Wednesday, 4 a.m.
At a time when their ranks are thin, at a time when an entire team is limping, perhaps it is time the Tampa Bay Lightning welcomed too old-timers to the lineup.
Well, hello there Zach Bogosian.
And isn't that Corey Perry standing beside you.
Perry, 36, and Bogosian, 32, each scored goals in a solid 4-0 victory by the Tampa Bay Lightning over the Philadelphia Flyers. Given the injury situation (both Brayden Point and Nikita Kucherov are injured), the Bolts could use all the firepower they could get.
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For Bogo, it's been a wait. He hadn't scored since he played for Buffalo in 2019-20 (he's had two seasons with the Lightning and one with Toronto since then).
Then there was Perry, the former Hart winner (2010-11). He scored 50 goals that year, but in 17 previous games with the Bolts, he had no goals and just two assists.
Asked about Perry, Lightning coach Jon Cooper grinned and said "How about Bogo. That was his first goal with the Lightning. Perry is way behind Bogo. I was excited. It took him three years, two with us. You’re happy for those guys. Corey’s been around the net a ton this year. You could tell that was a goal-scorers' goal. It was just a matter of time."
Said Perry: “It’s been a long time coming. There were a lot of chances. Pucks were bouncing an inch away. There’s obviously a little frustration. I have to continue play and help the other guys. When you’re not scoring, It’s frsutrating. You keep coming to the arena with a smile on your face and put in the work and good thing are going to happen."
Steven Stamkos and Alex Barret-Boule also scored for the Lightning.
Goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy won his 199th regular season game, and his 27th career shutout. (He has 49 more wins and six more shutouts in the post-season). He stopped all 34 shots.
“After six years in the league, you start getting people are considering who the best goalies are, and his name is in the top three every single year," Cooper said. "Now, he's inching up to maybe the best goalie in the league. That’s pretty impressive. Goalies are so had to read. It's such a mental game. There's no one you’d rather have back there than him."
The Bolts weren't as good in the first period as they were afterward. The team had lost three two-goal leads in its last two games.
"Actually, the first period was on us," Cooper said. "We didn’t execute. We were playing a game that wasn’t suited to us. We weren’t commanding the puck. we were trying to take the easy way, and it wasn’t working for us. "
The Bolts are 11-4-3, third in the NHL's Atlantic Division.
Tampa Bay is home Friday night for a 7 p.m. game against Seattle.