In Tampa, a four-goal third period from the Washington Capitals was too much to overcome for the Lightning.
The avalanche of goals came from Lars Eller, Garnet Hathaway, T.J. Oshie, and Tom Wilson as the Caps overwhelmed the Lightning for a 5-2 win.
“The second period we got into penalty trouble and spent quite a bit of time in the [defensive] zone,” Capitals head coach Todd Reirden said. “We regrouped, we talked about it between the second and the third. It was up to us to get back to our game for the third period where, if we do that, [we] come out with the outcome we wanted.”
Ilya Samsonov made 26 saves in the win.
Brayden Point and Jan Rutta were the Tampa strikers.
Tampa Bay dropped to 16-12-3.
“Overall we probably took too many penalties,” Washington’s Nicklas Backstrom said after the Capitals went 4-for-5 on the penalty kill. “Tough second period there especially, other than that we worked ourselves into this game and had a good start to the third. That was huge. And we got two points.”
Backstrom staked the Caps to a 1-0 lead.
“[We] played 55 minutes of solid hockey, and every time we made a mistake it has ended up in our net,” Lightning head coach Jon Cooper said. “It’s too bad. I want to sit here and say we deserved better, but at the end of the day we didn’t because of a couple of mistakes we made.”
[WATCH: All Capitals vs. Lightning highlights]
Andrei Vasilevskiy made 29 saves in the loss.
“I thought we played well in the second period,” Point said. “We had some good looks, [their] guy made some saves. Bottom line is in the third period we gave up some opportunities to a team you can’t give opportunities to, and they capitalized.”
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