Lightning defeat Rangers, first in League to 80 points

NEW YORK -- Louis Domingue made 31 saves in his second start in more than six weeks and the Tampa Bay Lightning won their second game in as many nights, 3-2 against the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden on Saturday.

Erik Cernak scored his first NHL goal. Steven Stamkos scored his 28th of the season and Yanni Gourde had his 13th. The NHL-leading Lightning (39-11-2), who defeated the New York Islanders 1-0 in a shootout at Nassau Coliseum on Friday, are the first team to reach 80 points this season.
It was Domingue's second appearance in 16 games since Dec. 20.
WATCH: [All Lightning vs. Rangers highlights]
"I'm not going to lie, it's pretty hard, especially with the bye week and Christmas break," Domingue said of his lack of playing time as the backup to Andrei Vasilevskiy. "I think I only played two games since a little bit before Christmas, so it's not easy. There's no special recipe to do it. You just have to apply the details in practice and once your name is called you've got to be ready, so you've got to find a way."

Mats Zuccarello scored for the Rangers (22-22-7) to extend his point streak to seven games (five goals, eight assists). Kevin Hayes scored and Henrik Lundqvist made 20 saves to go along with his third assist of the season, but his personal four-game winning streak ended.
The Rangers were happy with how they played in the first and third periods, but they felt a lull in the second, when they started turning the puck over, was why they lost.
Cernak gave the Lightning a 2-0 lead at 4:41 of the second, scoring on a 4-on-2 rush. Stamkos beat Lundqvist with a shot from the right face-off circle off a rush with Nikita Kucherov and Victor Hedman at 8:33 to give the Lightning a 3-0 lead.

Gourde had given the Lightning a 1-0 lead at 6:51 of the first period.
"I think it was more on us not managing the puck," Lundqvist said. "We did really well in the first, but they can look so fast when you lose the puck in the wrong areas because they're going. They have three guys going and their 'D' is joining and they make good plays. The game can become so tough when you start losing pucks in the wrong areas. That's what we did for seven to eight minutes, and it cost us."
The Lightning were thrilled for Cernak, who scored in his 31st game on a shot from the right hash marks.
"You could tell from my celebration that I was really, really happy for the first goal," the rookie defenseman said. "Obviously, that was a great feeling scoring the first goal, especially in this building. That was awesome for me."
Lightning coach Jon Cooper said the joke on the bench was that Cernak saved his first goal "for a Hall of Famer in net and at Madison Square Garden."
"Hopefully it wasn't my last one," Cernak said jokingly.
Zuccarello made it 3-1 at 16:17 of the second period. Hayes made it 3-2 at 6:49 of the third, scoring a power-play goal on a one-timer from the right circle off a cross-ice pass from Mika Zibanejad, who received the puck from Lundqvist.

New York outshot the Lightning 16-4 in the third period. Domingue made three saves and the Lightning blocked five shots after Lundqvist went to the bench for an extra skater with 2:19 remaining.
"When you win a lot of games throughout the season you're going to win in different ways and you just have to be comfortable in winning different ways," Stamkos said. "We knew we had a two-goal lead going into the third. We did hang on. That's the way it's going to be down the stretch and into the playoffs. You're going to have leads in [third periods] whether you're at home or on the road, and you've got to find a way to win those."

They said it

"Louis made some big saves for us. We didn't give up a bunch of chances in the game, we gave up a bunch of zone time, but when we did Louis was there. We talked about what we had to do in the second and for about a 12-, 15-minute run there, that's where we turned the game around." -- Lightning coach Jon Cooper
"The disappointing part of it is we got down 3-0. I thought we had a really good first period and didn't take advantage of our chances. And I thought we played 12 minutes of sloppy, uninspired hockey, which cost us [two] goals against that team. You can't play for 48 minutes against that team." -- Rangers coach David Quinn

Need to know

Lightning center Brayden Point was scratched because of a lower-body injury. Cooper said Point was held out for precautionary reasons and is considered day-to-day. He had played in 165 consecutive games. ... Kucherov had an assist on Stamkos' goal to break
Vincent Lecavalier
's Lightning record for the fewest number of games needed to reach 80 points in a season. Kucherov has 80 points (22 goals, 58 assists) in 52 games. Lecavalier did it in 60 games in 2006-07. ... Domingue is 9-0-0 since a 3-1 home loss to the Anaheim Ducks on Nov. 27. … Zuccarello played a single-game NHL career-high 25:58.

What's next

Lightning: Host the Vegas Golden Knights on Tuesday (7:30 p.m. ET; ESPN+, TVAS, SUN, ATTSN-RM, NHL.TV)
Rangers: Host the Los Angeles Kings on Monday (7 p.m. ET; NHLN, SNE, SNO, SNW, MSG, FS-W, NHL.TV)