TAMPA -- On the second night of their back-to-back set in the Sunshine State, the Detroit Red Wings didn’t get off to the start they would’ve liked but pushed back late in an eventual 4-2 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning at Benchmark International Arena on Tuesday.
“Obviously, really pleased with yesterday,” J.T. Compher said. “Today, I think probably only about 30 minutes of hockey that was good enough to get points and that’s too good of a team to spot them a first period like we did tonight. We didn’t execute well enough. We weren’t quick enough. We weren’t battling hard enough. And you’re going to have stretches of that, but it can’t be periods.”
Netminder John Gibson made 11 saves but left after the first period because of an upper-body injury and was replaced by goalie Daniil Tarasov, who had 12 in relief for Detroit (7-6-3; 17 points). Meanwhile, goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 19 shots for Tampa Bay (9-3-2; 20 points).
“Anytime we’ve called his number, he’s come in and played really well,” Red Wings head coach Todd McLellan said of Tarasov. “Obviously, with (Gibson) getting injured, and I don’t have an update on that… (Tarasov) is going to get more playing time, and we’ll see where he goes with it.”
Detroit got into some penalty trouble early in the first period — Moritz Seider was called for interference against Jeffrey Viel at 13:07 and Michael Brandsegg-Nygård went to the box for holding against Pontus Holmberg at 11:24.
“Not a lot of jump or pop right off the bat,” McLellan said. “We took some penalties, so their best players began to feel real good about their game. So, they got the feel and the touch, and then we defended with basically one player at a time. The other four kind of were standing still and they were in constant motion.”
On Tampa Bay’s first power-play opportunity, Nikita Kucherov sold a one-timer from the right face-off circle then slipped the puck to Brayden Point in the bumper. Point didn’t get all of it, but the 30-year-old forward got enough to beat Gibson for a 1-0 lead at 7:54. Just 5:07 later, Kucherov set up Point again to make it 2-0.
“There’s no way we should be short-handed twice in the first seven minutes,” McLellan said. “Especially the second one in the neutral zone where we’re holding somebody that’s not dangerous. So, that alone puts you behind the eight ball with that type of power play.”
The Red Wings lost a defensive-zone face-off in the left circle at 11:29 of the second period, and 10 seconds later Anthony Cirelli’s snap shot at the doorstep found twine to give the Lightning a 3-0 advantage.
“We just came out really slow,” Lucas Raymond said. “We weren’t moving our feet enough. We weren’t executing on plays. Kind of just got us caught behind the play all the time and they just came over us wave after wave.”
Detroit really needed to deter Tampa Bay’s momentum, and Raymond did just that for his club at 10:23 of the middle frame when he received Compher’s below-the-goal-line pass and buried a snap shot from the middle of the left face-off circle to make it 3-1. It was Raymond’s sixth goal of the season, and the fifth consecutive game in which the Swedish forward recorded at least a point.
“You always try to look at your game and see what areas you can get more out of,” Raymond said. “Whether that’s the puck going in the net or not, you’re always trying to find small edges out there. For me, it’s just sticking to my game and obviously looking to improve every game.”
