Despite a pair of Jake Guentzel goals, the Lightning couldn’t overcome a 3-0 deficit in what ended as a 6-3 loss to the Colorado Avalanche on Friday.
Tampa Bay outshot the Avalanche, but the home team took advantage of their scoring chances off the rush and received a four-point night from forward Nathan MacKinnon.
Tampa Bay is now 7-3-0 this season.
“It’s hard to play hockey when we’re behind right away at the beginning, especially against that team,” defenseman Charle-Edouard D’Astous said. "I think we’re way better than that. Usually our starts are good for us, so we just weren’t good enough tonight and not ready.”
Devon Toews made it 1-0 on Colorado’s first shot on goal. MacKinnon entered the zone on the fly and stopped to feed Martin Necas on the right side before a cross-ice pass found an open Toews in the left circle for the shot and goal.
Nazem Kadri then made it 2-0 for the home team on an Avalanche power play before the game’s sixth minute, one-timing his shot from the left circle on a T.J. Hughes pass from below the goal line.
“That’s a really good team over there,” coach Jon Cooper said. “You go down 2-0 five minutes into the game, now you’re chasing it. They did what they had to do. They came out flying, we didn’t. They got the lead and we were kind of playing catch-up the rest of the way.”
Colorado’s transition game continued to outpace Tampa Bay in the second period and furthered the lead to 3-0 just 24 seconds after the opening faceoff. Fedor Svechkov’s pass attempt on a 2-on-1 rush was blocked by a sliding Erik Cernak, but Svechkov then batted the puck out of the air and into the net.
Tampa Bay entered the scoring with their third power-play goal in as many games when D’Astous fired a shot from the top of the setup and Guentzel buried the rebound near the left goalpost 8:13 into the second period.
“Even if we scored tonight, I think we’ve got to be better,” D’Astous said. “We had so many chances and so many power plays. I think that could’ve turned the game around for us. It gave us a little bit of life in the second period, but at the end of the second, beginning of the third, we had a couple chances. So, we’ve got to be better.”
MacKinnon helped regain Colorado’s three-goal lead late in the period. He circled the net and passed to Artturi Lehkonen near the left faceoff dot, where the forward’s shot caromed in off a Lightning player’s skate.
Guentzel responded again for the Lightning, sliding the puck inside the right post just as a power play expired in the final minute of the second period.
An unsuccessful Colorado challenge on Guentzel’s second goal gave Tampa Bay a power play and the chance to cut the deficit to one goal, but that momentum and score never developed.
“That (power play) we had in the third, we spent a minute, 20 seconds just trying to get in and never did,” Brayden Point said. “That’s not good enough. It’s pivotal points in the game where we could’ve made it 4-3, and they end up making it 5-2 after the power play. Those are times you really want to cash in, but I think we’ve got to find a way to get into the zone.”
Shortly after, MacKinnon’s fourth point of the night saw him rush the length of the ice and bury his shot into the bottom left corner of the net 4:18 into the final frame.
A slot shot by D’Astous with five minutes remaining made it 5-3, but the Avalanche ended any comeback hopes with an empty-net goal.
D’Astous joined Guentzel and Point with two-point performances, while goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy made 18 saves.
The Lightning will aim to get back in the win column on Saturday when they close their first back-to-back of the season with a 9 p.m. ET matchup against the Utah Mammoth.
“We’ve just got to learn from our mistakes,” D’Astous said of the turnaround. “They’re fast, they’re skilled, they’re good,” D’Astous said. “If we play like we did tonight, it’s going to be the same result. We just have to play smarter.”
Benjamin’s Three Stars:
- Nathan MacKinnon, COL (Goal, 3 assists)
- Martin Necas, COL (Goal, 2 assists)
- Jake Guentzel, TBL (2 goals)
