The Lightning center is on pace to shatter his career high for goals. Could he also finally win a much-deserved Selke Trophy?
Here are three reasons to like the Lightning’s new-look power play. Thursday’s moves were transformative, because the personnel and positional changes made it difficult to tell which was the top unit and which was the second. Point men Victor Hedman and Darren Raddysh switched units, with Brayden Point and Jake Guentzel matched with Raddysh.
Ducks, Tampa Bay Lightning
The Tampa Bay Lightning got back in the win column on Thursday night, defeating the Anaheim Ducks 4-3 in a shootout at AMALIE Arena to earn a season series split with their Western Conference opponent. Jake Guentzel scored the lone goal in the three-round shootout.
Anaheim opened the scoring 6:03 into the game on a redirection by forward Troy Terry, but the Lightning tied the score eight minutes later on the power play. Hedman got the puck at the left point and fed forward Brandon Hagel in the right corner, where the latter passed the puck to Anthony Cirelli at the back post for a tap-in and a tie game.
The Tampa Bay Lightning are a few games behind the rest of the NHL, but it’s still time to grade every Lightning player’s performance through the first half of the season.
This was a high-shot volume, high-chance game that featured terrific goaltending from Andrei Vasilevskiy and Lukas Dostal. The teams each scored three goals through 60 minutes but easily could have exceeded that total. In the end, the Lightning netted the only goal in the shootout to secure a crucial second point in the standings.
A goal scored with Tampa Bay on the penalty kill propels it to a 2nd straight home win over a tough Eastern Conference opponent.
Stefan Noesen scored a power-play goal in overtime and Jacob Markstrom made 23 saves as the New Jersey Devils defeated the Tampa Bay Lightning 3-2.