Wednesday, 4 a.m.
For all their inconsistencies, for all of their injuries, it seemed like only days ago that the Atlantic Division title was within the reach of the Tampa Bay Lightning.
For the moment, that no longer seems to be the case. The Bolts dropped a 2-1 game to Boston Tuesday night and fell nine points behind the Bruins in the division race with 16 games to play.
The Lightning, after their hottest streak of the season, lost for the fifth time in six games.
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Tampa Bay was outshot by Boston 35-21.
"I don't think I've seen this by us," said Lightning coach Jon Cooper. "We had 21 shots on goal and 21 blocked. Is that a product of Boston or a product of us? Probably both. We were to slow in our approach. We'd get pucks to good areas and shoot them into guys."
The Bolts fell behind 2-0. Their only goal came from Mitchell Stephens.
Tampa Bay had another goal, by Yanni Gourde, disallowed because teammate Tyler Johnson was offsides.
"We did a lot of good things," Cooper said. "We didn’t finish when it startied getting close."
Bolts goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 33 of 35 shots in the loss. Vasilevskiy is now 33-13-3 on the season.
The Lightning is home at Amalie Arena against Montreal on Thursday night.The puck is scheduled to drop at 7 p.m.