Despite dominating the game for most of the night and outshooting the St. Louis Blues 31-18, the Tampa Bay Lightning fell in overtime 2-1. In a nutshell, St. Louis goalie Brian Elliott stood on his head and stole this game for the Blues.
Vladimir Tarasenko potted the tying goal late in the third period, sniping a shot over Ben Bishop‘s glove off a Paul Stastny faceoff win to send the game to overtime. At 1:16 in the overtime, Jaden Schwartz deked Bishop to his forehand and scored from his knees to win it for the Blues.
The Bolts came out on fire, outshooting the Blues 11-2 and forcing many turnovers in the opening period. With a little over five minutes gone, red hot Cedric Paquette found the rebound of an Alex Killorn shot and put it past Elliott to give the Bolts a 1-0 lead. It was Paquette’s fourth goal in four consecutive games. He is the first Lightning rookie to do that. It was his sixth goal in four games and he is riding a five game point streak.
From the middle of the second period on, the game became a goalie clinic between Elliott and Bishop.
Elliot stopped 30 shots and Bishop stopped 16 as the Bolts fell to 0-3-1 in their last four games away from Amalie Arena.
“It’s frustrating, because we played a really good game, played a full 60 minutes,” Bishop said. “Unfortunate bounce, as a shot goes off our guy and goes in and it goes to overtime.”
“To come into a rink like this, we outchance them, we outshoot them, and we could have scored a couple with the Grade-A chances. They were not going in for us, but you try not to get frustrated, because the effort was there, the game plan was there and executed,” said Steven Stamkos. “He’s (Elliott) a good goaltender in this league,” said Stamkos, “and he played well and stole one for them tonight.”
The Bolts played well and earned a point on the road. If this is indicative of their play during the tough month ahead, they will be in good shape.
With the point and Montreal losing to Buffalo, the Lightning increased its lead in the Atlantic Division.
Nikita Nesterov (healthy), J.T. Brown (healthy), Radko Gudas (knee surgery) and Matt Carle (abdominal surgery) were the scratches.
The Lightning will visit the Dallas Stars Thursday night.
(Feature Photograph/Getty Images)
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