It wasn’t a pretty performance by any stretch of the imagination, but the Tampa Bay Lightning found a way to beat the Ottawa Senators by a score of 3-1 on Thursday night. Buoyed by a two goal performance from Martin St. Louis and a great night between the pipes from Ben Bishop, Tampa squeaked past its division rival and picked up two very important points. The win moves the team’s record to 17-10-1, good enough for third place in the Atlantic Division and fourth place in the Eastern Conference.
After being held goalless in their last two games, the Bolts finally ‘broke out’ offensively at the 16:45 mark of the first period on Thursday evening. Following some pedestrian play from the team to start the frame, Marty St. Louis took a great feed from Ondrej Palat and chipped the puck past an unprepared Robin Lehner. Marty’s first of two on the night was huge for Tampa in so many ways. Jon Cooper’s choice to put Palat and St. Louis together paid immediate dividends.
Patrick Wiercioch tied the game for the Senators just 6:11 into the second period with his first goal of the season. Right off a Kyle Turris faceoff win, Wiercioch turned around and snapped a quick wrist shot past Bishop. The power-play goal was the Senators’ only marker on the evening. Ben Bishop made 33 saves on 34 shots against en route to victory. The big goaltender’s performance was simply fantastic.
Unwilling to roll over and die, the Bolts battled right back and scored the eventual game winning goal just seven minutes later. Again, the Palat-St. Louis combination did great work to manufacture the tally. Just as he did on the first goal, St. Louis took a nice Palat pass and popped the puck past Lehner. When the Lightning needed a big goal, the captain stepped up. Considering his (and the team’s) offensive struggles recently, it was great to see St. Louis get on the board twice.
Outplayed grossly for large chunks of the first 40 minutes of play, Tampa finally turned up the heat in the third period. The Senators were unable to generate opportunities in the final frame, as the Bolts shut them down at every turn. That hard work paid off midway through the period, as Valtteri Filppula whipped home his tenth of the season to extend the Lightning lead to 3-1. Filppula’s 10 goal total through 28 games this season eclipses his nine goal output from all of last season. His contributions so far in 2013-14 are a big reason for the Lightning’s early success.
While Tampa did hold on for the 3-1 victory, things were far from rosy on Thursday. In addition to losing the shot-attempts battle by a wide margin, the Lightning incurred a couple more injuries. Both Victor Hedman and Keith Aulie left the game and did not return. The injuries are of particular concern for the Lightning, as depth is proving to be an issue. With those two joining an injured list that already included Stamkos, Brewer, Gudas, Labrie, Pyatt, and Malone, the Lightning’s roster is pretty stretched.
It would be easy to argue that the Lightning didn’t deserve to win their game against the Senators, but the scoreboard shows that they did. At the end of the day, the Bolts grabbed two very important points and maintained their stellar record at the Tampa Bay Times Forum. Now, the team will look to build on this victory as the Winnipeg Jets come to town for a date on Saturday night.
As always, thanks for reading.