Bolts win on night they’re outplayed

by Gary Shelton on January 14, 2022

in general

Quinn Hughes dives over Boris Katchouch, who had the winning goal./JEFFREY S. KING

Friday, 4 a.m.

No one is going to apologize for winning, but the Tampa Bay Lightning got away with one Thursday night.

Somehow, the Bolts came up with a 4-2 win over the Vancouver Canucks in a game played at Amalie Arena. On the other hand, the Canucks had more energy and more speed than the homestanding Bolts.

In other words, Vancouver took the play to the division-leading Lightning.












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“I don’t know if we really stuck to our process," Lightning head coach Jon Cooper admitted. "I wasn’t really happy with some of the things we did. Am I happy with the result? There’s no question. I will never frown at that.

"But we made the game harder on ourselves. We recovered well in a lot of situations, but we played with fire a little bit. We had a few too many turnovers. When you have 38 shot attempts and have the puck as much as we did, we played a little pretty and not as gritty as we should have. We got away with it tonight, but we have much better in the tank than we gave."

Despite Vancouver setting the pace, the Bolts got goals from Steven Stamkos, Anthony Cirelli, Boris Katchouk and Brayden Point. Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 24 of 36 shots for his 21st victory.

The winning goal was by Katchouch on a two-on-non breakaway in which they passed back and forth serval times. It was Katchouch's second goal.

Stamkos scored his 18th on a day he was omitted from the regulars in the All-Star game. Instead, Stamkos is one of four players who will be voted on as the "last man in" for the game.

"They had a push the whole game," Lightning forward Pierre-Edouard Bellemare said. ".I think they were the better team tonight. We found a way to win the game."

The Bolts killed off four power plays in the game, and the Canucks managed only one shot with the man advantage. Still, Cooper cautioned that four penalties is "playing with fire."

The Bolts will be home Saturday night against Dallas. The puck is scheduled to drop at 7 p.m.

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