Friday, 4 a.m.
The start was awful. The finish was worse.
So how in the blazes did the Tampa Bay Lightning win this one?
The Lightning overcame a 2-0 deficit in the first period, and they endured giving up the tying goal with 8.1 seconds to play. Then again, a lot of shortcomings are forgiven on nights that Steven Stamkos and Brayden Point are cooking, aren't they?
Stamkos and Point took turns with the heroics on Friday night as the Bolts beat the Philadelphia Flyers 4-3 in a shootout.
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Stamkos and Point each scored a goal in regulation, then a goal in the shootout, to lead the Bolts' victory. Stamkos also had an assist on Point's goal. For the season, Stamkos now has nine goals and Point has seven.
Stamkos scored with 1:56 to play from a difficult angle to give the Bolts a 3-2 lead, but Claude Giroux came back to score in the dying seconds to force overtime. After neither team scored, Stamkos and Point each scored on their shootout tries. The Flyers missed on both of their shots.
"I didn't like the start,," said Jon Cooper, referring to Philadelphia scoring twice on its first five shots. "I knew we had more in us. We had a really strong second period. We gave up the seeing-eye single at the end."
Goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 27 of 30 shots on the night.
"On the defensive side of the puck, we've been pretty good," Cooper said. "We gave up those two early and didn’t give up much the rest of the game until late. If you’re going to do that, you have an opportunity to munch points."
The Lightning is in third place in the NHL's Atlantic Division with 21 points, six points behind Florida and four behind Toronto.
The Bolts are home Saturday afternoon against the New Jersey Devils. The puck is scheduled to drop at 4 p.m.