Point scored his 40th goal of the season./CHUCK MULLER
Sunday, 4 a.m.
As it turns out, the players of the Tampa Bay Lightning are mortal, after all.
The Lightning finally lost another game Saturday night, falling 4-3 to the St. Louis Blues. It was just the team's 14th loss of the season, and it ended a seven-game winning streak.
The Bolts fell behind 3-0 in a 75-second span in the first period. They came back, however, and Steven Stamkos appeared to score the tying goal with 5:43 to play. However, Brayden Point was offsides on the play, disallowing the goal.
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Stamkos had the tying goal disallowed./TIM WIRT
St. Louis becomes just the third team to sweep the Lightning this season. The other teams are Nashville and Minnesota.
It was the ninth loss of the season for Lightning goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy, who made 22 saves on 26 shots.
Point scored his 40th goal of the season. Stamkos scored his 39th, not counting his disallowed goal.
The Bolts trailed 3-0 after one period.
“I don’t know if it was necessarily the whole first period," Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. "It was 1:15 is what it was. It took us a little bit to get our legs underneath us. For the final two periods, I thought we played really darn well. We had some unreal looks, they didn’t go in and then get the unfortunate offside, but it was offside.
"That’s tough, but I liked the way we handled ourselves except for that little bit of a meltdown for 1:15. Tough league to win in and this is a tough building playing against a good team, I thought we handled ourselves really well.
“Pride doesn’t get you two points. This is a big, strong, physical team that doesn’t give you a lot. We had close to 50 shots on goal, a plethora of scoring chances but they just didn’t go in for us tonight. You can’t sit here and say we didn’t give ourselves a chance. And you’ve got to like that about our group especially down 3-0 and the crowd was into it. The boys circled the wagon and made one heck of an effort to come back, just fell short.”
Alex Killorn scored shorthanded on a pass from Anthony Cirelli.
“There wasn’t too much to read off that," Killorn said of Cirelli. "He just does a great job jumping their center, and I don’t think they were ready for that just because on the power play you don’t assume that will happen, kind of a bounce like that. All year, we’ve played together. I can’t remember how many games we’ve played without each other. We definitely have a certain chemistry. He works so hard that he’s fun to play with."
Killorn called Cirelli underrated.
"I don’t know what he’s at point-wise, but in the past couple months, he’s kind of shown what he can do," Killorn said. "He’s still young in this league. He’s going to find his scoring touch. But defensively, to be that good defensively this young in the league is something that’s really rare. That’s the reason why he gets played in so many different situations for us. We’re happy to have him.”
The Lightning returns to Amalie Arena for their final two home games of the regular season, starting with Monday’s tilt against the Boston Bruins. The puck drops at 7:30 p.m.
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