Joseph scores twice in Senators win against Lightning

TAMPA -- Mathieu Joseph scored two goals for the Ottawa Senators in a 4-2 win against the Tampa Bay Lightning at Amalie Arena on Monday.

Joseph, who played his first four NHL seasons with the Lightning from 2018-22, including winning the Stanley Cup twice (2020, 2021), has scored four goals in five games against his former team.

"I don't know, I found some legs against these guys," Joseph said. "It's fun when they go in. I've had some good memories in this building, and obviously I have some good friends out there. You're always a little motivated playing against these guys."

Tim Stützle had a goal and an assist for the Senators (23-27-2), who had lost two in a row. Anton Forsberg made 23 saves.

"I thought we had a good effort," Ottawa coach Jacques Martin said. "I thought we played well, played smart. They've got some high-powered forwards, and I thought we did a pretty good job neutralizing them and staying out of the box as well."

Brayden Point and Mitchell Chaffee scored for the Lightning (30-22-5), who were coming off a 9-2 loss to the Florida Panthers on Saturday. Andrei Vasilevskiy made 24 saves.

"We've come a long way (this season), and in these last two (games) we've taken a step backward," Tampa Bay defenseman Victor Hedman said. "We've just got to make sure we stop the bleeding now and don't feel sorry for ourselves, because it's too late in the season for that."

Stutzle gave the Senators a 1-0 lead at 10:45 of the first period. He made a move around Emil Martinsen Lilleberg along the left boards, toe-dragged Darren Raddysh near the hash marks and beat Vasilevskiy short side.

"Great play by [Jake Sanderson] to step up there and get it to me," Stutzle said. "I saw a guy coming right at me and tried to beat him. I felt like the 'D' played it really good. I didn't have [Claude Giroux] back door, so I just tried to shoot it low blocker."

Joseph extended the lead to 2-0 at 13:35 of the first when he finished a pass from Giroux on a 2-on-1. The rush started after Joseph blocked Nikita Kucherov's shot in the high slot.

Joseph then made it 3-0 at 15:49 of the second period. He stole the puck from Steven Stamkos at the defensive blue line and skated in on a breakaway before scoring blocker side on Vasilevskiy.

"It's awesome to win," Joseph said. "I feel like we deserved better last game (a 3-2 loss at the Chicago Blackhawks on Saturday) and the pucks didn't really go in the net for us. It's definitely fun to win in this building."

Chaffee cut it to 3-1 at 16:55 of the second, scoring from near the right post after Nick Perbix's pass behind the net deflected out front off the stick of Jakob Chychrun.

"We started how we wanted to and then we had a little slump in the middle," Chaffee said. "I think it cost us. We got back to it later in the end, but in this league, if you take a little time off, they're going to score a couple of goals."

Tarasenko pushed it to 4-1 at 4:01 of the third period when he buried the rebound of Brady Tkachuk's shot on a 2-on-1 into an open net.

"We got off to a good start with a few early goals," Forsberg said. "At the end, I thought we played very mature and we had some big blocks in there. The guys fought hard. It was fun to watch."

Point scored 35 seconds later from the low slot off a centering pass by Brandon Hagel to make it 4-2.

"You can't get this back. There goes an opportunity to get points," Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. "Everybody around you won today and you didn't. We can't be doing this win one, lose one or win two, lose two. ... That's not going to get it done for us."

NOTES: Kucherov played in his 700th NHL game. ... Giroux has seven points (three goals, four assists) during a five-game point streak. ... Hagel extended his point streak to 10 games (seven goals, eight assists). ... Senators defenseman Artem Zub had two assists. ... The Lightning held a moment of silence before the game in remembrance of Mason Fox, who had participated in their Hockey Fights Cancer night on Nov. 30.