{"id":539448,"date":"2026-04-04T00:40:26","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T00:40:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/539448\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T00:40:26","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T00:40:26","slug":"lightning-6-3-penguins-apr-2-2026-game-recap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/539448\/","title":{"rendered":"Lightning 6-3 Penguins (Apr 2, 2026) Game Recap"},"content":{"rendered":"

TAMPA, Fla. — \u2014 Anthony Cirelli<\/a> registered his second career hat trick, Nikita Kucherov<\/a> had a goal and three points, and the Tampa Bay Lightning<\/a> moved into first place in the Atlantic Division after a 6-3 victory against the Pittsburgh Penguins<\/a> on Thursday night.<\/p>\n

Zemgus Girgensons<\/a> scored his 100th career goal and Brayden Point<\/a> scored his second in 14 games for Tampa Bay, which improved to 7-1-2 in the past 10 games. Jake Guentzel<\/a> and Gage Goncalves<\/a> both had two assists while Andrei Vasilevskiy<\/a> finished with 21 saves.<\/p>\n

Egor Chinakov scored twice and Rickard Rackell also scored for Pittsburgh. Sam Girard and Kris Letang<\/a> both had two assists and Stuart Skinner<\/a> finished with 27 saves.<\/p>\n

The Penguins remain in second place in the Metropolitan Division, three points ahead of the New York Islanders<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Cirelli scored Tampa Bay’s first two goals and he added an empty-netter for his first hat trick since Jan. 17, 2020.<\/p>\n

Cirelli and Rakell traded goals 1:55 apart in the opening seven minutes of the game before Chinakov gave the Penguins their first lead of the game with a backhander from the right circle at 16:10.<\/p>\n

Cirelli notched his second of the game 11 seconds into the second, deflecting a puck away from Bryan Rust<\/a> and racing up ice for a breakaway, lifting a backhand shot over Skinner for a shorthanded marker.<\/p>\n

Point put the Lightning back in front at 14:08 on a rebound. Girgensons took a pass from Gourde behind the net, pulled the puck to his forehand as he reached the crease and tucked a backhander into the open part of the net with 54.7 seconds left in the second.<\/p>\n

Kucherov made it 5-2 at 13:50 of the third.<\/p>\n

Up next <\/p>\n

Pittsburgh: Host the Florida Panthers<\/a> on Saturday<\/p>\n

Tampa Bay: Host the Boston Bruins<\/a> on Saturday<\/p>\n

——<\/p>\n

AP NHL: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nhl<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. — \u2014 Anthony Cirelli registered his second career hat trick, Nikita Kucherov had a goal and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539449,"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-539448","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\/116343657848718496","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539448","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=539448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}