A three-goal second period got the Tampa Bay Lightning back in the win column on Thursday with a 6-3 beatdown of the Pittsburgh Penguins.<\/p>\n
The Lightning opened the scoring five minutes in with an Anthony Cirelli rebound look before Pittsburgh scored a pair of goals to take a 2-1 lead through 20 minutes of hockey.<\/p>\n
Cirelli tied the score on a shorthanded breakaway in the opening moments of the second period. Brayden Point restored the lead on a netfront look with 5:42 left in the period, and Zemgus Girgensons\u2019 100th NHL goal made it a 4-2 game in the final minute of the frame.<\/p>\n
Nikita Kucherov added a goal in the third with a shot that surprised Pittsburgh\u2019s goaltender, and Anthony Cirelli\u2019s second career hat-trick was capped with an empty-net goal.<\/p>\n
Andrei Vasilevskiy finished with 21 saves for Tampa Bay in the win.<\/p>\n
The Lightning, now 47-22-6 this season, will host the Boston Bruins this Saturday.<\/p>\n
Scoring summary
First period
TBL 1, PIT 0
5:06 Anthony Cirelli (21) – Gage Goncalves
Tampa Bay grabbed an early lead on a rebound look for Anthony Cirelli, whose shot found the right half of the net.<\/p>\n
TBL 1, PIT 1
7:01 Rickard Rakell (21) – Samuel Girard, Kris Letang
The Penguins evened the score with a shot from Rickard Rakell near the net after a pair of bounces off of Lightning skates.<\/p>\n
PIT 2, TBL 1
Egor Chinakov (19) – Bryan Rust, Girard
Pittsburgh got its first advantage of the night with Egor Chinakov\u2019s backhand shot on the fly.<\/p>\n
Shots on goal: TBL 11, PIT 11<\/p>\n
Second period
PIT 2, TBL 2
0:11 Cirelli (22) – Unassisted – SH
A shorthanded breakaway ended with a backhand bury for Cirelli\u2019s second goal of the game.<\/p>\n
TBL 3, PIT 2
14:08 Brayden Point (18) – Jake Guentzel, Nikita Kucherov
Tampa Bay took back the lead with a netfront look on the stick of Brayden Point, who chipped the puck into the top corner after a feed from Jake Guentzel.<\/p>\n
TBL 4, PIT 2
19:05 Zemgus Girgensons (9) – Yanni Gourde, Ryan McDonagh
Zemgus Girgensons furthered the lead with his 100th career NHL goal, accepting a pass in the slot and outwaiting Skinner for another backhand goal.<\/p>\n
Shots on goal: TBL 9, PIT 8<\/p>\n
Third period
TBL 5, PIT 2
13:50\u00a0Kucherov (41) – Charle-Edouard D\u2019Astous, Guentzel
Nikita Kucherov surprised Pittsburgh\u2019s netminder with a top-shelf shot from the bottom of the right circle.<\/p>\n
TBL 6, PIT 2
15:33\u00a0Cirelli (23) – Goncalves, Kucherov – EN
Cirelli completed the hat-trick into the empty net.<\/p>\n
TBL 6, PIT 3
19:59\u00a0Chinakov (20) – Letang, Mantha – PP
A power-play goal in the final second ended the night.<\/p>\n
Total shots: TBL 33, PIT 24<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A three-goal second period got the Tampa Bay Lightning back in the win column on Thursday with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539658,"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-539657","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\/116344274731684630","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539657","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=539657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}