In Tampa, the Lightning used a three-goal second period to build a 4-2 lead on the Vancouver Canucks on Thursday night leading to a 5-4 win.
Andrei Vasilevskiy made 36 saves in the Tampa win.
“We came out of these last two home games with four points,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “I like the way we played most of the time. I didn’t like either third period.”
The Canucks took a 1-0 lead on a first period goal from Conor Garland
Corey Perry tied the game, 1-1, also in the first.and J.T. Miller traded goals early in the second period for a 2-2 tie.
The Canucks dropped to 17-21-3.
Nikita Kucherov and Brandon Hagel then scored to give the Lightning the 4-2 lead after two periods.
“Obviously ‘Killer'(Killorn) made a heck of a play, using his big body and protecting the puck,” Hagel said. “It wasn’t a crazy breakout pass … it was hard work by Killer, and he was able to find me.”
Vancouver cut it to 4-3 on a strike by Quinn Hughes in the third period.
“You like to see that the guys are still competitive and there’s no quit,” Hughes said. “It’s always encouraging, but we didn’t get any points even if we did play better.”
Steven Stamkos scored off the power play to push the lad to 5-3 in the third period on the power play.
It was Stamkos’ 499th career NHL goal.
“I’m trying, shoot the puck and things are going to happen,” Stamkos said. “I had some good looks tonight. I just don’t want guys to feel obligated to force the puck; that’s human nature. That’s something you do when guys are close to milestones like that.”
Elias Pettersson scored with less than three minutes to go to inch the Canucks closer at 5-4, for the fial.
Collin Delia made 30 saves in the Vancouver loss.
“I thought we started the game really well, but we’re just having a tough time stringing together 60 minutes,” Canucks defenseman Tyler Myers said. “When you see how good of a team we can be when it’s good, we wonder why we can’t do that more often.”
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