In Newark, the New Jersey Devils held a 3-1 lead in their match with the Tampa Bay Lightning on Tuesday night.
New Jersey promptly surrendered five unanswered goals and lost, 6-3.
Victor Hedman scored what proved to be the game-winner at 7:17 of the final frame.
He was one six different Tampa skaters to hit for goals.
“It wasn’t a typical game from [Hedman] because he had four giveaways, but he ends up with two points, is a plus-4 and gets the game-winner,” Tampa Bay head coach Jon Cooper said. “That’s what great players can do. When they’re maybe not having the game they’d like, they can elevate and do what’s needed to help the team win, and that’s what Vic did.”
Andrei Vasilevskiy made 22 saves in the Tampa win.
Dawson Mercer and Jack Hughes had goals for New Jersey.
“They’ve won back-to-back Stanley Cup championships and were going to be a lot better than they were to start the game,” New Jersey’s Damon Severson said. “I don’t know what happened there in the last 20 minutes. We were fully in control, 3-1, and just let it go.”
The Lightning improved to 32-11-6.
“If you want to have a chance to win in this league, you’ve got to keep the opponent to two (goals) or under, so I’d say you’re playing with fire (allowing three goals),” Cooper said. “It’s a hard league to score in, and we kind of caught fire at end of the second and to start of the third. The boys found a way, and [Vasilevskiy] shut the door after allowing that third one, which was big.”
Yegor Sharangovich also scored for New Jersey.
“When you see your coach change in the lines, it’s maybe a little bit of a wake-up call and sometimes it’s just nice to get some different looks,” Tampa’s Alex Killorn (goal) said. “As we saw tonight, we scored pretty quickly once those lines got changed, so it was nice.”
New Jersey dropped to 17-28-5.
Steven Stamkos, Nikita Kucherov, Pat Maroon, and Pierre-Edouard Bellemare also scored for the Lightning.
“We had to get a kick in the butt and finally we woke up,” Bellemare said, “but I would put that one in the unacceptable category.”
Jon Gillies got the start for New Jersey and made 24 saves, yielding all six goals. He New Jersey dropped to was given the hook with 10 minutes left in the third.
Nico Daws made two saves in a mop up role.
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