TAMPA – The Tampa Bay Lightning gave up two goals to the Buffalo Sabres in the last 22 seconds of the first period in the Bolts’ 7-4 dismissal of Buffalo on Sunday evening. The win ended four one-point losses in the last five games as the Lightning’s latest three defeats occurred in overtime.
Tampa Bay immediately responded to this call to arms after forward Brandon Hagel found defenseman Ryan McDonough in front of the Buffalo net to tie the game at 3:02 in the second period.
At 6:24, forward Nikita Kucherov scored a breakaway goal when he fired a wrist shot that hit the top of the goal post and then the back of Buffalo goalie James Reimer’s skate. It allowed Kucherov to score off the rebound as the Lightning went ahead 3-2.
“It’s Game 80 or whatever it was tonight and Kuch showed a lot of emotion when he scored,” said Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper. “The guys know what is at stake for him as well.”
Kucherov pulled into the lead in points with 119 as he recorded two goals and an assist. He has a three-point lead over Colorado’s Nathan MacKinnon with two games remaining in the season.
“I think when you get down to this time of year it’s all about the team, but there are some individual accomplishments that can go down, like guys were excited for Kuch,” Cooper continued. “That also carried on for Lilleberg later in the game.”
At 16:45, Lilleberg fired a one-timer just inside the left blue line when he shot the puck over Reimer’s glove. Lightning forward Mitchell Chaffee controlled the face-off and assisted Lilleberg on his first NHL goal.
“Shame on me,” said Cooper. “I knew it was his first goal of the year, but I didn’t know it was the first of his career. For some reason, I thought he scored last year. That only happens nonce. You remember your first goal, you remember your first NHL game,”
Just before that at 14:31, Connor Geekie scored his seventh goal of the season when he had a shot blocked off of the face-off and rebounded the puck for the score. Geekie returned on Sunday after being at Syracuse where he scored 11 goals in 20 games and transitioned his confidence into Sunday’s return.
“That’s where you learn,” commented Cooper about Geekie’s Syracuse Nationals experience. “For somebody his age, he’s 20 years old, but he came in there and he was a phenomenal teammate and all he did was put his head down and he went to work and hopefully, it’s now paying dividends down the road for him.”
The Lightning added four goals in the second period when Kucherov scored on a turnover by Buffalo’s Ryan McLeod at 2:39. Later, he slid the puck to Jake Guentzel who scored his second goal of the game on the left side of the crease.
Buffalo took it’s 2-1 lead on scores by Juri Kulich and Peyton Krebs as backup Lightning goalie Jonas Johannson improved to 9-5-3.
“We wanted to be a fast paced, hard team to play against and I think we are at our best when we get pucks in deep or we are keeping it simple,” said Tampa Bay center Anthony Cirelli. “It was nice to build off of that second, obviously.”
