A Raddysh point shot hit traffic in the slot, but Holmberg grabbed the loose puck. He fed Gourde at the right circle. Gourde wired a pass into the crease, when Girgensons gained position on Cale Makar and redirected it into the net at 17:22.
The Lightning successfully killed a penalty early in the third to preserve the tie. Then, just shy of the halfway point of the period, they regained the lead. Kucherov made several stop-and-start moves on Brock Nelson before drawing another Colorado defender to him and slipping the puck to Max Crozier, who skated to the slot. With the Avs now out of position, Crozier fed Brandon Hagel at the right circle, and Hagel fired it past Wedgewood’s glove at 8:31.
The Lightning effectively snuffed out any Colorado attack for the next several minutes. Marty Necas fired what was only Colorado’s second shot of the period on net with 4:38 left, leading to the final TV timeout of the game. From that point, the Avs applied heavy pressure. They recorded 11 more shots on net through the end of the third and also had 10 other attempts that were either blocked or missed the net. But Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped all 11 shots. He made three key saves during Colorado’s six-on-five when the game was still 3-2. Then Anthony Cirelli scored an empty-netter at 18:35. The Avs pressed to the final buzzer, to no avail.
This was an important win for the Lightning, and not just because it came against the NHL’s best team so far this year. It was their lone home game before they begin a five-game road trip on Saturday in Philadelphia.
Lightning Radio Three Stars of the Game (as selected by Pat Maroon):
The Gourde-Girgensons-Holmberg line.
