In Edmonton, Steven Stamkos hit for four goals on Thursday night in the Tampa Bay Lightning’s s 7-4 win over the Oilers.
The loss snapped an eight-game winning streak for the Oilers.
“He looks at me after the fourth one and says, ‘First time ever,’ Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “I was like, ‘You’ve got 500 (529) of them, that was the first time you’ve had four in a game?’ And he said, ‘Yeah,’ so we had a good little chuckle on the bench.
“But yeah, you need your big guys to come out when the game’s on the line, and ‘Vasy’ (Andrei Vasilevskiy) and ‘Stammer’ did that tonight.”
Vasilevskiy made 53 saves in the win.
“Without him, that’s not even a game, so I think we give all the credit to ‘Vasy’ tonight,” Stamkos said. “Certainly not a recipe we want to have to rely on every night, but in a game like that when we don’t have our best and we’re playing a really good team that’s on a winning streak, to have him back there was obviously huge.
“He’s done it his whole life in the biggest moments too. You’re almost not surprised, [but] you should be because to play the way he did against the talent that’s on the other side tonight was, I think, even more impressive. He gave us a chance and we were opportunistic and buried our chances. We got a win. It wasn’t pretty, [but] we’ll certainly take it.”
Tampa improved to 14-12-5.
Neither team was able to hold a lead through the first two periods.
Stamkos opened the scoring in the opening stanza with a strike at 1:07 off the power play.
The Lightning’s Tyler Motte pushed the advantage to at 7:15 for a 2-0 lead after the first period.
Edmonton replied with three goals to erase the deficit, Darnell Nurse scored first to trim the hole to 2-1 at 1:23 of the middle frame, and McDavid hit off an Oilers power play at 7:20, to get ti tied at 2-2.
Zach Hyman then scored on a power play midway through the frame to gave Edmonton a 3-2 advantage headed to the third period .
The Oilers outshot the Lightning 23-7 in the second period.
“There’s always going to be games where you play well enough where you should have won, and there’s going to be games where you win that you don’t,” Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch said. “And tonight is going to be one of those where it just didn’t work out. I liked our guys’ effort and [if] we do that again, play like that, more often than not we’ll win.”
Edmonton dropped to 13-13-1.
“I thought for the most part that we played a solid game, but we obviously gave up a couple too many goals,” Edmonton’s Leon Draisaitl said. “I thought we were the better team and probably deserved to win, but it is obviously not the way that the League works.”
In the third, Tampa scored five times, Stamkos tied the game, 3-3, at 6:48.
Nikita Kucherov returned the lead, 4-3, to Tampa at 12:47
Stamkos picked up the hat trick at 14:02 to give the Lightning a 5-3 lead.
“He shot it from the blue line today and scored because their goalie got screened a little bit. Anywhere he shoots it from, he’s got a chance,” Lightning defenseman Mikhail Sergachev said of Stamkos, who had seven shots on goal. “I always think that he needs to shoot more and more.
“He’s got to shoot 10 times in a game and he’s going to score two. He’s got a very accurate shot, and he’s been in the League for 15 years being a leader on this team and he’s just a threat out there.”
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins stopped the Tampa run to cut the deficit to 5-3 when he scored 17:38
Tampa then hit an empty net with Anthony Cirelli picking up the marker at 18:27 for a 6-4 lead.
Stamkos added his fourth on the night with seven seconds left on the clock for the 7-4 final count.scored again at 19:53.
Stuart Skinner made 17 saves in the loss.
“The guys played a heck of a game,” Skinner said. “I don’t think anybody in this room should be upset except for me, to be honest.
“I ended up losing us the game. That’s something that I’ll take that on, and I’ll be better for it.”
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