To their credit, the Tampa Bay Lightning and Florida Panthers played an actual hockey game for the first 44 minutes of their final meeting during the regular season. Up 4-0 in the third period, the two teams got into their usual shenanigans that resulted in 14 penalties being dished out, 6 misconducts, 2 game misconducts, and Paul Maurice getting ejected. Overall, the two teams combined for 147 penalty minutes on the night. Oh yeah, and the Lightning won 6-1 behind Andrei Vasilevskiy’s 33 saves.
Despite having played the night before, the Panthers were the better team early on. Their forecheck bothered the Lightning, and Florida was able to rack up some chances against the home team. However, the defense, backed by Vasilevskiy, held firm, especially on a lengthy 5-on-3 late in the period with the game still in reach for the Panthers.
At the other end of the ice, well, let’s say the Lightning were opportunistic. They weren’t generating a ton of chances, but they scored on the ones they did. Brandon Hagel opened the scoring as he deflected a shot from Victor Hedman past Daniil Tarasov just over two minutes into the game. The Yanni Gourde line did their thing at the 14-minute mark when Pontus Holmberg dug a puck out from under Tarasov’s glove and set up Zemgus Girgenson’s for his 7th goal of the season.
With Nikita Kucherov and Girgensons in the box for over a minute, the Lightning did a fantastic job of limiting Florida’s chances on their two-skater advantage. If Florida had managed to score with the extra attacker, it changes the complexion of the game.
Up by two in the second period, the Lightning found their defensive stride as they were more composed in their zone and they limited the shots and chances for Florida. On a power play of their own (thanks to Matthew Tkachuk picking up an unsportsmanlike penalty for barking at the refs at the end of the first period), Nikita Kucherov set up Darren Raddysh for a one-timer that Tarasov stopped, but the rebound came right to Jake Guentzel who put it home. The 3-0 lead seemed to sap some of the energy from the Panthers and the Lightning really settled into things.
Erik Cernak would pot his first of the season on a beautiful wraparound goal to make it 4-0 at the end of the period. There had been some roughing calls earlier in the game, and some chippiness was brewing, but things came to a head four minutes into the third period when Nikko Mikkola knocked down Kucherov. A penalty was already going to be called when Tkachuk came off of the bench, circled around into the offensive zone and blatantly ran into Kucherov well away from the play.
That touched off a couple of fights and ended up with the deluge of penalties. Hagel took on Tkachuk and landed some clean blows on him. J.J. Moser and Gustav Forsling squared off in a secondary altercation (which cost them both a game misconduct) with Forsling throwing some extra punches well after Moser was down on the ice. Pretty much everyone on the ice ended up with a 10-minute misconduct. Paul Maurice, who had been upset with the officials pretty much all game, was tossed as well.
While the Lightning weren’t able to take advantage of the 5-on-3 (in their defense the unit consisted of Jack Finley, Gage Goncalves, Dominic James, Oliver Bjorkstrand, and Victor Hedman) they did score shortly after it expired when Holmberg tapped home a feed from Gage Goncalves and pushed it past Tarosav, who appeared to sustain a lower-body injury earlier in the sequence.
Curtis Douglas took a couple of swings at Nico Mikkola (who had no interest in dropping the gloves) and earned a five-minute fighting major and ten-minute major for being the “aggressor”. Mackie Samoskevich scored on the power play, but Oliver Bjorkstrand put one past Sergei Bobrovsky, who had replaced Tarosav after the Holmberg goal, to make it 6-1.
The teams pretty much just skated out the final four minutes of the game without too much enthusiasm for more mischief and the final horn sounded on the pre-Olympic Break portion of the schedule. Seven Lightning players (including six who scored in tonight’s game) and Wojciech Stachowiak will board a charter plane to Italy. The rest will get a little bit of relaxation and a chance to heal up before the Lightning resume their schedule on February 25th against Toronto.
The Goals
Brandon Hagel [27 ] (Victor Hedman), 1-0 Lightning
Zemgus Girgensons [7] (Pontus Holmberg, Yanni Gourde) 2-0 Lightning
Jake Guentzel [ ] (Darren Raddysh, Nikita Kucherov) Power Play, 3-0 Lightning
Erik Cernak [1] (Ryan McDonagh, Dominic James) 4-0 Lightning
Pontus Holmberg [9] (Gage Goncalves, Oliver Bjorkstrand) 5-0 Lightning
Mackie Samoskevich [6] (Johan Boqvist, Anton Lundell) Power Play, 5-1 Lightning
Oliver Bjorkstrand [10] (unassisted) 6-1 Lightning
Highlights