How Haydn Fleury came up big for Lightning in win over Blues

TAMPA — Haydn Fleury played in only three of the Lightning’s first 28 games this season, but he has started to see the lineup more often over the past week and a half. In Tuesday’s home game against St. Louis, he suddenly was called upon to play big minutes for the Lightning in their 6-1 win.

When Mikhail Sergachev hobbled off the ice less than 13 minutes into the game after blocking a shot, unable to put weight on his left foot, it left the Lightning with only two left-shot defensemen, meaning Victor Hedman and Fleury would have to shoulder more of the load.

And in a game that at times was tighter than the lopsided score indicated, Fleury’s steady play was critical. He logged a season-high 22:23 of ice time, and scored his first NHL goal in more than two years, a stretch of 66 games played. Fleury, who was a team-best plus-4 on the night, was one of only four available defensemen for the final 5:29 of the game after Erik Cernak took a fighting major penalty.

And he seemed to love every moment of it.

“When you play with five (defensemen), you don’t really have time to dwell on a mistake or dwell on really anything or think about anything good,” Fleury said. “You kind of just get back to the bench, have some water and you’re right back out there, so you get a nice rhythm and it’s always fun. Guys were supportive on the bench and we went down to four for the last five (minutes), so it got even better.”

Fleury had entered the night having logged only 12:20 of ice time in six games this season.

“It’s a tough job,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said of Fleury. “It’s almost like the backup goalie who doesn’t get it every single night. Flares hasn’t been in every single night. But he’s giving you a reason to keep him in.”

The Lightning took a quick two-goal lead, and seconds after Blues forward Brayden Schenn hit the post, Nikita Kucherov’s seeing-eye wrist shot from above the circles through screens set by Nick Paul and Brayden Point squeezed past goaltender Jordan Binnington with 13.3 seconds remaining in the period.

Another goal by Kucherov 96 seconds into the second — a period in which Tampa Bay was outscored 12-0 during its just-completed five-game road trip — might have been even more important for the Lightning to shake their middle-period woes.

“That’s how close it was,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “That goes in on Schenn’s shot, now who knows how this game goes, but it worked out for us.”

This is a critical stretch for the Lightning — Thursday’s game was the beginning of a stretch of five home games in their next six to close out December — and they knew they needed to simplify their game. They drove to the net and were determined to create traffic in front to take away Binnington’s line of sight, and their greasy game led to a 2-0 lead after goals by bottom-six forwards Mikey Eyssimont and Tyler Motte.

Kucherov’s two goals gave him 22 on the season and improved his NHL scoring lead to 54 points. Paul had a three-point night, and Steven Stamkos logged three assists for his 99th career three-point night.

The win wasn’t perfect. The Lightning allowed 13 scoring chances in the second period, but Fleury’s first goal since a two-goal night on Oct. 28, 2021, put an exclamation mark on the win.

The Lightning cycled the puck in the offensive zone and Stamkos kicked it out to Fleury up top, who corralled a rolling puck and rifled a wrister from inside the blue line that wobbled through traffic and past Binnington, chasing him from the game and giving the Lightning a 6-1 lead.

Fleury said when he was a young player coming up with Carolina, defenseman Dougie Hamilton told him, “Always shoot a rolling puck.”

“He’s got a lot of goals as a D-man, so you can listen to him,” Fleury said of Hamilton, who has been one of the league’s top goal-scoring defensemen over the past decade. “It was a knuckler.. When it hit my blade, it got wobbly. It worked out tonight.”

Cooper didn’t have an update on Sergachev after the game, but he was seen exiting Amalie Arena with his left foot in a boot and on a scooter.

“Who knows what’s going to happen to Sergachev now,” Cooper said. “But Fleury’s asset is hit skating, and he really skated pucks tonight, especially breaking them out. So I thought that was big for us and his game.”

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