Friday, 4 a.m.
Some losses are easier to swallow than others. Especially when fans can heckle the referees off the ice.
The Tampa Bay Lightning lost their second straight game, 4-3 to Pittsburgh at Benchmark International.
The Bolts came back to tie after falling behind 3-0. Then, after falling behind 4-3, they almost came back again.
The Lightning seemed to have tied the game on a goal by Nikita Kucherov in the final moments, but the officials stopped play after being alerted by officials in Toronto.
The goal was disallowed on a hand pass by Bradon Hagel, who protested the puck went off of his forearm.
"There's a couple of things," said Lightning coach Jon Cooper. "Did he mean to do it or was it deflected? Was there an advantage gained or not? You can really debate whethere an advantage was gained. Did Brandon Hagel direct that puck knowing exactly where it was going? No.
"Would you sit here today and say that maybe Brandon Hagel was preventing a puck from hitting him in the face? Or protecting some part of his body? If I threw this microphone at you, would you put your hand up to stop it? Hell yeah you would. So there's a spirit of the rule. Is the spirit of the rule for him to take it in the face? I think that's where we get that wrong. That’s not what happened. He didn't direct any pucks. It was a bang-bang play. there were tons of guys around it. We got to it first and a lot of the game developed after that and the puck went in the net. So is that frustrating one for me. It's laughable that that got overturned.”
The Bolts fell behind on a goal by Ville Koivenen in the first period and goals by Evgeni Malkin and Ben Kindel.
Tampa Bay rallied on a goal by Kucherov late in the second period and two goals by Hagel, Hagel now has 17 goals on the season.
Malkin scored the winnerwith 2:43 to play.
Jonas Johansson stopped 27 of 31 shots. Pittsburgh's Tristan Jarry stopped 37 of 40 shots.
The Bolts play the Islanders at Benchmark International at 7 p.m. on Saturday.