Despite trailing 2-0 before Wednesday’s game hit its fourth minute, the Tampa Bay Lightning fought back to earn a standings point in a 4-3 overtime loss to Toronto.
The Lightning pushed to score a pair of third period goals against the Maple Leafs and force overtime, eventually falling in the extra period at AMALIE Arena.
"For 57 minutes, we leaned on them. They're the first place team, one of the best teams in the league,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “As that game kept going, we did a lot of good things. When you dig yourself 2-0 in the hole, we were able to come back and salvage a point, but it's tough to do that against good teams. So give the guys credit, they battled. It was just a really tough start for us.”
Toronto took advantage of a pair of early turnovers to snag the 2-0 lead.
Mitch Marner scored one minute, 13 seconds into the game when Auston Matthews forced a giveaway atop the Lightning defensive zone. He passed to Marner in the high slot, and the latter cut back to score on a shot into the top left corner.
Another turnover led to a Maple Leafs 2-on-1, which ended with Matthew Knies’ rebound goal 3:33 into the game.
Tampa Bay earned numerous looks to score on a power play shortly after the 2-0 marker but hit the goalposts.
Defenseman Nick Perbix gave the home team some jump with 1:02 left in the first period, ripping his career-high sixth goal of the season past Toronto goalie Anthony Stolarz on a shot from the right point to halve the Lightning deficit.
“It's a whole lot of ‘57 minutes left,’” Tampa Bay captain Victor Hedman said of the Lightning conversation on the early goals against. ”It's not a three-minute game, which was good for us. They capitalized on their opportunities, came out hard, and then we got our power play and kind of took momentum away a little bit from them and created some momentum ourselves. We got that one from Perby right before the break, and now it’s a one-goal game. I think we battled hard from that.”
Neither team found the back of the net in the second period, and the Lightning tied the game 50 seconds into the third period when Oliver Bjorkstrand capped a tic-tac-toe passing play late in a power play.
Bjorkstrand accepted a pass from Nikita Kucherov at the right hashmark, blasting his one-timer through Stolarz.
Toronto took advantage of a four-minute power play and took their lead back with Knies’ second goal of the game 1:13 after Bjorkstrand tied the game. Knies found a loose puck near the net, scoring at the left post.
Tampa Bay’s response was to score a power-play goal of their own to knot the game again, this one coming from the top of the setup on Hedman’s whistled shot from the top of the setup.
Hedman’s goal tied the game 3-3 with 9:55 remaining in regulation and came via a top unit that was missing usual pieces Jake Guentzel (family matter) and Brayden Point (penalty).
“We pushed back, just the start was not good enough,” Bjorkstrand said postgame of reaching overtime. “We fixed that, a lot of the game was good. But yeah, gotta have a better start.”
Knies ended his hat-trick with the game-winning goal, closing the night 2:56 into the overtime period on a backdoor goal after a feed from Auston Matthews.
Hedman and Bjorkstrand each finished with a goal and an assist, while Brandon Hagel had a pair of assists. Goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy ended with 27 saves against the Maple Leafs, who saw each of Knies, Marner and Matthews finish with three points apiece. The Lightning were outshot 31-28, but shooting attempts heavily favored the hosts.
Toronto helped Stolarz by blocking 33 Tampa Bay shot attempts.
Tampa Bay is now 45-26-7 this season, second in the Atlantic Division behind only Toronto (48-26-4, 100 points). The Lightning will continue the homestand on Friday with a visit from the Detroit Red Wings at 7 p.m. and have four games remaining in the regular season.
Toronto holds a three-point advantage for a division title after Wednesday, but the Lightning postgame said their focus remains on stacking standings points and finishing as high as they can in the playoff picture.
“We want to get home-ice (advantage) and best case scenario you want to finish first. But for us, we did what we set out to do at the beginning of the year is to make the playoffs, and we've accomplished that,” Hedman said.
“And now we have our destiny in our own hands to get home ice. We're playing Buffalo and Detroit, two young teams that are really becoming better teams, and then we’ve got Florida. So for us, we’ve just got to keep elevating our game and make sure that we're ready to go when the fun starts next weekend.”
Benjamin’s Three Stars:
- Matthew Knies, TOR (3 goals)
- Auston Matthews, TOR (3 assists)
- Victor Hedman, TBL (Goal, assist)
