Lightning fall in overtime to Toronto

While the Tampa Bay Lightning continue to attempt to make a playoff push, they keep getting shoved further down the Eastern Conference standings.

With just one win in the past eight games - after Thursday's 4-3 overtime loss to Toronto - Tampa Bay sits six points behind Boston for the final playoff spot with 16 games left on the schedule. And with each point lost, the road gets that much more complicated to navigate back up the standings.

"We have to go on a streak, we have to, everyone knows that," said center Steven Stamkos, who scored for the seventh consecutive game while extending his points streak to 18 games.

It was hard to fault the effort put forth against a Toronto team loaded with young talent looking to make an impression. But the execution level needs to match the effort if the Lightning are going to have a chance to qualify for the postseason for the first time in three seasons.

"We are going to be judged on the results at this time of the year, not on how hard you are working, especially when you are a team on the outside looking in," said alternate captain Marty St. Louis. "For us it's about results right now. We just can't seem to find that.

"I still don't think we are making it hard enough on teams, so we just have to work, keep pushing and believing that we can make a run. I don't know, we are six points behind and six points is a lot, but it can be done.

"We just have to win one game and get on a run, we just haven't been able to do that in a long time."

Tampa Bay's only win in the past eight came Saturday vs. Atlanta as the Lightning have fallen from the sixth spot in the conference - which they occupied following a win against Vancouver on Feb. 9 - to the 11th spot during the current 1-6-1 stretch.

It would help if the goaltending, which was a strength when the team was winning games early in February, would provide more stability in net. Though Mike Smith stopped 34 shots Thursday, and couldn't be faulted on Phil Kessel's winner on a 2-on-1 break in overtime, he let in two shaky-looking shots off the stick of Viktor Stalberg.

Stalberg's first goal came on a 2-on-1 when the puck glanced off Smith's glove at 9:29 of the second that tied the game at 1. Then about five minutes later, Stalberg put a soft wrist shot through Smith's legs, which opened up as he tried to swat the shot to the corner.

"We have some defensive zone coverages and it seems it ends up in our net every time we make a blunder," Lightning coach Rick Tocchet said of one of the recent trends. "That's a tough thing to swallow. You have to keep the guys up in their energy level because that's demoralizing."

Tampa Bay battled back to tie the game twice on goals by Kurtis Foster and Steve Downie, and had several prime chances in OT just before giving up the 2-on-1 on an errant pass attempt.

"We were pushing to get that goal," St. Louis said. "I don't have any regrets on how that shift went besides getting the loss. ... We worked on that shift, we just didn't get the goal."