Lightning beat down the Panthers 6-1
- Dan Carlin
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
The Tampa Bay Lightning comfortably took care of business tonight versus the Florida Panthers in Tampa Bay. The Lightning now improve to 37-14-4 on the season with 78 points keeping them in 1st place of the Atlantic Division. The Florida Panthers now drop to 29-25-3 on the season putting them in last place of the Atlantic Division.
The Lightning would open the scoring with Brandon Hagel deflecting his 27th goal of the season past Tarasov with 17:52 remaining in the 1st period of the game. Victor Hedman picked up the only assist on the Hagel deflection on a beautiful shot from Hedman. The Lightning weren’t done there with their depth adding a goal from a very unlikely source in Zemgus Girgensons giving the Bolts a 2-0 lead with 5:52 remaining in the period. Girgensons now has 7 goals on the season assisted by Pontus Holmberg and Yanni Gourde on the goal. The Lightning would take a 2-0 lead into the 2nd period of this game.
The Lightning would continue where they left off in the 2nd period of this game with Jake Guentzel giving the Lightning a 3-0 lead with 18:46 remaining in the period. Guentzel now has 26 goals on the season which was assisted by Nikita Kucherov and Darren Raddysh. Both Kucherov and Raddysh extend their respective point streaks on the assists. Kucherov now extends his to 10 games, and Raddysh extends his to 6 games into the Olympic break. However the Lightning weren’t done scoring to end the 2nd period of this hockey game. Erik Cernak who’s not known for his goal scoring added his 1st of the season on a beautiful wraparound goal off his own rebound. Ryan Mcdonagh and Dominic James were credited with the assists on the goal by Cernak.
The Lightning carried a 4-0 lead into the final period of regulation in this game and would keep scoring against the Panthers. However before the Lightning goal , there would be scumbag behavior from the Florida Panthers which comes with no surprise considering that’s they do every game. Matthew Tkachuk would take a run at Nikita Kucherov and would pay the price of doing that by getting his face punched in by Brandon Hagel. Brandon Hagel handled himself very well and beat the hell out of Tkachuk.
The Lightning would another goal making it 5-0 lead against the Panthers. Pontus Holmberg would add his 9th goal of the season assisted by Gage Goncalves and Oliver Bjorkstrand. Oliver Bjorkstrand is really starting to hum in his last couple of games for the Lightning with points in his last 3 games. The Panthers would score a garbage time goal by Mackie Samoskevich adding his 6th goal of the season cutting the big lead to 5-1 with 10:10 remaining in the game. Oliver Bjorkstrand would net his 10th goal of the season making it 6-1 Lightning sealing the win for the Lightning.
The 3 stars of tonight’s game go out to the following players:
Andrei Vasilevskiy 33/34 saves
Oliver Bjorkstrand 1 goal 1 assist
Pontus Holmberg 1 goal 1 assist
The Lightning will now head into the Olympic Games in 1st place of the Atlantic Division. I’ll be giving potential trade candidates for the Lightning leading up to the March 6th trade deadline during the break.
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