In Tampa, the Lighting’s Anthony Cirelli hit for a pair of goals on Sunday in a 5-4 win over the visiting Minnesota Wild.
Steve Stamkos won the game with the deciding strike in the skills portion of the evening’s affair.
“I think as a collective group everyone’s got to kind of step up and just have that next-man-up mentality,” Cirelli said. “And I think tonight the guys did a good job of battling for 60 minutes.”
His was the only goal in the skills competition.
To keep it as dramatic as possible, the Wild rallied late, as they are want to do, with late goals in regulation to get the game to overtime.
Brian Elliott made 28 saves in the Bolts win.
Tampa improved to 10-4-3.
Kevin Fiala and Joel Eriksson-Ek scored in the waning minutes of the third period to get the Wild even and send the game to the extra session and skills.
“We went in and talked to them after the game, just said we hate doing what we keep doing but we love what we keep doing,” Wild head coach Dean Evason said. “We don’t want to do it but we love the resilience. We don’t quit. What we like is we play hard, but we play hard for each other.
“Clearly we want to play with a lead and we want to play right. But we have to learn how to do that, and we will. But in the meantime, we were pretty excited about how hard we pushed to come back for each other.”
Cirelli and Pat Maroon gave the Lightning a 2-0 lead in the opening frame.
“To give up the two 6-on-5 goals … poor ‘Pally,’ I think everybody in the building when that hit the post went ‘Oh, no!’,” Lightning head coach Jon Cooper said. “Breaks went the other team’s way in the last couple of minutes. Good for them, they earned them, but we had a chance to put that away. In saying that, the guys pulled it out.”
Minnesota’s Marcus Foligno and Brandon Duhaime replied with strikes to get the game even, 2-2, in the second period.
“We’ve got to understand that we’ve got to get to our game right away,” Foligno said. “I liked the effort again tonight. We pushed and kept clawing back. And like I said, could’ve easily had a lead in the second period.”
Cirelli and Alex Barre-Boulet restored the two-goal lead midway through the third period, 4-2.
“Just trying to get to the net,” Cirelli said. “Trying to stick to my game. [Hedman] makes a great play with that great shot on the first one and [Cal] Foote and [Alex Killorn] made a great play on the second one.”
Minnesota dropped to 11-6-1.
Kaapo Kahkonen made 20 saves in the Wild loss.
The Lightning were without Brayden Point, who is out indefinitely with an injury.
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