Guentzel scores twice, Lightning rally past Hurricanes

TAMPA -- Jake Guentzel scored twice in the third period, and the Tampa Bay Lightning rallied for a 6-4 win against the Carolina Hurricanes at Benchmark International Arena on Saturday.

Guentzel put Tampa Bay ahead 5-4 at 6:38 of the third period when he backhanded a J.J. Moser wrist shot from the left point five-hole on Pyotr Kochetkov from the top of the crease.

Ryan McDonagh had a goal and an assist, and Brayden Point and Jack Finley scored for the Lightning (19-13-3), who were 0-2-1 in their past three games. Dominic James and Charle-Edouard D'Astous each had two assists. Andrei Vasilevskiy made 18 saves.

"You basically saw a formula of how to lose a game and how to win a game all in a span of about two hours and 15 minutes," Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said. "That's what happened."

Andrei Svechnikov and Eric Robinson scored for the Hurricanes (22-10-3), who have lost two straight (0-1-1), including 4-3 in a shootout to the Florida Panthers on Friday. Jackson Blake and Bradly Nadeau also scored, and Kochetkov made 23 saves.

It was the second straight game Carolina failed to hold a three-goal lead.

"It wasn't a good game, even when we were up 3-0 we kind of got fortunate on a couple of the plays," Carolina coach Rod Brind'Amour said. "And then we come out in the second and just lay an egg really. It was terrible. We kind of got what we deserved. Mentally you can feel that we just weren't sharp. You see the turnovers we made. Just stupid plays that you can't win hockey games doing."

Robinson gave the Hurricanes a 1-0 lead at 2:42 of the first period. Tampa Bay defenseman Darren Raddysh's clear attempt was held at the blue line by Jordan Staal. Staal then fed a pass to Robinson in the right face-off circle, where he sent a one-timer five-hole on Vasilevskiy.

Blake pushed it to 2-0 with a power-play goal at 4:00 when he deflected a pass from Nikolaj Ehlers between his legs in front that went off Vasilevskiy's stick and under his left arm.

Nadeau extended the lead to 3-0 on the power play at 12:27 with a wrist shot from the slot. The goal came during the second half of a four-minute man-advantage after Finley was given a double minor for high-sticking.

Nadeau was recalled from Chicago of the American Hockey League on Saturday after forward Seth Jarvis was injured in Friday's loss.

"When you're up three, you've got to be pretty confident you're going to win that game," Staal said. "Couple of lax plays, a couple of turnovers and they're back into it. We tried to push back in the third and came up short."

The Lightning scored two goals in the opening 1:20 of the second period to get back into the game.

Gage Goncalves cut the deficit to 3-1 just 30 seconds into the period when he finished a feed from Dominic James in the low slot.

Point set up at the crease and redirected a pass from D'Astous into an open net behind Kochetkov to make it 3-2 at 1:20.

"There's a lot of accountability on this team, a lot of guys speaking up in the room after that first period," McDonagh said, "We were embarrassed. You feed off that first shift [of the second period]. Obviously they score a goal and they set the tone right away for us."

Finley tied it 3-3 on a breakaway at 16:36 when he put a rebound past Kochetkov's left skate after his initial shot was stopped.

"The first period wasn't great, but I thought in the second we came out hard and stuck with it in the third," Finley said. "That just shows the character in this room. [Dominic] James was driving our line all night. It was a team effort."

Svechnikov regained a 4-3 lead for Carolina at 2:47 of the third period, skating in on a 2-on-1 and lifting a pass from Mark Jankowski over Vasilevskiy's left pad.

"We've got to be hard to play against," Staal said. "I think we got a little soft. It ended up being a shootout but in the wrong direction for us."

McDonagh tied the game 4-4 at 3:13 after breaking through two defenders and slipping the puck between Kochetkov's pads.

"It was a good 40-minute game, we're trying to get closer to a 60-minute game here at home," McDonagh said. "But obviously a good response in the end."

Guentzel scored into the empty net at 19:33 for the 6-4 final.

"Three in four nights, you can feel it," Brind'Amour said. "This is part of the schedule that you have to grind out and we didn't tonight."

NOTES: With an assist, Lightning forward Nikita Kucherov recorded his fourth calendar year with at least 110 regular-season points and tied Jari Kurri and Peter Stastny for the second-highest total by a player born outside North America. The only players with more are Leon Draisaitl and Jaromir Jagr (both with five). ... Point has eight points (three goals, five assists) over his past six games. ... Hurricanes defenseman Jaccob Slavin was a healthy scratch as Brind'Amour did not want to play him in back-to-back games as he continued to work his way back from a lower-body injury.