In Columbus, the Tampa Bay Lightning held a 3-0 lead over the Blue Jackets in the third period on Saturday night, before Columbus rallied with a pair of goals to close the gap to one.
Brandon Hagel hit an empty net with 48 seconds left on the clock for a 4-2 win for the Lightning.
“It’s hard to win in this league, and when you walk into an NHL building and come away with two points, you take those and move on to the next game,” Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said. “You can pick apart any game you want, but the bottom line is we needed these points. We got them and let’s move on.”
Andrei Vasilevskiy made 33 saves in the win.
“[Vasilevskiy] made some big saves early,” Tampa’s Steven Stamkos said. “Once we scored that goal, a great goal on the power play by Paul, I think we got some life. We had a pretty good response after that.
“It kind of went south a little bit in the third, but after the two games we had coming out of the break, we needed two points.”
Tampa improved to 28-20-5.
The Lightning took a 1-0 lead at 15:40 of the opening stanza on a power play strike by Nicholas Paul.
Anthony Cirelli pushed the advantage to 2-0 with 49 seconds gone in the middle frame.
“I just tried to make a move and go upstairs, and luckily it went in,” Cirelli said.
Columbus dropped to 16-25-10.
“That’s a good hockey team,” Columbus’ Zach Werenski said. “They know how to win, and they’ve been through it before, especially their core guys. It’s tough. We pushed hard.”
Stamkos ballooned the lead to 3-0 with 23 seconds elapsed in the third period.
Columbus’ Boone Jenner hit for a double in the third period to close the gap.
Jenner trimmed the deficit to 3-1 at 12:22 of the third.
“I liked the way we just stuck with it, and we knew we’d get rewarded if we didn’t change anything,” Jenner said. “They started to go in in the third, but obviously we came up short and they were able to get the last one.”
He collected his double at 15:50 off the power play to close the gap to 3-2.with a redirection on the power play.
Elvis Merzlikins made 33 saves in the loss.
“We started strong, we finished strong,” Columbus coach Pascal Vincent said. “We had a chance to come back in this game. If you were at the game tonight, that’s the style of hockey we’re going to play. That’s what we wanted to create and that’s what we’re creating.”
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