Nick Paul added more cushion for Tampa Bay with 12:07 left in the third period when he scored his 10th goal of the season on the power play.
Making his way to the front of the net and presenting his stick for Stamkos, Paul calmly redirected a heavy slap pass from Stamkos past Joel Hofer and pushed the Bolts lead to 6-0.
Justin Faulk added a power-play goal of his own and spoiled the shutout for Andrei Vasilevskiy with 4:03 remaining in regulation to wrap up the 6-1 final.
Vasilevskiy was strong in goal for the Lightning yet again, stopping 28 of the 29 shots he faced, including some big saves on shorthanded chances for the Blues throughout the contest.
Despite the 6-1 win, it wasn’t all good for Tampa Bay Tuesday night. Mikhail Sergachev took a heavy shot from Colton Parayko off his left foot and hobbled to the bench before eventually making his way to the locker room and missing the remainder of the game.
After the contest, Lightning head coach Jon Cooper was unable to provide an update, telling reporters the team should know more ahead of Wednesday’s practice at AMALIE Arena.
The Bolts will be back in action with the final home game before Christmas Thursday night against the Vegas Golden Knights.
Bolts by the Numbers
- Nikita Kucherov scored his 21st and 22nd goals of the season for his eighth multi-goal game of the season.
- Kucherov has picked up points in eight consecutive home games (7-7—14).
- Kucherov remains the only player in the NHL with more than 50 points on the season (22-32—54).
- Steven Stamkos recorded three assists for the 295th multi-point game of his NHL career, passing Theo Fleury (294) and taking sole possession of 57th place on the NHL’s all-time list.
- Stamkos recorded three shots on goal and passed Vincent Lecavalier for sole possession of the most shots on goal in Lightning franchise history.
- Mikey Eyssimont opened the scoring with his fifth goal and 11th point of the campaign (5-6—11).
- Tyler Motte scored his second goal of the season and second in the past three contests.
- Haydn Fleury scored his first goal in a Lightning sweater and added an assist for his first multi-point game with the Bolts.
- Nick Paul posted a three-point effort for the second time this season with one goal and two assists. Paul has recorded four multi-point games this year.
- Nick Perbix skated in his 100th career NHL game and recorded one assist.
Bolts Quotes
- Jon Cooper: “We have to simplify our game. It sounds like a cliché, but when you do those things, you’re hoping to put teams under duress, making the game a little bit more unpredictable in their defensive zone. Then, if you’re around it and shooting it enough, good things usually happen for you and it happened for us tonight, especially in the first period and a little bit of the second.”
- Jon Cooper on the performance of Haydn Fleury: “Fleurs hasn't been in every single night, but he’s giving you a reason to keep him in…Fleury's asset is his skating and he really skated pucks tonight, especially breaking them out, so I thought that was big for us and his game. Then, for him to get what I found out was his first goal as a Bolt, that was pretty cool.”
- Haydn Fleury: “When you play with five (defensemen), you don’t really have time to dwell on a mistake or dwell on really anything or think about anything good. You kind of just get back to the bench, have some water and you’re right back out there, so you get a nice rhythm. It’s always fun. Guys were supportive on the bench, and we went down to four for the last five (minutes), so it got even better.”
