Larkin's OT goal lifts Red Wings past Lightning for 4th straight victory 

DETROIT -- Dylan Larkin scored on a breakaway at 3:36 of overtime to give the Detroit Red Wings their fourth straight win, 2-1 against the Tampa Bay Lightning at Little Caesars Arena on Friday.

“We’ve seen pretty much everything in these last four games,” Detroit coach Todd McLellan said. “We’ve seen our team be completely in charge of a game, we’ve had a goalie steal a game for us in Toronto, and tonight we almost saw two games in one.”

Tampa Bay had a 3-on-2 break in overtime, but Jake Guentzel’s cross-slot pass skipped over Victor Hedman’s stick and bounced off the back boards. The puck then shot past Brandon Hagel, leaving Larkin, who had been behind the original break, alone to control it.

As a result, Larkin easily beat Hagel down the ice and slipped the puck between Andrei Vasilevskiy’s pads for the winner.

“That happens,” Hedman said. “I’ve got a simple backdoor tap-in, but it hits a stick and suddenly it is a breakaway the other way.”

Axel Sandin-Pellikka scored his first NHL goal, and John Gibson made 31 saves for the Red Wings (4-1-0).

It was Gibson's first game since he allowed five goals on 13 shots in Detroit’s season-opening 5-1 loss to the Montreal Canadiens on Oct. 9.

“I’ve coached against [Gibson] with three different teams, and that’s the kind of game he gives you,” McLellan said. “Yeah, he gave up five against Montreal, but that was our whole team struggling.”

J.J. Moser scored, and Vasilevskiy made 29 saves for the Lightning (1-2-2), who also lost 3-2 in overtime at the Washington Capitals on Tuesday.

“I think we definitely deserved a point out of this game,” Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said. “It’s too bad we didn’t get two, but that’s overtime. A sick chance at one end turns into an even better chance at the other end.

“And that’s a really, really good player going on that breakaway.”

The Lightning played without forward Nikita Kucherov, who was a late scratch due to an illness. Kucherov is three points away from becoming the 101st player in NHL history to reach 1,000 career points.

Cooper said he didn’t know if Kucherov would be available to play on Saturday at the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Sandin-Pellikka, who was playing his fifth NHL game, scored at 13:02 of the first period to give the Red Wings a 1-0 lead. With Detroit playing at 6-on-5 because of a delayed penalty, Sandin-Pellikka sent a low wrist shot that deflected off Hagel’s skate and bounced past Vasilevskiy.

“It is obviously a dream come true,” Sandin-Pellikka said. “I got a goal, I made some other good plays and we got the win.”

Detroit had the first 10 shots of the game before Conor Geekie forced Gibson to make a save at 13:37.

The Lightning had 11 shots in the first two periods but generated 19 in the third.

“I thought the first period felt like climbing a hill,” Cooper said. “Our power play was out of sync, so we weren’t getting any life from that, but I felt good about our game. We played the third period the right way.”

Moser tied the game 1-1 at 16:17 of the third, scoring from the point through traffic on Tampa Bay’s 18th shot of the period.

“We were trying to shoot at least in the second half of the game,” Moser said. “You keep shooting and then one finds its way through seven bodies and goes in.”

NOTES: Red Wings forward Lucas Raymond missed his second straight game with an upper-body injury. McLellan said Friday morning he could return as soon as Sunday against the Edmonton Oilers. … Larkin has 10 overtime goals, which ranks second in Red Wings history behind Sergei Fedorov (12).