Steven Stamkos scored his 499th goal on a 5-on-3 power play in the third period to help the Tampa Bay Lightning beat the Vancouver Canucks 5-4, Thursday night.
On the verge of becoming the 47th NHL player to reach 500 goals, Stamkos beat Collin Delia from the left circle to make it 5-2 at 5:30.
Delia made four strong saves on the Lightning captain, including a pair during the ensuing one-man advantage.
Quinn Hughes and Elias Pettersson scored to pull Vancouver to 5-4. Curtis Lazar had an in-close shot turned aside by Andrei Vasilevskiy with two seconds to play.
Corey Perry, Alex Killorn, Nikita Kucherov and Brandon Hagel also scored for the Lightning, who have won nine straight at home. Vasilevskiy made 36 saves.
Delia stopped 30 shots, and Conor Garland and J.T. Miller added goals for Vancouver. Hughes added two assists and has 201 career points.
“We started the game really well. We’re just having a tough time stringing together 60 minutes,” Tyler Myers said.
“Certain blocks of the game where we make mistakes that cost us, Ended up being too much for us to come back.”
The Canucks have dropped five in a row on the road.
Vancouver defenceman Oliver Ekman-Larsson was a healthy scratch after going a combined minus-5 over the previous two games.
“I think he can be better, but I think there’s a lot of guys that can be better now,” Vancouver coach Bruce Boudreau said before the game.
“It’s something you don’t want to do. He’s arguably our best defenceman but sometimes you just have to do what you think is the best thing for the team right at that moment.”
Up next for Vancouver is the Florida Panthers on Saturday night.
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