Before leaving on a five game western trip, the Eastern Conference leading Tampa Bay Lightning (34-16-6) hosted the St. Louis Blues (35-15-4) at Amalie Arena tonight. The Bolts were simply manhandled by the Blues who scored twice in the first five minutes and never looked back.
The Bolts started slow and were embarrassed again as the Blues scored twice and outshot Tampa Bay 11-3 in the first nine minutes of the first period. The Lightning looked out of sorts the whole period and got out of it trailing by just two goals, thanks to goalie Ben Bishop stellar play.
Just 1:50 into the game, the Blues Alex Steen made a perfect stretch pass to T.J. Oshie who split the Lightning defense and beat Ben Bishop glove side for his 15th of the year.
With Mark Barberio in the penalty box for playing with a broken stick, Steen found Dmitrij Jaskin behind the Bolts defense and beat Bishop five hole. It was Jaskin’s eighth of the season.
Shots for the period were 17-6 in favor of St. Louis.
The Bolts were much more competitive to start the second period. At 8:03 Tyler Johnson scored his 20th of the year, a power play goal, from Nikita Kucherov and Anton Stralman to cut the Blues lead in half. It was the Lightning’s second power play goal in their last 20 man advantages. Johnson’s goal gave Tampa Bay three 20 goal scorers on the season.
From this point on, the second period belonged to the Blues as they scored three unanswered goals in 3:08 to take a commanding 5-2 lead.
At 12:58, Steven Stamkos gave away the puck in his own zone and Steen tipped it by Bishop for his 19th from David Backes.
T. J. Oshie made a highlight reel, behind the back, between the legs pass to Backes who scored at 14:11 to put the Blues up 4-1. Just over a minute later, a wide open Paul Stastny scored on a Patrik Berglund rebound for his 11th of the season.
Tampa Bay scored it’s second of the night at 17:28 when Brett Connolly took a pass in the slot from Valtteri Filppula and blasted it past Brian Elliott to make it 5-2 St. Louis.
Shots in the second period were 17-14 in favor of the Blues.
After giving up five goals on 34 shots, Ben Bishop was relieved by Andrei Vasilevskiy to start the third period. Later. coach Cooper would call it a “mercy hook”.
The final period started with promise as Steven Stamkos tipped in an Alex Killorn shot with 13:29 remaining in the game. It was Stamkos’ 29th of the season. Anton Stralman also registered an assist on the play.
But the Blues ended it with a Vladimir Tarasenko empty net goal with 1:05 remaining to put the Bolts out of their misery.
Shots ended in favor of the Blues 44-29. It was the forth time this season that Tampa Bay gave up 40+ shots in a game.
St. Louis improved to 22-1-2 when leading after two periods, while Tampa Bay fell to 1-16-2 when trailing after two periods.
After the game captain Steven Stamkos took full responsibility for the loss, “I can’t make that turnover at that time of the game, that kind of killed us. We had the momentum, we were getting some chances, it’s 2-1 and I screwed up. I can’t blame anybody else but myself for that one. It was tough. For me personally, I was feeling really good, had an extra step and then that happens. It’s unacceptable for that to happen at that point in the game and I take full responsibility for that.’’
Bolts coach Jon Cooper said, “Our start was horrific. They (St. Louis) came ready to play. They clearly knew what happened to them the last time we played them, even though they found a way to win when we outplayed them, and they came in here (ticked) off. I don’t know if we thought it was going to be another night like it was when we were there, but they have been a top team in this league for a while and they proved it.’’
Cedric Paquette (upper body injury, day-to-day), J.T. Brown (healthy), Nikita Nesterov (healthy), Radko Gudas (knee surgery) and Matt Carle (abdominal surgery) were the scratches.
The Lightning will visit the San Jose Sharks Sunday night.
(Feature Photograph/Getty Images)
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