Steve Stamkos and Tyler Johnson had two goals each as the Tampa Bay Lightning beat the Edmonton Oilers 6-3 Saturday night at Rogers Place.
“I thought the third goal really broke our back,” Oilers head coach Ken Hitchcock said after the game. “I thought that hurt us a lot.”
LISTEN BELOW: Ken Hitchcock
Tampa’s Nikita Kucherov, who enjoyed a five point night, says the Oilers are a fast team and they did their best to match that as they wrapped up a four-game road trip.
“It’s been tough games, especially tonight. A tough building; tough place to play. They came out hard and (we) did a good job to defend them and played the right way the whole sixty minutes. And Vas (Vasilevskiy) did a good job in net; kept us in the game. A good game overall.”
The Lightning are 11-0-1 in their last 12 games. The Oilers have lost three in a row.
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins opened the scoring just past the halfway point of the first period, finishing off a pass from Connor McDavid. McDavid earned his 200th career assist on the play. Stamkos tied it late in the first when he zipped a power play one-timer past Mikko Koskinen.
Alex Chiasson restored the Oilers’ lead with a power play goal early in the second. He deflected a Darnell Nurse point shot for his 16th of the season. Nikita Kucherov buried a wrist shot on a breakaway to make it 2-2 with 7:00 left in the frame. Just 1:32 later, J.T. Miller tapped in a goal mouth pass to put Tampa Bay ahead.
Johnson banged in a rebound to extend their lead before the third period was five minutes old. Leon Draisaitl came right back with a power play snipe two minutes later. The Oilers had another power play shortly after but couldn’t muster the tying goal. Stamkos tallied his second of the night with 4:57 left. Johnson added a late empty-netter.
“We’ve got to keep checking until the last minute, and if we have to tie it up in the last ten seconds then so be it, but we opened it up a little too early I think,” Draisaitl said.
Kucherov had a goal and four assists. McDavid had three assists. Koskinen suffered his first loss on home ice, having been 7-0 at Rogers Place prior to the game.
“That was a good test for us tonight, but — obviously — we’ve got some work to do,” Chiasson said after the game.
LISTEN BELOW: Alex Chiasson
Lightning head coach Jon Cooper says there was a lot of star power in the game and he thought they all put on a show.
“It was guys on both sides, and fans come to see those guys,” Cooper said. “It was a tough one, probably for both teams going into the break knowing there’s a few days off here, but I like the way our guys responded and we were led by Kuch tonight.”
When it comes to their road-trip, Cooper says all of the Canadian teams they faced are playing extremely well.
“We started off with a big game against Toronto before that (the road-trip), and I don’t know the exact stat but probably 17 to 19 games they’ve gotten points — and most of them wins — and it’s hard to do in this league. You’ve got to take them when you can and they’ve been doing it different ways, but what I liked about tonight is that we were sound all night, and it was a good way to go into the break.”
The Oilers, 18-15-3, will host Vancouver on Thursday.