In Pittsburgh, the visiting Tampa Bay Lightning finally found their game on Tuesday night.
Tampa’s Andrei Vasilevskiy made 28 saves in a 5-1 decision over the Penguins.
“The way last night went, we thought for most of that game, we played well and kind of shot ourselves in the foot,” Tampa Bay head coach Jon Cooper said. “There’s a lot of talk about back-to-backs and how hard they are. Sometimes back-to-backs are needed. We needed a game right after last night. Good feeling the guys would respond. They certainly did tonight.”
The Bolts evened their record at 3-3-1.
“I thought we played well,” the Pens’ John Marino said. “We skated hard. Controlled the majority of the second period, but the chances we gave up were too much.”
The Lightning put up three goals int the middle frame after a scoreless first period.
Brayden Point scored with 31 seconds gone in the period for a 1-0 lead.
Ondrej Palat and Ryan McDonagh added goals, 10 seconds apart, for a 3-0 lead after 40 minutes of play.
“[Taking the lead] helps out in a lot of areas,” McDonagh said. “It just creates more momentum for you, makes the other team press a little bit. You keep it simple and keep going north and forecheck, you get more goals that way. It was a good sign for us.”
Jason Zucker scored the Pens’ lone goal when he made the score 4-1 to Tampa.
“We’re putting ourselves in a position to win games,” Pittsburgh head coach Mike Sullivan said. “I think we’re a team that’s playing well collectively as a group. The structure is evident. That’s important at this particular time. … We’re not perfect. We make mistakes, but they’re mistakes of enthusiasm.”
Mikhail Sergachev scored an empty-net goal when the Pens pulled their goalie for an extra attacker, the goal came at 16:55 of the third period.
“I think it’s still early, but we were talking about getting better,” Palat said. “Just feel better about our game. It’s a good step. There’s still room for improvement, I think. We need to be better too.”
Alex Killorn added a second empty-net goal to ice the game with a 5-1 final.
Tristan Jarry made 26 saves in the Pens loss.
“We need everybody,” Zucker said. “I think we’ve shown that the first few games of the season. We need to make sure everybody is pulling their weight and more.”
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