The Lightning scored early, but depth scoring put the Bruins over the top in a 7-3 win.
It was the Nikita Kucherov and Brayden Point show. They kept the team close up until the third period, but that wasn’t enough to give the Lightning the win they needed. The Bruins ended the game with seven goals.
Point took a feed from Kucherov and opened the scoring just 21 seconds in.
Boston responded quickly, scoring twice before the end of the first period with Trent Frederic and Charlie McAvoy grabbing two goals.
Nikita KucherovThen Kucherov got back at it, netting his 28th goal of the season and second point of the night. He’s back to leading the NHL with 67 points on the season.
The Bolts were forced to go down to 10 forwards when Tanner Jeannot left the game early after taking a massive hit behind the Boston net.
Point finished off a textbook pass from Kucherov, bringing the Lightning within one at 4-3. That was the closest Tampa Bay would get. Boston scored three more in the third period, bringing the score up to 7-3.
"The penalties hurt us early, kind of took a little wind out of our sails. We got ourselves back. I don’t know, it was a weird game, a lot of weird pucks going into the net," said Lightning Coach Jon Cooper.
"That second one goes off Pointer’s stick. You saw some of these goals. I thought we only gave up three shots in the third. One is an empty net breakaway. One is a snapped stick breakaway. The bottom line is it was a 4-3 game going into the third and they found a way to take advantage of their three shots and we couldn’t do the same."
The Lightning went 1-2 on this brief road trip.