Vasilevskiy gloves one of his 28 saves./JEFFREY S. KING
Tuesday, 2 a.m.
The stars returned to the stat sheet Monday night for the Tampa Bay Lightning. And, yes, the Bolts are soaring again.
Steven Stamkos, the leading point-scorer in the NHL, had three points, including two goals.
Nikita Kucherov, the leading goals-scorer in the league, had his 13th goal in 12 games.
And Andrei Vasilevskiy, the NHL leader in wins by a goaltender, picked up his 10th, and his ninth in a row.
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Stamkos leads the league in scoring./CARMEN MANDATO
Ah, but on this night, it wasn't just the pace-setters who played well for the Bolts in an 8-5 win over Florida. It was darned near everyone.
Braydon Point had a goal. And Ondrej Palat. And Yanni Gourde. And Vladislav Namestnikov. And Anton Stralman.
Eight goals, seven scorers. The Lighting improved to 9-2-1 with a franchise record of 19 points.
“After what they did to us a few weeks ago, as a coaching staff, we wanted to see where we were going to be at knowing that we were going to play them again at the end of the month,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “Florida’s going to look back and say they gave up eight goals, but they’ve got a good team. They play fast. They’re heavy. For us, we needed to see where we’re at, and I’m happy with the way things turned out.”
Vasilevskiy gave up a lot of goals, but he was solid when Tampa Bay needed for him to be.
“He’s really good,” Cooper said. “This is when you have to win games when he’s going to sit there and say he probably didn’t have his best stuff tonight. More often than not, he’s our best player every single night. I just felt it was good for us to be able to pick Vasy up tonight because he’s normally not giving up five. But when it comes to goaltenders, the biggest stat you can have is winning games and that’s what he’s doing. It’s great to see.”
The Bolts went with 12 forwards and six defensemen in the win.
“As I said, it’s not stuck to anything,” Cooper said. “We coach to win games. We put lineups in to win games. Twenty guys will go in tonight and how we’re going to play them. We felt in different areas we could use some help, whether it was face-offs or balancing a line or things like that. Fortunately for us, it worked out.”
The Bolts are home Thursday night against the Rangers. The game begins at 7:30 p.m.
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