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DiPietro Baffles Bolts Again

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By ERIK ERLENDSSON, The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 22, 2008

UNIONDALE, N.Y. - Perhaps Thursday became the official stopping point of necks craning to check the scoreboard.

Maybe a 1-0 loss to the New York Islanders that stopped the Lightning's streak of road games with at least a point at 10 will be the breaking point of optimism for a team that still firmly believed it was in a playoff race.
Rick DiPietro stopped 32 shots for his second shutout of Tampa Bay this season, with both coming at Nassau Coliseum. He improved to 3-0 against the Lightning this season, stopping 92 of 94 shots.
Miroslav Satan scored the only goal of the game early in the third period to spoil an otherwise solid night by Tampa Bay rookie goaltender Karri Ramo, who stopped 27 shots and has allowed three goals in his past two starts.

Combined with Carolina's victory against Atlanta, Tampa Bay sits 10 points out of the Southeast Division lead with 21 games left in the season.

"We enter a third period tied 0-0 on the road, and still in position to win the game, and I think we played a pretty good third, but we can't give up that type of chance," center Brad Richards said. "But you have to score a goal in order to win a game."

The Lightning do, however, have to be credited for continuing to battle despite sitting in last place in the Eastern Conference. And considering the outside forces aligning to bog the team down - continued unresolved ownership situation and trade rumors flying around like a swarm of bees - the team has not given in.

"I don't know any other way but to keep fighting and keep trying," said defenseman Dan Boyle, one of the players who has been mentioned in trade rumors.

The first period Thursday looked an awful lot like the opening 20 minutes from the night before in Buffalo as the Islanders tilted the ice in their favor. And it was the oft-maligned goaltending that kept Tampa Bay in the game, as it has for the better part of the past month. Ramo, making his second start in the past eight games, followed up Johan Holmqvist's 42-save effort by stopping all 14 shots he faced in the first.

The Lightning turned things back the other way in the second period, outshooting the Islanders 11-7 while also killing off a pair of penalties. But DiPietro, who was making his 10th consecutive start in net, matched Ramo in the New York end, especially on the power play late in the period in which the Lightning had four shots on goal.

Satan finally broke the scoreless tie early in the third period as he skated across the Tampa Bay blue line and took a Sean Bergenheim pass. With Shane O'Brien tangled up with Mathieu Darche near the left boards and Filip Kuba down too low, Satan skated unchecked into the slot area between the circles and fired a wrist shot past Ramo at 5:37.

"We hold them to eight or nine scoring chances, then we make a huge mistake on a read by our defensemen and it ends up in our net," Lightning coach John Tortorella said. "Then we don't score. You knew how that game was going to be played as we went through, it was who makes the mistake and we made a pretty big one off a pretty easy rush coverage."

Vinny Lecavalier, who had a game-high six shots, had the best chance to pull Tampa Bay even when his wrist shot from the right circle hit the far post and deflected right back to DiPietro, who covered up the puck with 5:10 left in the third.

"That was pretty close, it could have hit him and went in or something like that, but ... what can you do," Lecavalier said.

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

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