TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Shootout Kind To Bolts Again

ADVERTISEMENT

By ERIK ERLENDSSON, The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 5, 2007

TAMPA - The bottom line was the bottom line for Tampa Bay on Tuesday with a victory that pulled them out of the bottom.

Vinny Prospal scored the deciding goal in the fourth round of a shootout to give Tampa Bay a 4-3 win against the top-ranked team in the Eastern Conference, the Ottawa Senators.

Mathieu Darche, Chris Gratton and Filip Kuba scored in regulation and Johan Holmqvist stopped 26 shots to give the Lightning a second consecutive victory to lift Tampa Bay from 14th in the Eastern Conference to ninth, six points behind Southeast-leading Carolina. The Lightning improved to 17-6 all-time in shootouts, including 11-2 the past two seasons. Holmqvist improved to 10-1, and after stopping three of four Tuesday, has allowed five shootout goals on 37 attempts.

It didn't matter that the Lightning knocked off an Ottawa team that came in winless in its past six and now has its longest winless streak (0-4-3) since 1997. It didn't matter that Tampa Bay twice lost two-goal leads in the third period. And it didn't matter that the players were just as upset about losing the leads in the third as they were happy to come out with the win.

The end result is what Coach John Tortorella was going to accent Tuesday, deflecting any negativity while concentrating his postgame comments on the positives in knocking off a team that has historically given Tampa Bay fits in recent history, winning 19 of the previous 24 regular-season meetings.

"There's been enough sarcastic people around our hockey team right now that I'm not even going negative right now," he said. "We knew we were going to get their best and they're a heck of a hockey club and I thought we stood right in there. Even through that third period I thought we were playing very well, so I'm real happy with the team."

A 2-0 lead was built on goals from two of the secondary threats the Lightning have been looking for - Darche finishing off a check before finishing off play when Jan Hlavac intercepted a Wade Redden pass in the slot - and Gratton scoring his first in 21 games by tapping in a feed from Marty St. Louis just as a Redden power play expired.

Tampa Bay carried that lead into the final period before things started to unravel a bit when Daniel Alfredsson scored the first of his two goals in the period on a rebound at 7:05. Kuba answered 2:03 later when he cut down the slot for his third of the season for the type of comeback goal that buries most teams.

But a desperate Ottawa team rallied with a pair of goals 36 seconds apart in the final two minutes - with Redden scoring at the 18:39 mark of the third - to force the game to overtime and eventually to a shootout, where Brad Richards and Prospal beat Ray Emery to ensure the game ended up in the win column.

"We let them take the game over and we still have to fix the problem as far as giving up the lead," said Darche, who now has three goals in the past three games, "but we got the two points and that's what matters in the end."

And the fact that the team assessed their third-period play and what they need to do to correct things - Tampa Bay has lost three third-period leads of at least two goals in the past two weeks - is the proper type of self-assessing Tortorella likes to see.

"The team has always been that way," he said. "Some of the clowns around here in the local media don't understand that."

Reporter Erik Erlendsson can be reached at (813) 259-7835 or eerlendsson@tampatrib.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT