Tampa Bay snapped their two-game losing streak on Thursday night, moving ahead of the Boston Bruins in the wild-card standings.
The Tampa Bay Lightning hosted the LA Kings on Thursday night in front of an eager home crowd at Amalie Arena. The Lightning are in the midst of a competitive points race in the Atlantic Division where they currently sit in the first wild card spot. With five games left until the 4 Nations break, the team is looking to grab every point they can get.
The Kings started goaltender David Rittich after Darcy Kuemper played against the Florida Panthers the night before. For the Lightning, a win against the Kings would mean that they were finally working their way out of a frustrating scoring freeze.
The month of January included 16 games in three different time zones with four sets of back-to-backs, two of them happening in a quick six-day span. Heading into Thursday night’s game, the Lightning had just one goal over their last two games and scored two or fewer in three of their last four.
Brandon Hagel opened the scoring in the first period on a breakaway goal off a feed by Gage Goncalves. Andrei Vasilevskiy earned a secondary assist on the goal.
“I think all the boys were pretty excited. I think I may have blacked out on that one,” Hagel said of his photo-worthy celebration. “That was my first triangle attack of my career, so it worked out well.”
With 12:16 left in the second period, after the penalty was killed, Quinton Byfield scored for the Kings. The Lightning challenged the play, and after review, it was deemed offside. The score would remain 1-0 throughout the entirety of the second period.
“I think clearly a big turning point in the game was when the challenge went our way,” said Lightning coach Jon Cooper. “Who knows what happens if the game is tied? But the big thing for our team was we felt maybe could have been up more than just one after two. So it was, how were we going to play in the third? We didn’t think we needed to change anything.”
While the Kings did make a push to tie things up in the third period, the Lightning still generated eight more scoring chances at even strength. Hagel scored a second goal almost 16 minutes in, after intercepting a rebound from Nikita Kucherov’s breakaway chance.
“The best part of hockey is scoring goals," said Hagel. "I just love scoring goals. You don’t get to do it very often. You don’t get to do it your whole life. So for me, scoring is the best thing in the world.”
With about a minute remaining, Anthony Cirelli capitalized on the Kings’ empty net with a shorthanded goal, giving Vasilevskiy his third shutout win of the season.
"No time to think too much about if I'm sick or not, so I just went out and played,” Vasilevskiy said of whether or not he needed any extra preparation after being out sick. “The guys played well defensively. So that's the result.”
The Lightning will face the New York Islanders on Saturday night in Tampa.