Thursday, 4 a.m.
Maybe you can measure it in the strides as Oskar Sundqvist pulled away as the Blues on his shorthanded goal.
Maybe you can measure it in the heartbeats that Brayden Schenn used to score the clinching goal at the end of a power play in the third period.
Either way, the St. Louis Blues remain marginally better than the Tampa Bay Lightning.
The Blues beat the Lightning for the second time in eight days, 4-3, despite a pretty good game by the Bolts.
The Lightning scored on goals by Nikita Kucherov, Anthony Cirelli and Brayden Point.
"That was a pretty good hockey game," said Lightning coach Jon Cooper. "I ithought there were two pretty good hockey teams going at it. In the end, they got us on special teams. We got the power play goal, but we gave up the shortie. Eventually, it ended up being the difference. We were on the losing side, so it’s natural to sit here and say we should have gotten a point out of it. But I was happy with a lot of things we did. We fell one short."
The Lightning is at Washington Friday afternoon. The puck is scheduled to drop at 5 p.m.