Tampa drop slumping Kraken, 6-2

In Tampa, Andrei Vasilevskiy made 36 saves, and the Lightning downed the Seattle Kraken, 6-2, on Tuesday night.

Tampa took a 2-0 lead early in the first period on goals from Ian Cole and Erik Cernak.

The Lightning improved to 18-9-1.

“It was a weird game,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “[Seattle] is a heck of a team. I think they still carry that expansion mantra with them a little bit, but they certainly don’t play like that. It was obviously a closer game than the score indicated.”

Seattle got on the board in the first period to cut the deficit to 2-1 on a a strike from Jared McCann .

“We were a little bit slow on everything and they’re going to take advantage of that in a big way,” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said. “I felt like it should have been a 1-1 hockey game after the first period.”

Tampa broke the game open in the middle frame with three unanswered goals.

Corey Perry started the outburst in the second with a power play goal for a 3-1 advantage.

Just 75 seconds later Brayden Point put the Bolts up 4-1.

“That was unbelievable,” Tampa Bay defenseman Victor Hedman said of Point’s goal. “I don’t think people understand how hard of a shot that was with the backhand either. That’s going to be on the highlight reel for a very long time. Beautiful goal, beautiful celebration.”

Ross Colton made 5-1 in the 16th minute of the frame.

“We carried the play at the end of the first period and had a great second period,” Hakstol said. “When that third goal went in, that took a lot out of us. We were pretty good for 30 minutes of that hockey game. We did a lot of good things, and we deserved a little bit better in terms of where the scoreboard was.”

Seattle dropped to 16-9-3.

Steven Stamkos hit for a goal in the third to make it 6-1.

“We did a really good job in the [offensive] zone,” Point said. “There were some extended shifts in our [defensive] zone that we need to clean up, but for the most part I thought offensively we were good.”

Seattle finally got back on the board with a marker from Ryan Donato.