In Tampa, Cale Makar scored the deciding goal in the skills competition on Saturday night to give the Colorado Avalanche a 4-3 win over the Lightning.
“I just saw that [Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy] wasn’t really down yet,” Makar said. “I just tried to throw it in the five-hole and it did something a little weird.”
The big three scored for the Avs with Nathan MacKinnon, Gabriel Landeskog, and Mikko Rantanen scoring in regulation.
“We had to play some desperate hockey here because you need the points,” Colorado coach Jared Bednar said. “You just can’t afford in this league to not be carving points out on a regular basis, and we haven’t done this so far. Tonight I thought we played with real good purpose, we were definitely a more connected group.”
Darcy Kuemper made 29 saves for the Avs’ win.
Steven Stamkos struck once and had two points on the night for the Bolts.
“I like a lot of things I saw tonight,” Tampa Bay head coach Jon Cooper. “We took way too many penalties (seven). We can control that.
“If we win the shootout, there’s probably a whole different vibe in this room. We didn’t win the skill contest tonight. There were a lot of times in that game that I thought we did really well.”
Mathieu Joseph and Brayden Point also scored for the Lightning.
“Cirelli was there late and the puck got to me,” Joseph said. “Great play by [Alex Killorn] to find Cirelli, and luckily it went in.
“We could have had a couple more tonight that didn’t go our way. Sometimes you need greasy goals. It’s not an easy league to score in.”
Vasilevskiy made 24 saves in the loss.
“Penalties killed us today, ruined the flow of the game,” Stamkos said. “Again, it’s process over outcome, we’ve talked about that all the time. It wasn’t a bad effort. We found a way to get a point.”
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