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One night after the team struggled to put anything on net in a loss in Philly, the Tampa Bay Lightning put 42 shots on Boston Bruins netminder Jonas Gustavsson. But unfortunately for the Bolts, none of them came in overtime, as Boston winger Brad Marchand beat Ben Bishop just 10 seconds into overtime in Tampa’s second straight loss, a 1-0 defeat at the hands of the B’s.
But it wasn’t for a lack of trying.
For all three periods of Tuesday’s defeat, the Lightning were the aggressors when it came to their head-to-head with Boston. After being outshot 11-to-8 in the opening frame, the Lightning responded with an in-your-face, 19-shot middle frame headlined by countless odd-man rushes, an end-to-end style that undoubtedly favored Tampa Bay, and a Nikita Kucherov crossbar shot on Gustavsson.
Their momentum continued on into the third period, too, with a 9-0 shot advantage to start the period, including great looks on a Vladdy Namestnikov deflection that Gustavsson just got a piece of 6:20 in, and a Ryan Callahan post shot 6:50 into the period.
And even when the Bruins finally got on the board with their first shots of the third, two from Marchand and a rebound blast from Lee Stempniak, Bishop remained tall in the Lightning crease.
But without a shot on goal in the final 7:30 of the third period, it would be the Bruins that finally put the Bolts away behind Marchand’s 34th goal of the season on a great three-man effort with center Patrice Bergeron and defenseman Torey Krug to start the overtime.
Random thoughts and notes
- This felt like one of those October games where the Lightning did just about everything right but couldn’t find a way to beat the goaltender. In particular, the Killorn-Stamkos-Callahan line ran all over the Bruins again and again with a tremendous cycling game that often left the Bruins scrambling around the defensive zone, and were somehow consistently robbed by Gustavsson. It was actually the second straight game against Boston that the trio had been damn near unstoppable in the Boston end. But, ‘cause hockey makes no sense, they could not solve Gustavsson like they did Tuukka Rask.
- If there’s one thing you liked about this game from Tampa’s point of view, it was the return of an activated defense. This was completely missing from Tampa Bay in their 4-2 loss in Philadelphia, but was evident as could be in Tuesday’s game. This actually may have been one of Victor Hedman’s more aggressive games of late, too. Without his usual top-pair partner, Hedman was everywhere for the Bolts, and finished the night with three shots in a game-high 26:52 of time on ice.
- Staying on the point, Anton Stralman missed this game with an illness. Crazily enough, it was the first game that Stralman has missed since coming to Tampa Bay from New York in 2014. That called Luke Witkowski up from the American Hockey League, and while he didn’t play, pushed Andrej Sustr back into the lineup along with another game for Slater Koekkoek.
- On a second-guessing point, I honestly might have gone with something better than the Valtteri Filppula, J.T. Brown, and Jason Garrison trio head coach Jon Cooper elected to go with to begin overtime. Tampa Bay came into this game 7-1 in the 3-on-3 overtime format this year, so there’s not much room for questioning, I suppose, but if the Bruins come at you with their best, shouldn’t you counter with yours rather than attempt to wait out the matchup game and hope to strike then? Just a thought.
Up next
The Bolts are back at it on Friday night in their season-series finale with the Philadelphia Flyers. Philly beat the Lightning by a 4-2 final at Wells Fargo Center on Monday night, and the home teams have won each game of this season series thus far. Tampa Bay has won won 21 of 34 home games this year.
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.