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Halloween was a nightmare for the Tampa Bay Lightning. Playing host to the Boston Bruins, the Bolts -- without Jonathan Drouin and Cedric Paquette -- couldn’t solve B’s backup netminder Jonas Gustavsson en route to 3-1 loss at Amalie Arena, extending their losing streak to four games.
But a trip to Raleigh, N.C. on Sunday proved to be the perfect post-Halloween brew for the Bolts.
The Lightning overcame a power-play goal against from Carolina captain Eric Staal, scored four straight, and ultimately won by a 4-3 road final. It seems a ho-hum Sunday win on a day typically reserved for NFL football, but this was a huge win for Tampa Bay a number of reasons.
The first? Tyler Johnson is finally on the board with a goal. You’ve seen No. 9 knocking on the door of late (he had great chances against the Avalanche and even against the Bruins), and you figured it was simply a matter of time before Johnson threw this 700-pound gorilla off his back.
Undrafted or not, it was hard to legitimately envision that this was Johnson’s big comedown from a two-year high in which he scored 53 goals and 122 points in 159 games. He’s a legitimate No. 2 center in this league, and the puck just wasn’t doing him the favors it was the previous two years.
But now comes time for the 25-year-old to build on it and string a little run together for the Bolts.
The second? The Bolts’ defense played a much, much stronger game.
I’ve been critical of their defense during this losing streak. Mainly for their indecisiveness with the puck at the attacking blue-line and picking up their guys in the defensive zone. Think of the Hurricanes’ goals; There’s little that the Bolts could have done on Staal’s goal, as he has one of the longest reaches on a wraparound shot, and such was clearly the case on his power-play goal. Kris Versteeg’s came on a breakaway shot that trickled through Vasilevskiy, and Carolina’s third goal came with just :00.1 second left in the game. In other words, with a two-goal lead, you can’t really blame TB for celebrating a much needed win a bit early.
The third, and the most important however, was the return of a healthy Vasilevskiy.
After missing October in recovery from a blood clot near his collarbone, the 6-foot-3 netminder returned to the Tampa crease, and stopped 32-of-35 shots in a winning effort. It wasn’t an insane night from No. 88, of course, and that Versteeg goal is one he would have liked back. But he made the stops he needed to, and had a calming presence that slowed the game down when the Bolts needed him to.
Vasilevskiy will get better with time, too, and that’ll help a Bolts squad that’s riding starter Ben Bishop a bit more than Jon Cooper would probably like to. At least this early in the season, anyways.
Ty Anderson has been covering the National Hockey League for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, has been a member of the Pro Hockey Writers Association's Boston Chapter since 2013, and can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com.