It was Cirelli’s second hat trick in the NHL and first since Jan. 17, 2020.<\/p>\n
Nikita Kucherov had a goal and two assists for the Lightning (47-22-6), who are 7-1-2 in their past 10. Jake Guentzel and Gage Concalves each had two assists, and Andrei Vasilevskiy made 21 saves.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Egor Chinakhov scored twice, and Rickard Rakell extended his goal streak to three games for the Penguins (38-22-16), who had won two straight and three of four. Samuel Girard and Kris Letang each had two assists, and Stuart Skinner made 27 saves.<\/p>\n
Cirelli gave the Lightning a 1-0 lead at 5:06 of the first period. Concalves intercepted a pass from Penguins forward Ben Kindel in the defensive zone and put a snap shot off Skinner’s blocker from above the right face-off circle. The puck rebounded to Cirelli in the slot, where he buried it to the glove side.<\/p>\n
Rakell tied it 1-1 at 7:01. After Girard skated behind the net, the puck deflected off two Lightning defenders to Rakell, who went skate-to-stick behind his back and stuffed it past Vasilevskiy at the left post.<\/p>\n
Chinakhov put Pittsburgh up 2-1 at 16:10 when he lifted a backhander from the right circle under Vasilevskiy’s right arm.<\/p>\n
Cirelli evened the game 2-2 just 11 seconds into the second period, scoring his second goal while on a short-handed breakaway with a backhand shot over Skinner’s left pad.<\/p>\n
Brayden Point gave Tampa Bay a 3-2 lead at 14:08. Guentzel followed the rebound of his shot behind the net and knocked it out in front, where Point chipped the puck over Skinner’s glove.<\/p>\n
Zemgus Girgensons increased it to 4-2 with his 100th NHL goal at 19:05. Yanni Gourde sent a backhanded pass from behind the net to Girgensons in front, where he went forehand-backhand and tucked the puck around Skinner’s left pad.<\/p>\n
Kucherov made it 5-2 on a sharp-angle wrist shot from the right circle at 13:50 of the third period.<\/p>\n
Cirelli completed the hat trick with an empty-net goal at 15:53 to push it to 6-2.<\/p>\n
Chinakhov cut the deficit to 6-3 while on the power play with his second goal at 19:58.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was Cirelli’s second hat trick in the NHL and first since Jan. 17, 2020. Nikita Kucherov had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537686,"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],"class_list":{"0":"post-537685","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"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116338399170876028","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537685","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=537685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}