After a listless loss to the Boston Bruins on Saturday afternoon, the Lightning wanted to come out and set the tone against the Carolina Hurricanes. There was an extra hop in their step early, but Carolina started to outwork them midway through the second period, and took the victory, 4-1. Gage Goncalves had the lone goal for the Lightning while Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 27-of-31 shots.
The Lightning had the early edge in shots and were dictating play, even if their puck-handling was the smoothest. During an early power play they had a golden opportunity when Brayden Point had space from the slot, but wrapped his shot just wide of the net. Tampa Bay had the puck in the zone for the majority of the power play and generated chances, but just couldn’t beat Pyoty Kochetkov, who finished with 23 saves on the night.
Late in the power play, Nikita Kucherov snapped a pass across the ice that was picked off by Sebastian Aho. The Hurricanes rushed the puck up the ice and Seth Jarvis sniped the far corner over Vasilevskiy’s shoulder to open the scoring with a short-handed goal.
Seth Jarvis (Sebastian Aho) Short-handed, 1-0 Hurricanes
Scoreboard aside, it was a good period for the Lightning as they out-chanced the Hurricanes 11-7 at 5v5 and held them to just two high-danger chances. Unfortunately, that would be their best period of the night. They held their own for the beginning of the period and came close to tying the game when Anthony Cirelli bounced a puck off of the crossbar.
Then the defense got leaky. The Hurricanes started finding the soft spots in the defense and peppered Vasilevskiy with shots. He made a nice right pad save on Jarvis quickly followed by another one on Jordan Staal. It looked like maybe he was going to bail his team out until they could get their act together. Then Jordan Martinook stole a pass in the neutral zone and then flipped an innocent-looking backhander on net. It hit Vasy’s stick and squeezed inside the post to make it 2-0.
Jordan Martinook (unassisted) 2-0 Hurricanes
The Lightning offense, which relied too heavily on long, stretch passes and not enough puck control and sustained zone time just couldn’t generate enough chances, especially secondary ones, against Kochetkov.
Late in the period, it looked like Brayden Point had a step behind the defense off of one of those rushes, but Kucherov’s pass didn’t connect. Carolina cleared the puck out to the neutral zone where Darren Raddysh attempted to swat the puck away with his hand, but missed the bouncing puck, which allowed Taylor Hall to speed by him. The veteran saucered a pass over a prone Victor Hedman and Jack Roslovic finished it off for his 100th career goal.
Jack Roslovic (Taylor Hall, Jalen Charfield) 3-0 Hurricanes
The short-handed Lightning offense (they were skating 11/7) was dealt another blow as Nikita Kucherov left the game early. He had been feeling under the weather according to Coach Cooper and was also spotted favoring his arm/wrist during practice yesterday. There was no update on his condition following the game.
Gage Goncalves gave the Lightning faithful a bit of false hope as he snapped home his third goal of the season (with Anthony Cirelli providing a snow shower on Kochetkov) to make it 3-1.
Gage Goncalves (Brandon Hagel, Darren Raddysh) 3-1 Hurricanes
The comeback win was short-lived as Sean Walker snapped home a shot from the slot less than two minutes later following a Carolina face-off win.
Sean Walker (Jordan Staal) 4-1 Hurricanes
Frustration set in as the Lightning took a bench penalty, quickly followed by a delay of game penalty. They killed off the 5-on-3 and another Carolina power play after Vasilevskiy took his own delay of game penalty. At least the penalty kill had a good night.
The Bolts have now dropped two in a row, and not played to their expected level in three games. They also scuffled away a chance to gain some ground on the Panthers, who lost to the Boston Bruins. Once again they’ll look to turn the page on a substandard effort and turn things around against Philadelphia on Thursday as the road trip continues.
