The Tampa Bay Lightning lost for only the third time last night when going into the third period with a lead. With a chance to move into 9th place in the East (2 points behind the Canadiens) the Lightning ended up giving away 2 points to the Florida Panthers who are now tied with the Bolts at 46 points and 12th place in the East.
The Panthers opened up the scoring in the 1st period with a goal on their very first shot. At the time the Lightning were up 7 shots to 0, were looking great, then had a defensive lapse and allowed the Panthers best player to skate behind the D. Nathan Horton took a great pass from Stephen Weiss and buried a wrister to make it 1 to 0. The Lightning answered back with two goals in the next seven minutes, a great Tip in by Jeff Halpern on a rebound from a laser by Vincent Lecavalier and the Steve Downie buried a wrister off an amazing pass from Ryan Malone.
The Lightning ended the period up 2 to 1 on 14 shots to 6 shots from the Panthers.
The Lightning had another flat 2nd period, kind of mirroring the 2nd period from Tuesday’s Caps game other than the Panthers still couldn’t put another puck in the net.
That flat play continued into the third period and the Panthers scored goals by Cory Stillman, and a blaster by Rostislav Olesz.
We finished the game with a 30 to 29 shot advantage but were outshot 23 to 16 in the 2nd and 3rd periods.
Matt Walker and Andrej Meszaros who both had great games finished with a +2 rating. Kurtis Foster and Victor Hedman had -2 ratings for the game. Martin St Louis led the team in ice time with 23 minutes.
FanSided
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