Lightning beat Capitals for third straight win
TAMPA — Andrei Vasilevskiy’s performance Monday against the Washington Capitals featured its share of jaw-dropping saves against one of the league’s quickest and most dangerous offenses.
But one stop stood out most, and it might have been the biggest moment in the Lightning’s 3-2 win at Amalie Arena.
Tampa Bay trailed by a goal and was killing off the final seconds of a Washington power play at the start of the second period. Defenseman John Carlson flicked the puck down the ice from just outside his own blue line, banking it off the end boards to the left of the net. Evgeny Kuznetsov skated on to the puck and passed it across the crease to Tom Wilson.
Vasilevskiy appeared to be beat but quickly slid across the goal mouth and swatted Wilson’s wrister out of the air with his glove, keeping it a one-goal game.
Three minutes later, Alex Killorn scored a game-tying goal in front of the net. Anthony Cirelli’s power-play goal midway through the second period gave the Lightning the lead. But it was Vasilevskiy’s shorthanded save that turned the momentum.
“It’s huge, especially at the start of the period,” said center Brayden Point, whose early third-period goal wound up being the winner. “That’s an incredible save. Vasy comes over so fast, and he takes so much space away from guys. It’s pretty remarkable to watch. He had a couple game-savers, I thought (Monday). It’s a different game out there without Vasy, for sure.”
The win gave the Lightning (5-3-1) their third straight victory after a sluggish start out of the gate. They handed the Capitals (5-1-3) their first regulation loss of the season.
It’s no coincidence the Lightning’s improved play has coincided with Vasilevskiy being at his best. Following his 31-save performance on Monday, Vasilevskiy owns a 1.33 goals-against average and .954 save percentage over the past three games.
Cirelli scored the go-ahead goal on a 5-on-3 power play less than nine minutes into the second period. He assisted on Tampa Bay’s other two goals.
As time wound down on their 1-minute, 20-second, two-man advantage, Victor Hedman found Barre-Boulet in the right circle, and he flicked a pass off the stick of defenseman John Carlson to Cirelli in front of the net. Capitals goaltender Vitek Vanecek reached back to try to make a poke check, but Cirelli backhanded the puck into the net.
The Lightning were just 1-for-18 on the power play in six games without Kucherov before Cirelli’s goal.
The win also could be attributed to what Tampa Bay was able to do on the penalty kill against a Capitals team with one of the game’s top power-play scorers, forward Alex Ovechkin.
Killorn’s slashing penalty put the Lightning down a man with 1:35 left in the first, but defenseman Erik Cernak blocked two Ovechkin one-timers from the left circle, taking one on the wrist and another on the foot.
“That’s how you win hockey games,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “It takes so much courage to stand in there. You know he’s not passing. So it’s mano-a-mano.”
Vasilevskiy’s save on Wilson came 17 seconds into the second period, as the Lightning started the period on the penalty kill for the first 25 seconds.
“You just don’t want to be in the position to chase games, and (Vasilevskiy) prevented us from doing that and then we ended up getting the lead,” Cooper said. “We scored right after that. That’s the key. It’s (almost) 2-0, and now it’s 1-1 all because of the timeliness of that save. Who knows what happens after that, but those are game-changing.”
Killorn scored his fifth goal in his past four games just over three minutes into the period when Cirelli corralled a loose puck off an offensive-zone faceoff and slid a pass through the crease to Killorn in front of the net.
Point gave the Lightning a 3-1 lead early in the third, taking a pass from Taylor Raddysh in the neutral zone and breaking in alone on the left side before beating Vanecek top shelf.
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