As the Tampa Bay Lightning continue to make a push for the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs, the team will need its best players to lead the charge. We saw that in a 6-3 win over the New York Rangers Thursday night when Brayden Point and Nikita Kucherov led the way with six and five points, respectively.
On Saturday night in Sunrise, another pair of two-time Stanley Cup champions stepped up to lead the Bolts to two points with Steven Stamkos and Andrei Vasilevskiy guiding Tampa Bay to a 5-3 win over the Florida Panthers.
The Lightning have now won three games in a row, the last two coming against a couple of teams sitting near the top of the NHL standings. With 15 games to go, the Bolts hold the first Wild Card spot in the Eastern Conference with a four-point lead over the Detroit Red Wings and a five-point lead over the New York Islanders and Washington Capitals, who both have a game in hand.
The past three games have been a massive success and while there’s still plenty of hockey left to be played, the group must be feeling good coming off a big win over its intra-state rival. Here’s how they did it.
Whether you’re on the road or at home, you always want to have a quick start in the NHL. The Lightning got that Saturday night when Stamkos opened the scoring just 20 seconds into the first period to give his team an early 1-0 lead.
Taking pass off the boards from Erik Cernak, Stamkos skated into the Florida zone on a 2-on-1 with Brandon Hagel, who he tried to find with a pass, but the puck went off the skate of Brandon Montour and made its way through Sergei Bobrovsky to give Stamkos his 26th goal of the year.
Just over 13 minutes later, the Bolts doubled the lead and made it a 2-0 game with Mikey Eyssimont netting his career-high, 10th goal of the season. Following a clear up the boards by Nick Perbix, Nick Paul made a fantastic play to redirect the puck into open space, where Eyssimont was able to use his speed to gain possession and skate in all alone on Bobrovsky.
Looking to go five hole, Eyssimont was stopped by Bobrovsky on his initial shot, but the speedy forward stuck with it and buried his own rebound to send Tampa Bay to the first intermission with a 2-0 lead.
The Lightning kept that same intensity rolling into the second period and got rewarded when Darren Raddysh scored his fifth goal of the season 3:02 into the middle frame.
It all started when Anthony Cirelli was willing to take a hit to make a play, as the two-way forward found Stamkos streaking through the neutral zone before getting crunched against the boards immediately after making the pass. Crossing over the Florida blue line, Stamkos moved the puck to Anthony Duclair, who then fed a trailing Raddysh as he made his way into the offensive zone. Skating downhill to the top of the right circle, Raddysh wired a hard, perfect shot into the top left corner to push the lead to 3-0.
Just 3:57 later, the captain added another one with the Lightning taking advantage of a 5-on-3 power play. Almost instantly after a faceoff in the Florida zone, Kucherov sent a pass to the point for Hedman, who immediately put the puck on a platter for Stamkos to completely hammer his patented one-timer into the top right corner for his second goal of the night and 27th of the season.
From there, it was Big Cat time. When Stamkos put Tampa Bay up 4-0, shots were 13 apiece. For the remainder of the game, the Panthers outshot the Bolts 37-3, and Vasilevskiy was more than up to the task.
Matthew Tkachuk and Sam Reinhart (2x) were able to find the back of the net to get Florida back within one, but don’t let the three goals against fool you, Vasilevskiy was sharp as a tack and had one of his best performances of the season. Whether it was a lunging toe save on a rebound attempt or a left to right, outstretched stop with his blocker, Vasilevskiy was in a different zone and won the game for the Lightning.
With the score at 4-3, Stamkos flipped a puck out of the Tampa Bay defensive zone before Hagel used his speed to dart down the ice and win a race against Brandon Montour to negate an icing call.
Winning a puck battle against both Montour and Carter Verhaeghe, Hagel sent a pass to Kucherov, who had his shot at the empty net blocked by Tkachuk. But Hagel was right there to jump on the loose puck and send a return feed right back to Kucherov, who buried a backhand into the open cage to make it a 5-3 game with his 40th goal of the season.
That was the dagger as the Bolts finished up the remaining 1:32 to earn two big points in a 5-3 victory. Vasilevskiy finished the night with 47 saves as he and the rest of the Tampa Bay team will have two days to prepare for another huge game against the Vegas Golden Knights at T-Mobile Arena Tuesday night.
Bolts by the Numbers
Steven Stamkos picked up his second four-point game of the season with two goals and two assists. Stamkos opened the scoring 20 seconds into the first period, marking the sixth opening-minute goal of his NHL career and moving him past Vincent Lecavalier (5) to take sole possession of the most in Lightning franchise history. With his second goal coming on the power play, Stamkos is up to 209 career power-play goals, tied with Gordie Howe for the fourth-most with a single franchise in NHL history. Stamkos is up to 60 points on the season (27-33—60).
Andrei Vasilevskiy made 47 saves, his second-most of the season and fifth-most of his career. Vasilevskiy is up to 24 wins on the season with a record of 24-16-1 and is 3-0-0 over his last three starts with a .942 save percentage, 2.01 goals against average and one shutout.
Nikita Kucherov scored a goal and added an assist to extend his assist/point streak to 10 games (4-16—20), one shy of tying his season-long, 11-game point streak set Nov. 16-Dec. 6 (6-15—21). Kucherov is one game shy of tying his career-long, 11-game assist streak set, which was also set Nov. 16-Dec. 6. Kucherov (40-74—114) has now scored 40 goals in a single season three times, the second-most in Lightning franchise history behind only Steven Stamkos, who has accomplished the feat six times. Kucherov’s 114 points are the second-most recorded in a single season in Bolts franchise history, trailing only his 128-point campaign in 2018-19.
Victor Hedman recorded one assist and extended his assist/point streak to four games (2-5—7). Hedman is up to 67 points on the season (12-55—67), the third-most he’s recorded in a single campaign in his career. Hedman has recorded 13 points over his last nine games (3-10—13).
Darren Raddysh scored his career-high fifth goal of the season and is up to 27 points on the season (5-22—27) with six points over his last three contests (1-5—6).
Mikey Eyssimont scored his career-high 10th goal of the season (10-10—20) and has picked up four points over his last four games (2-2—4).
Nick Paul recorded one assist and extended his point streak to four games (1-4—5). Paul is up to 37 points on the season (18-19—37) and has picked up eight points over his last 10 contests (4-4—8).
Anthony Duclair recorded one assist and extended his point streak to five games (5-4—9). Duclair has recorded at least one point in each of his three games with the Bolts (2-2—4) and is up to 31 points on the season (18-13—31).
Bolts Quotes
Jon Cooper: “We were put in some tough situations to get ourselves out and protect the lead and we did it. You look at those challenges and say, 'Boys, you passed.' Is that a recipe for success? Long-term, no, but we will be in those situations again. We're going to have to kill a penalty off. We're going to have to 5-on-6 and get through it. And we did it against a really, really good hockey team. So, for me, was it the easiest win when you sit on a 4-0 lead and just sail into the end of the game? No. And that's why they have 40-plus wins. We were faced with a lot of challenges and we passed, but we know we've got better in us, especially the penalties we took and stuff like that to give them life. But the kid in net was unreal and, listen, we came here to get two points and we got them. Not going to apologize for that.”
Steven Stamkos: “You don’t want to take that many penalties in a playoff game, so that’s something we’ve got to dial back here. Like I said, it just puts too much stress on the guys that are out there and the goaltender. I think we do have much better than what we showed tonight, but like I said, two points is two points at this time of the year and we need them.”
Jon Cooper: “It's the Vasy we've seen for a decade and that's why he's the best.”
Krenner’s Three Stars
- Andrei Vasilevskiy
- Steven Stamkos
- Sam Reinhart
Lightning Look Ahead
- Tuesday, March 19 at Vegas Golden Knights, 10 p.m. ET, T-Mobile Arena
- Thursday, March 21 at San Jose Sharks, 10:30 p.m. ET, SAP Center
- Saturday, March 23 at Los Angeles Kings, 10:30 p.m. ET, Crypto.com Arena
