Stamkos scored his 11th goal of the season./CARMEN MANDATO
Thursday, 1 a.m.
Suddenly, the wins aren't coming. Not only that, but for the Tampa Bay Lightning, the shots aren't coming, either.
The Lightning lost for the fourth time in six games Wednesday night, falling 3-2 to the Boston Bruins. The Lightning fell behind 3-0 in the game before losing 3-2.
Tampa Bay got off five shots in the first period, seven in the second and nine in the third.
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Sustr finally got the Bolts on the board./STEVEN MUNCIE
"You have to learn from this experience,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “You go on a four-game road trip and get two points out of it, that’s not what we had planned and actually probably never thought that would happen. But it did. So now you have to look back and say, ‘Okay, why did it happen?’ Give Boston credit. We haven’t seen them but a really solid two-way team that skated and worked and did what they had to do, got the lead and held on. As I said, they’re a good team.”
The Bolts scored on goals by Andre Sustr and Steven Stamkos, his first goal in six games. Nikita Kucherov also has gone six games without a goal.
"We have to understand we’re getting everybody’s best shot, especially when you haven’t played teams before,” Cooper said. “I would imagine when you’re playing a team that has the start we had, you’re going to get their best shot. The league’s way too good to, I don’t want to say we took it off, but we didn’t have near the desperation they had in the first period. We were a step behind, which was obvious.
"It was unfortunate because it ended up costing us the game. But as the game slowly went on, we slowly tilted the ice. By the time we got to the third period, we were doing all the right things, all the things that had we done at the beginning of the game, not sitting here saying we would have won the game, but the score ended up 3-2 and probably wouldn’t have given up the chances we gave up, we probably would have got a couple more. Just a little bit of a lesson learned in this game, and we’ve got to bring our third period home with us and come out to start that way against San Jose.”
The 21 shots tied for the lowest the Bolts have had all season. Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 33 of 36 shots.
"Our shot volume’s not where it needs to be,” Cooper said. “We’ve taken a little step back in that department, and we’ve just got to work at it.”
The Lightning begins a four-game home streak against the San Jose Sharks Saturday night. The puck drops at 7 p.m.
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