Lightning return home with a 4-2 loss to Stars

Tonight’s game against the Dallas Stars revealed a Lightning team that is close, but just a step behind the elite teams in the league this season. With the game tied in the third period, it was the Stars that dictated the pace of play and scored twice within a minute to take a 4-2 lead. Their defense shut it down from there, and the Lightning’s 5-game point streak ended with the final whistle blowing while a puck skittered harmlessly away from danger.

It wasn’t all bad for the Lightning as Anthony Cirelli continued his recent heater, scoring the game-opening goal just four minutes into the game. He found the back of the net a second time to give the Lightning another lead after Evgenii Dadonov had tied it up. Unfortunately, Cirelli’s second goal would be the last time the Lightning put a puck past Jake Oettinger, who finished the night with 27 saves.

Both of Cirelli’s goals were typical, Anthony Cirelli-type goals. On the first one, he had inside position in the slot when Brandon Hagel fired a bad-angle shot on net. The puck deflected right to Cirelli who kicked it down, and then roofed it. On the second one, he was being absolutely mauled in front of the net by the much taller Miro Heiskanen, but he was still able to get the puck off of a rebound and sling it around the defensive play and into the net.

Some will be upset with the second Dallas goal, but it took a significant amount of lucky wobbles for it to go into the net. First, Ryan McDonagh had to lose the puck in his skates. Then Matt Duchene had to be able to dig it out, and keep his momentum going through the neutral zone. Then, his pass to the back-cutting Heiskanen hit Mitchell Chaffee’s stick, but there wasn’t enough of a disruption in it’s direction to keep it from getting to the defenseman. Heiskanen picked a perfect spot under the bar to beat Vasilevskiy.

The second period opened with both teams getting a couple of chances, but as the period went on Dallas began to take charge.

While they were only outshot by one (9-8), the chances against will stilted very much in the Stars’ favor. The dam was beginning to break, and in the third period, Dallas cracked the barrier. A bad pass deep in the offensive zone by Ryan McDonagh led to Matt Duchene breaking the other way with a three-on-one advantage.

Erik Cernak played it well, and forced Duchene to drop the pass back to a well-covered Tyler Sequin. The veteran was able to flip it back to Duchene, who beat Vasilevskiy from a sharp angle. From there, Dallas just pushed the Bolts to the edges and wore the clock down.

With Jake Guentzel in the box, Roope Hintz attacked the blue line and caught Cernak a little flat-footed. Hintz split the defense and beat Vasy cleanly. It was pretty much over from there with Dallas locking down defensively. They denied the Lightning any solid chances from dangerous areas, and were quick to clear the puck when they could, often by carrying it out through the neutral zone, forcing the Lightning to retreat and regroup.

The Lightning played well for vast portions of the game, and got off to another hot start, scoring first for the 12th time this season. Unfortunately, it wasn’t sustained throughout the entire game and Dallas simply wore them down. It was a better performance than Thursday’s game, but it just wasn’t enough, and the Lightning can’t be content with moral victories at this point.

They were close, but a couple of mistakes, and another tough night on the power play, prevented them from pulling out a key victory. They’ll look to build on the positive on Monday when they host the Colorado Avalance.

The Goals

Anthony Cirelli (Brandon Hagel, Mitchell Chaffee) 1-0 Lightning

Evgenii Dadonov (Ilya Lyubushkin, Sam Steel) 1-1