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Holmqvist Stars As Lightning Win Again

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By ERIK ERLENDSSON, The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 17, 2007

Updated: 11/17/2007 12:47 am

TAMPA - Nights like Friday are just the type of pick-me-up performances a team needs throughout the course of a season.

The type of game where the things appear just a tad out of sync, where the game feels a little off kilter, where the other team looks to have more hunger in its game. It was the type of game in which the goaltender needs to be on top of his game.

And Johan Holmqvist was.

The Lightning won their fifth consecutive game with a 5-2 victory against the Washington Capitals, who have dropped 12 of their past 16 games since starting the season 3-0. The win pulled Tampa Bay to within four points of Southeast Division-leading Carolina.

Tampa Bay stars Brad Richards, Marty St. Louis and Vinny Lecavalier all notched a goal and a pair of assists, but it was Holmqvist's 28 saves that paved the path to victory.

"That's the goalie's job and Homer certainly has done his job, tonight especially when I don't think we were on our game through most of it," Lightning coach John Tortorella said. "Teams that end up being there at the end of the year win these type of games. So credit goes, starting with Homer right on through the team as far as just trying to find a way to win."

While the Lightning have been piling up the offense, scoring 24 goals during the winning streak that started on Nov. 7, Holmqvist has quietly put together a solid stretch of his own, stopping 141 of 148 shots (.953 save percentage) and a 1.40 goals against average. But it has necessarily been the quantity of the stops, it's been the quality of the saves and the times in which they have come.

"He's making some saves and that's allowing us to still play the way we do offensively," Richards said. "Tonight we were probably cheating at some times and doing things we shouldn't have, but he's there to hold the fort and that's the way we could get the breaks that we did."

Though Tampa Bay opened the scoring on Lecavalier's goal 1:31 into the game on the Lightning's first shot, Washington came out charging, surging almost from the start of the game. And within a span of 44 seconds midway through the second period, the Capitals had the lead after Brooks Laich deflected a Shaone Morrisonn shot at 12:46 and Alex Ovechkin found some open space near the top of the circles to unleash a wrist shot at 13:30.

It was then Tortorella called time out to try to settle things down and get his players refocused on the game.

"I thought we were being out-battled before our first goal and after we scored that goal," Tortorella said. "I thought to myself, 'Where are we going to go? Is it going to help us or do we think it's going to be an easy one?' And I really felt they took it to us as far as battles, especially in our end. We couldn't get the puck and when we did, we watched them play."

Andre Roy followed the timeout with a fight against Donald Brashear and Jan Hlavac answered with his third goal of the season after intercepting a Milan Jurcina pass 46 seconds after Roy landed in the penalty box.

From that point it was a whole lot of Holmqvist and enough capitalizing on offensive chances to pull out the victory with a Richards' power-play goal 10:22 into the second and a back-breaker by Paul Ranger with 27.6 seconds left in the period.

"It was a good feeling when we tied it up 2-2 in the first, we just knew we had to regroup and go out and play two stronger periods," said Holmqvist, who stopped Ovechkin on a breakaway with six seconds left in the second period, one of 19 shots he stopped in the final two periods.

St. Louis sealed the game with an empty-net goal with 24 seconds left to pick up Holmqvist, who provided one of those pick-me-up nights as the Lightning improved to 8-1-1 at home.

"He's been playing great, very consistent ... can't say much more than that," Ranger said of Holmqvist. "He's been unbelievable a couple of these nights here."

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

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