Only one night after being shut down by the Edmonton Oilers in the City of Champions, the Tampa Bay Lightning managed to eke out a 2-1 overtime win over the Calgary Flames at the Scotiabank Saddledome.
If this writer wasn't so ridiculously verbose, tonight's piece would have been incredibly short. Why? Simply because Tuesday’s contest was very boring. Nothing happened. It takes a lot of effort to struggle through Alberta these days, but the Bolts made it look easy. Teams can’t legitimately expect to win games at the NHL level when they only fire 12 shots on goal through two periods of play. Somehow the Bolts made it work. It wasn’t until they fell behind that the team actually started firing pucks at Karri Ramo with any sort of regularity.
What’s perhaps most disappointing about the way the Bolts won in Calgary is the fact that the Flames didn’t play all that well either. Unlike in Edmonton, where the Oilers played well along the boards, took away the Bolts’s time and space, and did a lot of little things right, the home team in Calgary was very average. The Lightning got their zone time. The Lightning had their chances to take shots. The fact of the matter is that they didn’t.
And it could have and should have cost them. They made grabbing the win much more difficult than it had to be.
The two teams battled through a scoreless 40 minutes without much action. The only thing of note to take place during the opening stanza was a thundering hit by Mark Giordano on Nikita Kucherov. Kucherov was obviously shaken up, as he sat out the entire second period before returning for the third. In an effort to stand up for his teammate, J.T. Brown fought Giordano and got absolutely pummeled.
Offense was at a premium through the first two stanzas, but Dennis Wideman finally broke the scoreless tie at the 1:21 mark of the third. With his team on a power play, Johnny Gaudreau fed the puck to Wideman who made no mistake potting it past Evgeni Nabokov. Just like in Edmonton one night prior, it was hard to believe that the listless Lightning would be able to mount any sort of a comeback.
They did.
With just more than two minutes left on the clock, Valtteri Filppula scored his first goal of the season to knot things up at one. Jason Garrison fired a bomb from the point that squeaked through Ramo, and Filppula was there to tap it home. With the second assist on the goal, Jonathan Drouin was credited with his first NHL point. It couldn’t have come at a better time.
The final buzzer rang, the dry scrape happened, and overtime commenced. Exactly three minutes into the cocktail hour, Ondrej Palat popped his second of the year past Ramo to secure his team’s 2-1 win. Another point shot, this one off the stick of Anton Stralman, fooled the Calgary goaltender enough to create a secondary opportunity. Palat, who was at fault on Edmonton’s winning goal on Monday, redeemed himself in style.
Moving away from the boxscore-like recap, here are some observations:
1) Evgeni Nabokov was fantastic once again for the Bolts. He made the saves he needed to make and looked every bit like a goaltender who can give the team a chance to win when he’s called upon. Full credit to him for earning his first win as a member of the Lightning. Here’s hoping there are a few more before this season ends!
2) For the second straight game, Steven Stamkos was held off the scoreboard. Unlike in Edmonton, however, he was visible. Especially in the early stages of Tuesday’s game, the Drouin/Filppula/Stamkos line generated some fairly significant zone time. You’d like to see that trio put the puck on net with more regularity, but it’s clear that the chemistry is there.
3) Speaking of Drouin… It was great to see him notch his first NHL point. While it wasn’t a slick primary assist or a highlight reel goal, it counts just the same. That Drouin has supreme hockey sense and ability has been very apparent through his first two games at the NHL level. This isn’t a player who looks out of place at all.
4) While he didn’t score on Tuesday, Brett Connolly played another strong game. On a line with Tyler Johnson and Ondrej Palat, the British Columbia native created a few opportunities and was more noticeable than he had been on the fourth line. When you put offensive players like Connolly in offensive situations, good things usually follow. Maybe I’m misreading things, but it certainly looks like his confidence is growing right now.
--
Tuesday’s win is the pure definition of a stolen victory. The Lightning probably deserved to lose the game; the Flames arguably deserved a better fate. As the Bolts move on to their next stop on this Western swing (i.e. Winnipeg), they need to forget about what could have been a devastating two nights in Alberta. Now 2-1-0 on the road trip and 4-2-1 on the year, Tampa sits second in the Atlantic Division behind the Montreal Canadiens.
As always, thanks for reading.
Michael Stuart has been the Tampa Bay Lightning writer for HockeyBuzz since 2012. Visit his archive to read more or follow him on Twitter. 
Ottawa Senators Blogger • 
Join the Discussion:
»