Two nights ago, the Tampa Bay Lightning engaged in an epic showdown with the Toronto Maple Leafs featuring back-and-forth action, plenty of goals, disagreements between officials and players, a penalty shot, and a dramatic overtime period that eventually led to a Lightning shootout victory.
Although Wednesday night’s contest against the Buffalo Sabres at Amalie Arena was the Lightning’s third straight game that needed at least overtime, don’t let that fool you. While this game had a handful of exciting moments, it was a mostly boring, emotionless tilt that stood in stark contrast to Monday’s thriller. Against the Maple Leafs, the Lightning showed fire and energy. But with the last-place Sabres in town, Tampa Bay’s emotional investment didn’t seem like it was there tonight. And it showed in the final score.
Jason Pominville’s power play goal 1:26 into overtime capped off a come-from-behind 2-1 victory for the Sabres (20-33-11, 51 points) over the Lightning (43-17-4, 90 points). Although the Lightning became the first team in the NHL to reach 90 points, their four-game winning streak ended while Buffalo has now won two of its last three. Lightning head coach Jon Cooper didn’t mince words after the game was over.
“There was one team that looked like they are getting close to making the playoffs and preparing to play in the postseason and the one team looked like they weren’t. Take that from there which team was which,” said Cooper.
He also added, “We just went in to Buffalo and lost two weeks ago (5-3 on Feb. 13) and we just played them again and lost. You would think that a team that beat you just recently, I don’t know if there is any more motivation than we now have them in our home building and let’s take care of business. Regardless of who you played the game before, that is irrelevant to me. It’s a consistency thing and it’s game to game, you have to bring it every night.”
Even defenseman Dan Girardi and forward Cory Conacher lamented their team’s lack of emotion this evening.
“We needed the same effort we had against Toronto,” Girardi said. “A lot of emotion, a lot of desperation, and that wasn’t there. We took a bunch of penalties in the third, and that hurt a lot.”
Conacher believed they didn’t take the Sabres seriously enough due to their position at the bottom of the Eastern Conference.
“I hate to say it,” Conacher said. “Maybe. I don’t know what it is. (The Sabres have) been playing well lately. We should have expected that.”
Although the Sabres held a 7-3 shot advantage halfway through the opening 20 minutes, both teams were sluggish and lethargic, unable to generate any outstanding scoring chances.
That lack of energy filtered to the crowd, who didn’t really have much to be excited about early on. Even a power play for Buffalo with 5:18 left resulted in only a single shot on goal for the visitors, as the Lightning easily killed it off.
Things changed with 1:57 left, as Conacher finally gave the home fans something to cheer about. Yanni Gourde got the puck back to the point, where Girardi unleashed a shot on net. Johnson made the save, but left a big, juicy rebound in front. Conacher was left all alone in the slot, where he easily put home a rebound into the net for his seventh of the season and first since February 3 against Vancouver.
Location, location, location. Clearly @conhockey19 was in the right one. #BUFvsTBL pic.twitter.com/I2prrD7pLb
— NHL (@NHL) March 1, 2018
Moments later, Buffalo nearly tied it up, as Evan Rodrigues flung the puck on net looking for a rebound. He got his wish, as Lightning goalie Andrie Vasilevskiy, who finished with 32 saves, made the stop and left a rebound for Pominville, who was driving to the net. However, Vasilevskiy kicked out his left leg, keeping the puck out and preserving Tampa Bay’s lead going into the first intermission.
Despite holding the lead after a period, the Lightning still didn’t generate much in the way of offensive chances in the second period.
However, there was a stretch of about five minutes where both teams engaged in some intense back-and-forth action. New acquisition J.T. Miller, playing his first game as a Bolt, set up Adam Erne in front of the Sabres’ crease. Unfortunately for Erne, he was denied twice by Buffalo goalie Chad Johnson, who stopped 21 shots.
Buffalo followed that up with a flurry of chances in Tampa Bay’s zone after a Lightning turnover. Vasilevskiy came up with one save, only to see the puck lying on the goal line before it was knocked away. Rodrigues followed that up by ringing a shot off the crossbar, and then the Sabres got another chance that Vasilevskiy turned aside yet again.
Brayden Point nearly gave the Bolts a 2-0 lead when he earned a breakaway chance, but his shot rang off the post, leaving the game 1-0. Point appeared to have his hand hooked by Nathan Beaulieu, but play continued on. After that deluge of chances by both teams, the action settled down and the Lightning took a 1-0 lead into the final period despite being out-shot 20-12.
While both teams had some good looks at the net in the third period, the Sabres tied it up
Both teams had early power plays in the final period of regulation, only to come up short. Vasilevskiy, who was very sharp for much of the night, nearly committed a costly turnover while handling the puck away from the net. He was forced to scramble back to his crease, diving across to get his stick on a shot in the nick of time. However, you could just feel like a Sabres goal was inevitable. With 8:13 remaining, that’s exactly what happened.
Following a turnover by Andrej Sustr, Pominville got the puck over to Rodrigues in the left circle, where he roofed a perfect shot past Vasilevskiy top shelf for his sixth goal of the season, tying the game 1-1. Tampa Bay was able to kill off a late penalty on Miller, but they weren’t able to overcome a penalty on Erne with 19.1 seconds left in regulation. Erne laid out Buffalo’s Johan Larsson with a body check and was whistled for an illegal check to the head, giving the Sabres a power play going into overtime.
Although the Lightning’s effort on the penalty kill was valiant in OT, it wasn’t enough, as a little bit of controversy lingered at the end of the game.
Pominville’s game-winner, his 10th of the season, came on a one-timer blast that got through Vasilevskiy. However, replays showed that he was bumped a few seconds before the goal occurred. While the bump did happen, it appeared as though Vasilevskiy had enough time to reset himself before attempting to make the save on Pominville’s shot.
As a result, there was no lengthy review, as the war room in Toronto automatically looks at any scoring play in overtime, and they didn’t believe it warranted a review. Vasilevskiy slammed his stick on the ice in frustration after the goal, drawing a 10-minute misconduct penalty despite the game being over.
Despite what happened on the game-winner, Cooper’s concerns lied with how his team played, not what happened in overtime.
“Toronto looks at everything after there’s a minute left and in overtime. Not much you can do, it’s in their hands,” Cooper said. “There was contact prior, but they’ll probably look and he had a chance to get set. I haven’t talked to him, so I don’t know if he caught the sight line of the puck or anything like that. I’ve seen a lot worse than that be called good goals. I didn’t think that was the issue tonight, let’s put it that way.”
Tampa Bay returns to action tomorrow night when they travel to Dallas for the second half of their back-to-back. Puck drops at 8:30 pm EST.
Game Notes
-J.T. Miller, playing his first game after being picked up in a trade with the New York Rangers along with Ryan McDonagh, played 17:40. Even though he was held without a shot on goal, he had a very physical presence in this game with four hits.
-Nikita Kucherov was a scratch due to an upper-body injury suffered on Monday night. McDonagh, Slater Koekkoek, and Jake Dotchin were the other scratches.
-Tonight’s loss ended the Lightning’s streak of 10 consecutive games in which they scored at least three goals.
-Yanni Gourde’s assist gave him 27 on the season. He has points in five of his last six games and 12 of his last 14.
-The Lightning are now 6-4-0 in the first game of a back-to-back set.
-Wednesday’s loss marks the first time that Tampa Bay has lost consecutive games to the Sabres since March 19, 2012 and February 26, 2013.
Three Stars of the Game
1st Star: Jason Pominville – Scored the game-winning goal in overtime and assisted on Buffalo’s other goal.
2nd Star: Chad Johnson – The Sabres backup netminder picked up the win by making 21 saves.
3rd Star: Andrei Vasilevskiy – Made 32 saves, keeping the Lightning in it for as long as he could, bailing them out when Buffalo was applying the pressure.
