In Tampa, Mika Zibanejad took a cross ice pass from Artemi Panarin and hit for the game-winning goal in a 2-1 win for the New York Rangers over the Lightning on Saturday.
Panarin had attempted a shot on the play but the blocked puck came back to him before feeding Zibanejad in his wheel for the power play winner.
“That’s three in a row that we’ve played the way we want to play,” Rangers coach Gerard Gallant said. “I think we’re finding our game and everyone’s enjoying it. That was another battle tonight, a low-scoring playoff-type of game. The power play was a little off tonight until it gets the winning goal at the end.”
Igor Shesterkin made 28 saves to get the Rangers win.
“We stole one, I don’t think we played good enough for long enough today,” Zibanejad said. “And Igor … if it’s not for him I don’t want to imagine what would happen. But at the end of the day we got the two points and we’re moving on. A good lesson, it’s a lot easier to learn those lessons when you win.”
New York swept the three-game season series from the Lightning.
Brayden Point was the lone striker for the Lightning, his goal gave Tampa a 1-0 lead in the opening period.
“It’s tough, really late in the game like that and the PK played some well,” Point said. “It stinks because I thought we played a pretty decent game for the most part, especially with our start. But it’s very taxing on our penalty killers to be playing that much and killing that much, our goaltender as well. Tonight it bit us.”
The Lightning dropped to 39-16-6.
“We play tonight’s game, and we take six minors, we put a skilled team like that on the power play for 11 minutes while our guys sit on the bench,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper. “Right now you wonder what’s going on with our team and why we literally shoot ourselves in the foot and that’s a big reason. You can’t do it, you can’t do it in this League.”
Jacob Trouba scored his 10th of the season in the middle frame to tie the game, 1-1.
The Rangers improved to 39-18-5.
“Nice to kill those [penalties] off and get a goal, it definitely got us rolling a little bit,” Trouba said. “It was a tight game, so it was good to get a little bit of momentum.”
Andrei Vasilevskiy made 25 saves in the Tampa loss.
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