Falling behind early to one of the hottest teams in the league could have been a recipe for disaster for the struggling Lightning, but Brian Boyle made sure it wasn’t.
Boyle erased the deficit by scoring the next two goals before the first period was through and Tampa Bay held the lead for good en route to a 6-3 win over the Flames — snapping Calgary’s six-game winning streak.
“That’s a really good team over there. A lot of speed, a lot of skill. They’re tough to play at home, and they’ve been hot,” said Boyle. “It’s never a perfect game, but we made some strides tonight.”
After Troy Brouwer’s power-play goal gave the Flames a 1-0 lead, the Lightning tied it at 10:04, converting their first man advantage with Boyle neatly re-directing Victor Hedman’s point shot past Chad Johnson.
Hedman, who had three assists on the evening, also had a hand in Boyle’s second goal four minutes later when Boyle got behind TJ Brodie after a nifty give-and-go with Valtteri Filppula and beat Johnson with a deke to his backhand.
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“(Hedman) was a monster tonight. He’s such a huge part of our team. Head up on the first one. I just kind of had my stick out in the air and he hits it, sandlot style,” said Boyle.
Another big contributor offensively was Alex Killorn, who scored a pair, including an empty netter, and also added an assist. Braydon Coburn and Andrej Sustr had the others for Tampa Bay (15-13-2), which won for just the second time in nine games (2-6-1). Filppula also had three assists.
“It wasn’t the start we wanted, but I’m pretty happy with the resiliency of our group coming back. You can’t always control the way that the game starts, but you can control how you respond to that and I think we responded really well,” Killorn said.
Brodie and Micheal Ferland also scored for Calgary (16-14-2). Sean Monahan had an assist to extend his career-best scoring streak to eight games (four goals, six assists). It’s the second longest active streak behind Sidney Crosby’s nine.
“I give them credit. I thought they were the hungrier of the two teams and the margins were small and they deserved to get points out of there,” aid Flames coach Glen Gulutzan.
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The Flames had two chances to tie it early in the second but Johnny Gaudreau hit a goal post and Ferland squandered a breakaway.
Shortly after, Coburn put the Lightning up 3-1 when his slap shot from the blue line beat a screened Johnson. It was Coburn’s first goal in 102 games.
Sustr’s first of the season at 18:47 made it 4-1.
“There are going to be games where you just don’t have it,” said Brouwer. “It’s a shame, because I actually thought we were pretty good to start the game and I liked where we were at, but then we let a couple floater shots from the point get through — things that are uncharacteristic of us.”
Gulutzan replaced Johnson with Brian Elliott to open the third period and, just as his season has gone, it didn’t start well for the veteran. A juicy rebound was buried by Killorn 37 seconds in for a short-handed goal.
Goals 21 seconds apart from Brodie and Ferland got the Flames back in it with over 15 minutes still to go, but they could get no closer.
Ben Bishop made 19 stops to improve to 9-10-1. Johnson, who yielded four goals on 21 shots, was tagged with the loss to fall to 13-5-1. Elliott had 12 saves in relief.
Notes:
The Lightning were without leading scorer Nikita Kucherov (undisclosed), who joined Steven Stamkos and Ryan Callahan on the sidelines. They then lost Ondrej Palat (undisclosed) in the second period…. Cory Conacher, recalled earlier in the day from Syracuse (AHL), took Kucherov’s spot on the line with Tyler Johnson and Palat…. Hedman played in his 500th NHL game.
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