The Lightning were without their star winger Nikita Kucherov for the second consecutive game due to illness, but that wasn’t the reason for their struggles on Saturday night against the Blue Jackets.
Kent Johnson opened the scoring for Columbus with a goal 4:58 into the game.
The Lightning responded quickly with goals from Ryan McDonagh and Anthony Cirelli, grabbing a 2-1 lead heading into the first intermission.
“I think we had spurts there where we were really playing on all cylinders, putting the pressure on them,” said McDonagh. “We get the lead there and then we take our foot off the gas and allow them to pretty much hem us in an entire period there, and it’s tough to rebuild there, respond like that.”
“We’ve got urgency when we’re down, we need to have that urgency when we’re up in games too and just continue to get closer to playing a 60-minute game.”
The team’s offensive struggles continued from Friday, managing just nine shots after two periods.
Columbus tied the game midway through the second period, but the goal was overturned after a coach’s challenge revealed the play was offside. The Bolts continued to carry a 2-1 lead.
The Blue Jackets finally pulled even when Damon Severson buried a one-timer from the high slot at 13:59. This would count as the only goal between the two teams in second period.
The Lightning pressed in the third, but Kirill Marchenko scored the go-ahead goal just 1:15 in, converting a pass from Dmitri Voronkov in front of the net.
The Lightning couldn’t capitalize during more than two minutes of 6-on-5 play. In the sequence, forward Jake Guentzel broke his stick in frustration against the goal post after appearing to be taken down in front of the net.
“It’s tough. We’re on a four-game road trip with multiple back to backs,” said Lightning coach Jon Cooper. “We’ve gotten points in all the games and we thought a good third, we get a point out of this. It was unfortunate.”
“Just bad kind of details on our track and it’s in the net. The guys pushed for one, but we couldn’t find the back of the net like we did last night. Kind of a tough start to the season for us, especially on the road to have these multiple back-to-backs, now we’ve just got to regroup when we go home.”
Tampa Bay pushed back, but it wasn’t enough as the Columbus Blue Jackets secured a 3-2 win in regulation.