In Tampa, the Lighting defeated the Vancouver Canucks, 4-2, on Thursday.
For Vancouver, it was the first time they had lost two straight under new head coach, Bruce Boudreau.
“I liked the compete, I thought it was much better than the other night for sure,” Boudreau said. “Anytime you can hold that team to 21 shots … I don’t know what the chances were, but I know they didn’t have a lot of them.
“At the same time, we had opportunities, we had four power plays and we don’t get anything. That’s my fault for putting the same guys back out there all the time.”
Andrei Vasilevskiy made 24 saves in the Tampa win
Tyler Motte and Matthew Highmore hit for a goal each and two points in the Canucks loss.
Vancouver dropped to 16-17-3.
The Lightning took a 1-0 lead first period off a power-play goal from Steven Stamkos.
“At the end of the day I think they were the better team tonight,” Tampa Bay’s Pierre-Edouard Bellemare said. “We found a way to win the game, but you have to give credit where it’s due.”
Highmore tied the game at 1-1.
“Obviously that’s a skilled play,” Highmore said. “Didn’t really see it coming, but from our end that was a really nice goal that got us back in the game.”
Anthony Cirelli restored the Bolts lead with 21 seconds left in the opening frame for a 2-1 advantage.
“It’s not just the goals, obviously we all know [Stamkos] can shoot the puck and he can score big scores,” Bellemare said. “But he’s been huge for us on the [penalty kill]. He’s been winning those face-offs that we lefties have a hard time winning on the right side.”
Boris Katchouk pushed the lead to 3-1 with a strike in the third period before Motte scored to make the count 3-2.
“I know Ross, I mean we’ve played with each other for a long time,” Katchouk said. “I knew he was coming back and all I had to do was try to put it in the net.”
The Lightning improved to 25-9-5.
“I wasn’t completely happy with a lot of the things we did,” Lightning head coach Jon Cooper said. “Am I happy with the result? There’s no question, and I will never frown at that. But I think we made the game harder on ourselves. We recovered well in a lot of situations but we played with fire a little bit.”
Brayden Point added an empty-net goal with 76 seconds left in the game for the 4-2 final.
Thatcher Demko made 17 saves in the Canucks loss.
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