In Tampa, the Lightning hosted the Dallas Stars on Monday night in a grudge match after being throttled in Dallas, 8-1 over the weekend.
This time around,Andrei Vasilevskiy made 25 saves in a 4-0 shutout of the Stars.
“This was the first game I really felt like myself,” Vasilevskiy said. “Obviously I didn’t have much to cheer about the last few games; it’s been pretty hard for the first few games for me. Tonight, the whole team played great and we got a great result.”
Anthony Cirelli hit for a double in the win.
The Lightning moved to 11-10-5.
“It’s a humbling game, it’s a funny game; one night everything goes in, and the next night nothing goes in,” Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said. “Just because your name is Andrei Vasilevskiy, [it] doesn’t mean you can take 207 days off and just step in and be Vezina-caliber again. He’s got to get his feet wet too. Now you’ll hopefully see the most consistent game that he wants to play.”
Tampa struck twice in the first period to take a 2-0 lead all the way into the third frame.
Nikita Kucherov opened the scoring at 7:47 of the first to give the Lightning a 1-0 lead.
Cirelli picked up his first of the night at 18:21 for the 2-0 advantage.
“I thought we stuck to the game plan there, for the most part,” Cirelli said. “We worked really hard. We tried to limit chances and get in lanes. … So many shots blocked tonight (24). It was nice to have a bounce-back game. There was a lot to like tonight.
Dallas dropped to 14-6-3.
“I think you beat a team 8-1, especially a championship team, you know they are going to respond,” Dallas coach Peter DeBoer said. “Their best players, to a man, were at a different level tonight. We knew that was going to happen.”
Tampa used a breakaway goal from Luke Glendening at 3:05 of the third to stretch the lead to 3-0.
“We knew [Vasilevskiy] was going to be great,” the Stars’ Matt Duchene said. “We shelled them last game. Obviously, [Vasilevskiy] wasn’t himself last game. He was outstanding for them. We did some good things. It’s not like we got totally outplayed or anything like that. We’ll have a day off tomorrow and get back at it against Florida (on Wednesday).”
Cirelli’s double came at 12:12 of the frame for the 4-0 final.
Jake Oettinger made 19 saves in the loss.
“We created enough to be in that game,” DeBoer said. “I even felt in the third at 2-0 we were right there until that third goal went in.”
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