If you walk into a random elementary school classroom anywhere in America, you’re quite likely to see a poster that says something like this: “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.… It’s cute. It’s inspirational. The kids eat that sort of thing up.
The Tampa Bay Lightning took a different approach to things on Saturday night. They skipped the whole ‘shoot for the moon’ bit and went straight at the Dallas Stars. The result was a 5-4 Tampa victory, and two more points for them in the standings. The win was the team’s third straight, which keeps them only two points back of the Montreal Canadiens in the Atlantic Division.
In what became a back-and-forth affair, it was the Lightning who struck first. 13 minutes into the first period, with his team on the power play, Anton Stralman scored his sixth of the season to make it a 1-0 game. There was some debate about whether the shot deflected off Ryan Callahan and past Jhonas Enroth, but the boxscore gives credit to Stralman with help from Ondrej Palat.
Not wanting to be outdone, the Stars answered back less than two minutes later with a power play goal of their own. It was Tyler Seguin who ripped the puck by Andrei Vasilevskiy for his 30th of the campaign. The seesawing wasn’t done. Before the first period buzzer rang, Nikita Kucherov potted his 25th of the year to make it a 2-1 game.
People in attendance at Amalie Arena probably expected the Lightning to use that late Kucherov goal as energy and inspiration in the second period. That didn’t really happen. While they did manage to fire 11 shots at Enroth in the middle frame, the Dallas goaltender was up to the task on each one. It was the Stars who had success finding the back of the net. Two goals, courtesy of Seguin and Vernon Fiddler, turned a one-goal Lightning lead after 20 minutes into a one-goal Stars lead after 40 minutes.
That lead didn’t last either.
This year’s version of the Dallas Stars has shown a penchant for giving up third period goals. They lived up to that unfortunate reputation on Saturday night. Early final frame scores from Victor Hedman (5:31) and Alex Killorn (3:40) restored the Lightning’s one-goal lead and paved their path to victory.
With the Dallas goalie pulled, Brian Boyle sealed the deal with his 14th (!) of the year, a shorthanded tally, at 19:36. Thank goodness he did, too. Fiddler scored for the Stars with only three seconds left on the clock to make it a 5-4 game, but it ultimately wasn’t enough. The Bolts found a way to hold on, even if it wasn’t particularly pretty.
As nice as it was to see Tampa Bay get the win, it’s hard to feel too good about this victory. Able to take advantage of a porous Dallas defensive scheme, the Lightning won this game in a way that won’t work against quality opponents in the National Hockey League. The points count just the same, but the team will have to be a lot tighter defensively if it wants to have a chance in the spring.
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.