The Tampa Bay Lightning suffered their third straight loss this afternoon as they fell to the Flyers 4-2 in Philadelphia.
The first period could not have begun any better for the Lightning. It has been a rare occasion that the team comes away with the first goal of the game but they were able to do so today. Tampa Bay was able to take advantage of a two-on-one breakaway and Nikita Kucherov (16) scored on a wide-open net giving the Bolts a 1-0 lead 5:34 into the game.
The Lightning scored the only goal of the period but were pretty much dominated in all other aspects of the game in the first twenty minutes. They spent a lot of time in their own zone and allowed the Flyers to register 14 shots on net. Luckily, Andrei Vasilevskiy had an answer for all of them.
Both teams played a very disciplined style of hockey in the first period as only one penalty was committed. Unfortunately, that penalty went against the Bolts as Vladislav Namestnikov took a hooking penalty against Andrew MacDonald.
Philadelphia's control of the game in the first period not only continued in period two, it translated into three straight goals. Travis Konecny (6), Sean Couturier (7), and Michael Raffl (8) lit the lamp to turn a 1-0 Lightning lead into a 3-1 Flyers lead.
With a little more than three minutes to go in the period, Alex Killorn chipped away at the lead with his 13th goal of the season. Unfortunately, former Bolt, Radko Gudas, brought the lead back up to two goals with his second goal of the season.
As has been the case recently, the Lightning failed to maintain any sort of momentum in the second period of play. Instead of using Killorn's goal as a building block to get back in the game, Tampa gave up another to Philadelphia giving them all the positive energy heading into the locker room for intermission number two with a 4-2 lead.
For the most part, the third period was quite uneventful. Unfortunately for the Bolts, this resulted in an inability to get back into the game as they suffered another loss in regulation.
The Lightning have struggled to produce anything positive over the past three games, getting beaten rather decisively in all of them. It is becoming more and more apparent that some changes are going to need to be made in Tampa Bay if this team wants to turn things around. It is no longer a case of the Lightning simply suffering because of injuries. They still have talented members of this roster and need to start playing better now.
Tampa Bay does not have to wait long to get back onto the ice as they will travel to Pittsburgh for a game against the Penguins tomorrow at 5 p.m. ET.