In Tampa Thursday, the visiting Vancouver Canucks stung the Lightning in a 5-1 win.
The Canucks rode the two-goal efforts from Jack Skille and Jayson Megna to the relatively easy victory.
“We needed to respond better when we got down a goal and you earn your breaks,” Lightning defenseman Victor Hedman said. “Right now we’re trying hard, we’re battling hard but we’re not getting the right bounces.”
Ryan Miller made 38 saves before leaving the game late in the third period with a lower body injury.
WATCH: All Canucks at Lightning highlights
“He felt sore, he kind of twisted it,” Canucks head Willie Desjardins said. “He didn’t feel quite right so we took him out as a precaution. He was good though. He deserved to be first star.”
Miller was replaced by Jacob Markstrom who stopped two shots in relief.
Jonathan Drouin was the lone goal scorer for the Bolts.
“Well, first of all, I don’t even remember losing games by four goals, ever. Maybe one a year,” Lightning head coach Jon Cooper said of the dismal effort. “We’re losing them at once a week now. It comes down to defending.
“You look back at the end of the game and say, ‘Oh, well, they had 41 shots and this was going on and this goalie made a big save, whatever.’ We still gave up five. That doesn’t matter. Even if we do get a couple of these to go in, so we lose 5-3. You still lose. The harder guys are trying to score, it’s just the more it’s hurting.”
Ben Bishop started the game and stopped 16 band was pulled in the third period in favor of Andrei Vasilevskiy to start the third period.
Tampa fell to 14-12-2 with the loss.
“We did a lot of good things, we tracked back hard. That’s a transition team that makes a lot of skilled plays and we made it tough on them. They like that east-west [play] and the key to breaking that up is backchecking,” the Canucks’ Erik Gudbranson said of his team’s effort in the win.
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