Once again, Point is the king of overtime

by Gary Shelton on March 7, 2018 · 3 comments

in general, Tampa Bay Lightning

Point scores the winner in overtime for the Bolts./JEFFREY S. KING

Point scores the winner in overtime for the Bolts./JEFFREY S. KING

Wednesday, 4 a.m.

Point has become the King of Overtime for Tampa Bay./JEFFREY S. KING

Point has become the King of Overtime for Tampa Bay./JEFFREY S. KING

The way the Tampa Bay Lightning look at it, the rest of the team has 60 minutes to win a hockey game.

After that, it's Point time.

Or, to say it another way, a time to get Points.

The Lightning went into overtime for the sixth straight time Tuesday night, beating the Florida Panthers 5-4. And, once again, it was Brayden Point who starred in extra time, knocking in an overtime goal at 2:49 to end things.

 Content beyond this point is for members only.

Already a member? To view the rest of this column, sign in using the handy "Sign In" button located in the upper right corner of the GarySheltonSports.com blog (it's at the far right of the navigation bar under Gary's photo)!

Not a member? It's easy to subscribe so you can view the rest of this column and all other premium content on GarySheltonSports.com.

Vasilevskiy faced a season-high 49 shots./JEFFREY S. KING

Vasilevskiy faced a season-high 49 shots./JEFFREY S. KING

“You got to be out there and coaches trust me with that," Point said. "Not every guy gets to play there. It’s a privilege to play overtime. We’re just trying to work hard, and guys are finding me. It’s not only myself, but our team’s been playing well in overtime.”

Gourde scored twice to tie a rookie record./JEFFREY S. KING

Gourde scored twice to tie a rookie record./JEFFREY S. KING

The Bolts have won five of their six overtime games. Point has scored two overtime goals for winners, and he scored three times in shootouts.

This time, he made a deke to fake out Florida's Evgenii Dadonov, then put the puck past Roberto Luongo for the winner. Point now has four overtime goals and 10 game-winners.

Nick Bjugstad scored a hat trick for the Panthers in the loss.

Killorn found the net for the Bolts./JEFFREY S. KING

Killorn found the net for the Bolts./JEFFREY S. KING

Point now has 27 goals on the season. Yanni Gourde, who scored twice, has 24 goals, tied for the most-ever by a rookie for the Bolts.

Also scoring for Tampa Bay was J.T. Miller and Alex Killorn.

"He's been doing it all year," Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. "“Just in that situation he was in, to be able to have the poise to pull that (move) off, not only to make that move around Dadonov and it’s in the back of the net, it was pretty impressive.”

The Bolts led 2-0, 3-1 and 4-2 going into the third period. Once again, however, the defense was on its heels in the third period.

Cooper didn't think his team's defense was good enough.

Ryan Callahan puts a hit on Aaron Ekblad./JEFFREY S. KING

Ryan Callahan puts a hit on Aaron Ekblad./JEFFREY S. KING

"We've got to close it out better than that," Cooper said. "Ironically, I thought after they tied it, we actually kind of played our best hockey for a while. This just didn’t start in the third. We weren’t defending like we should’ve been defending all the way through, and it just caught up to us in the third.”

Still, the Bolts were able to pull out the victory.

“We’ve dealt with that a little bit throughout this little stretch," said forward

Kucherov had an assist to continue to lead the NHL in scoring./JEFFREY S. KING

Kucherov had an assist to continue to lead the NHL in scoring./JEFFREY S. KING

Alex Killorn. "I think we want to do a better job of protecting our leads, especially to let one in that early, kind of a mix up play in front of the net but we found a way to be resilient and we found a way to win.”

Said Gourde: “We aren’t going to give up, but at the end of the day we have to tie things up in our D-zone and we can’t be allowing teams to get back in the game every single night. Like I said, at the end of the day we won that game and it’s a great team effort.”

The Bolts got their 39th win from Andrei Vasilevskiy, who stopped 45 of 49 shots. Vasilevskiy is now 12-3-1 over his last 16 games.

The Lightning is home again Thursday night against the Rangers. The puck drops at 7:30 p.m.

Stamkos is stopped by Panter goalie Luango./JEFFREY S. KING

Stamkos is stopped by Panthers' goalie Luongo./JEFFREY S. KING

 

 

 

 

 

{ 0 comments… read it below or Subscriptions }

Cancel reply

Leave a Comment

Previous post:

Next post: