Lightning pull out another one in OT

Calgary put the Lightning through the grindstone Saturday, but it was Tampa Bay that came out polished on the other side.

Andrej Meszaros scored 1:57 into overtime to cap a comeback in a 2-1 Lightning victory, Tampa Bay's third in a row. Steven Stamkos scored his 32nd of the season one minute into the third to eliminate the one-goal deficit.

Antero Niittymaki stopped 25 shots to improve to 6-0-1 in his past seven starts.

Tampa Bay stayed entrenched in a playoff spot, holding down the No. 7 position one point ahead of Philadelphia and two points ahead of the New York Rangers. The Lightning are on a 6-1-1 run since Jan. 21 and a 9-1-2 stretch on home ice since Dec. 26.

The win was the 25th of the season for the Lightning, surpassing last season's total.

It didn't come easy.

Through two periods, Calgary clogged up the middle of the ice and stifled any Tampa Bay attempts to enter the offensive zone. When it came to the Lightning's five power-play chances, the Flames' three shots on goal matched Tampa Bay's output.

"That was one of the toughest games (of the season) for grinding it out. I mean, Calgary didn't give us much," Lightning coach Rick Tocchet said. "They played a playoff-style game and stayed on top of us pretty good."

The flip side of that, however, was that Calgary wasn't getting much in the form of opportunities. Though the Flames held a 20-10 shot advantage through two periods, the scoring chances were held in check. And the only goal came at the 15:44 mark of the first when a Mark Giordano wrist shot found a seam through a screen for a power-play goal.

"It's not so much what you get sometimes, it's what you give, and I didn't feel that we gave them that much," Lightning right wing Marty St. Louis said. "I wasn't too concerned about the amount of shots we hadn't taken yet, because we knew we hadn't given them much.

"So it was like, OK, we knew we needed one period to get back in the game and maybe win the game."

After a discussion during the second intermission about being more aggressive in the offensive zone, Stamkos - who celebrates his 20th birthday today - found a rebound in the opening minute of the final period and zipped in a backhander past Miikka Kiprusoff as Stamkos was falling down.

The goal brought life to the Lightning bench, and they turned it up a notch in the third period. The Lightning wound up outshooting the Flames 13-6 in the third period and overtime, with Meszaros notching the winner. After first fumbling the puck, he regained control and found enough of a crack for the winner.

"I was able to get it back on my stick and was able to shoot it short-side and I had a little space there, but I never knew it was going to go in. I just wanted to put a shot on net," Meszaros said.

Finding a way to pull out two points from a game like this that can wear down a team is an important lesson. As Tampa Bay battled inconsistency through the first two-plus months of the season, winning games proved to be a difficult lesson to master.

But with five of the past seven victories coming by one goal, improving Tampa Bay to 11-5-11 in one-goal decisions, the Lightning are starting to look like attentive pupils.

"This is a huge sign, being able to win a game like this from behind, and we almost won it in regulation," St. Louis said. "So, we are pleased with the team effort."

Figuring out how to pull out victories continues to be about staying with it and not going outside of the structure, one of the biggest points the coaching staff has been emphasizing this season.

That was evident Saturday night.

"The one thing with this team, it's OK to be down a goal or be at 1-1. We don't have to trade chance for chance," Tocchet said.

"I was kind of comfortable with the way we were playing defensively. I just didn't want us to press too much and (wanted to) stay with the system."