{"id":537327,"date":"2026-04-02T21:54:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T21:54:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/537327\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T21:54:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T21:54:18","slug":"penguins-continue-fight-for-playoff-hope-in-game-at-tampa-bay-against-lightning-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/537327\/","title":{"rendered":"Penguins continue fight for playoff hope in game at Tampa Bay against Lightning"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 This article originally appeared on <a href=\"https:\/\/pittsburghhockeynow.com\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/pittsburghhockeynow.com\/\">PGHHockeyNOW.com.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">A playoff hope has become a downhill chase as <a href=\"https:\/\/pittsburghhockeynow.com\/tag\/pittsburgh-penguins\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Pittsburgh Penguins<\/a> (38-21-16) could slash their magic number to single digits with a win Thursday when they visit one of the best teams in the NHL, the Tampa Bay Lightning (46-22-6) at Benchmark International Arena.<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Despite Tampa Bay\u2019s usual position at the top of the standings, the Penguins have points in nine of their last 12 games against Tampa Bay (7-3-2). And the Penguins are 5-2-0 in their last seven visits to Benchmark International Arena dating back to Oct. 23, 2019.<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Road warriors: The Penguins have points in five-consecutive road games (4-0-1) and have points in 13 of their last 15 road games overall (9-2-4).<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Tuesday, Anthony Mantha scored his 30th goal of the season. The first time he\u2019s reached that plateau. Also, he has 21 points (8G-13A) in 30 career games against the Lightning and is a plus-11. His 21 points are the most he\u2019s accumulated vs. one opponent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/pittsburghhockeynow.com\/pittsburgh-penguins-game-76-the-chase-lines-notes-how-to-watch-vs-lightning\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/pittsburghhockeynow.com\/pittsburgh-penguins-game-76-the-chase-lines-notes-how-to-watch-vs-lightning\/\">Click here to read more from PGHHockeyNOW.com<\/a>.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Download the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wpxi.com\/mobile-apps\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">FREE WPXI News app<\/a> for breaking news alerts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Follow Channel 11 News on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/wpxi\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WPXI\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Twitter<\/a>. | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wpxi.com\/video\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Watch WPXI NOW<\/a><\/p>\n<p>TOP STORIES FROM CHANNEL 11 NEWS <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph body-copyright\">\u00a92026 Cox Media Group<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 This article originally appeared on PGHHockeyNOW.com. A playoff hope has become a downhill chase as&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537328,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5105],"tags":[5,189,4,540,92,5168,5167,18277],"class_list":{"0":"post-537327","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa-bay-lightning","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-lightning","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-tampa-bay","12":"tag-tampa-bay-lightning","13":"tag-tampabay","14":"tag-tampabaylightning","15":"tag-wpxi"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116337342249689071","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}