Bolts clobbered by Arizona to end road trip

by Gary Shelton on October 28, 2018 · 2 comments

in general, Tampa Bay Lightning

Dominique gave up seven goals in defeat./JEFFREY S. KING

Sunday, 3:30 a.m.

If this is how much the Tampa Bay Lightning miss Victor Hedman when he's gone, the guy definitely deserves a raise.

With Hedman sidelined because of an injury, the Lightning were clobbered in their worst defeat of the season. The Arizona Coyotes, in sixth place in the Pacific Division of the Western Conference, scored their seven goals on just 30 shots.

“You look at your schedule and this probably sets up as a tough one for us," Lightning coach Jon Cooper said of his team's second game in

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Erne scored his first goal of the season./CARMEN MANDATO

two nights and third game in four nights. "You can’t predict it’s going to be a 7-1 tough one for us.”

The Bolts, who had played well defensively in a win over Las Vegas the night before, had a tough night. They trailed 3-0 after one period and 5-0 after two.

The victory spoiled the return of goaltender Louis Domingue to the place he used to play.

“It sucks for him, let’s be honest," Cooper said. "You have a job to do and he’s battling as hard as he can, especially in a building he used to play in. He’s got a lot of pride. We’re not hanging this on him. It’s tough. It’s the National Hockey League. They have a good team. The start of their season hasn’t gone wins and losses probably how they’d like but I think they’re fourth or fifth in the league for shots per game. It just hasn’t been going in for them. At some point, they’re going to go in for them, and unfortunately for us, tonight was the night.”

The Coyotes scored two short-handed goals in the win, which upped their team's record to 5-5 on the season.

“Giving up two goals on the power play, that’s unacceptable," said defenseman Anton Stralman. "You look at the game, you start out in the first period and you, it’s really tough coming back in this league when you look at that period. If I’m not mistaken I think we outshot them. A couple of their goals just find their way in. And Stepan’s goal was a nice shot and a breakdown off the rush. But you look at two of those goals coming in to the first intermission down 3-0, it’s tough. It’s tough to win games in this league. It’s really hard to find your way back in games when you’re down that much. You look at the game as a whole and it’s 7-1 and it’s not good obviously. Very disappointing.

"You’re going to have bad games throughout the season. You obviously don’t want it to be 7-1. It’s kind of embarrassing, especially when you have a game that I know means a lot to our goalie, coming back and playing here. That’s tough.”

Cooper took some solace in a successful road trip.

“If this was the first game of the road trip and then we finished the rest, we probably wouldn’t be talking like this," Cooper said. "As a group, we look back and say, this was a five-gamer, we got seven out of 10 (points). The big thing I’ll be interested to see is how we respond in the next one.”

The Lightning returns to Tampa for a Tuesday night game against the New Jersey Devils. The puck drops at 7:30 p.m. at Amalie Arena.

 

 

 

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