The Lightning overcame a stellar goaltending performance from Kevin Lankinen and a 2-0 deficit to record their fifth home win of the season.
In the first nine minutes of the game, Lankinen made three tremendous saves to keep the game scoreless: he stopped a Gage Goncalves tip, a Victor Hedman one-timer, and a Jake Guentzel in-alone chance.
The Canucks ended up drawing first blood, scoring twelve seconds after a power-play ended. Linus Karlsson drilled a right-circle slapshot past the glove of Dennis Hildeby at 15:32.
Early in the second, the Canucks received another power play—and extended their lead. After Ryan McDonagh broke his stick, the Lightning were down a man and a stick. They narrowly failed to clear the zone, and the Canucks capitalized. Jonathan Lekkerimaki put a left-circle shot wide of the net, but the rebound came directly to Elias Pettersson on the other side. With Hildeby out of position from having to defend the initial attempt, Pettersson finished into an open side of the net at 4:35.
But the two-goal lead didn’t last long for Vancouver. Exactly sixty seconds after the Pettersson goal, a hooking penalty on Liam Ohgren put the Lightning on the power play. Fifty-five seconds later, the Lightning got on the board. They had a shooting mentality during the man advantage, firing four shots on net—three of those came from Nikita Kucherov. On the second of those Kucherov shots, Lankinen made the save but lost his stick in the process. The puck came back to Kucherov, who quickly roofed it into the top of the net at 6:30.
Just under five minutes later, the Lightning tied it. Against Seattle on Thursday, the Lightning surrendered two goals shortly after losing a faceoff. In this game, they reversed the script. After a Vancouver icing, Brayden Point picked the circle to the right of Lankinen—on his weak side. That would normally be a disadvantage, but Point was going against Pettersson, who was also on his weak side. If Point could win the draw on his backhand, the puck would come to Kucherov in the middle of the ice. That’s exactly what occurred. Point got a piece of the puck to control it, then swept it cleanly to Kucherov, who fired a shot past Lankinen at 11:23.
The Lightning grabbed their first lead at 2:04 of the third when Guentzel’s shot from the blue line deflected off the stick of Ohgren and into the Vancouver net.
Pontus Holmberg provided insurance at 15:57 when he jumped on a puck in the offensive zone after the Canucks won a faceoff. Holmberg swerved through the low slot and wired a shot through Lankinen’s pads. The Canucks would get no closer, although they had a goal disallowed on the shift after Holmberg’s goal because Drew O’Connor deflected the puck with a high stick.
The Lightning outshot the Canucks, 35-14, but those numbers don’t tell the full story of the game. At points—especially in the final two periods—the Canucks forced turnovers and applied pressure on the Lightning. But those segments didn’t yield shots on goal. Vancouver finished with 37 shot attempts that were blocked or missed the net.
Still, the Lightning certainly generated more chances than Vancouver—Lankinen did well to deny many of those looks. But he couldn’t stop enough of them.
The Lightning excelled in two areas that had been cause for concern. They went 1-1 on the power play and won 33 of 53 faceoffs. They’ll look to keep those trends moving in the right direction when they begin a three-game road trip on Tuesday in Vegas.
Lightning Radio Three Stars of the Game (as selected by Phil Esposito):
- Pontus Holmberg — Lightning. Goal.
- Nikita Kucherov — Lightning. Two goals.
- Brayden Point — Lightning. Two assists.
