Woes in Boston continue as Lightning lose, 4-1

In a town that holds so much historical relevance, the Lightning's history in Boston holds only horror stories.

The trend continued on Wednesday in a 4-1 loss to the surging Bruins, who improved to 8-1-4 in their past 13 games. Tampa Bay, meanwhile, dropped to 3-18-9 all-time in Boston.

The latest loss for the Lightning kept the team winless in its past three games, tying a season-long stretch set in the opening three games and marking the first time Tampa Bay has had consecutive losses in regulation since Oct. 15-17.

Since beating the New York Rangers on Friday and exploding for five goals and rallying late to score three in Dallas the next night, Tampa Bay's offense has gone cold. The Lightning were shut out for the first time this season on Monday against Colorado and were well on their way to another inept offensive showing against Boston until Jeff Halpern snapped the scoreless streak at 107 minutes, 46 seconds with a goal early in the third period.

By that time, however, Tampa Bay was already down four goals as the line of Patrice Bergeron centering Marco Sturm and Mark Recchi accounted for three goals and eight points going against the Lightning's top line of Steven Stamkos, Ryan Malone and Marty St. Louis.

Stamkos lost the puck then lost Bergeron in front of the net on the second Boston goal, Sturm was allowed to crash the net and push in an uncovered puck on the third goal and defenseman Andrej Meszaros tried to skate through three guys in the defensive zone before losing the puck that allowed Sturm to tap in a Bergeron pass for the final Bruins goal of the night.

"We had some individual breakdowns," Lightning coach Rick Tocchet said. "There was more individual stuff than I would say it was the team, but the bottom line is when you don't score goals these are glaring mistakes."

Scoring goals can help overcome those mistakes, but putting pucks in the net for Tampa Bay has been a difficult task recently. A power play that was starting to show signs of being consistent with goals in seven consecutive games has now gone 0-for-13 in the past two.

And despite 40 shots against Tim Thomas on Wednesday, the production has quickly evaporated.

"It seems before we were not getting shots but we were scoring, now we are getting the shots but we are not scoring," said Stamkos, who leads the team with 17 goals. "It's tough because it's not coming from a lack of chances - pucks just aren't going in. We need to get more traffic to the net and keep it simple. I think 40 shots against a pretty good team, we'll take that every night, we just need to find ways to score more goals."

And the Lightning need to find a way to get more goals from just their top two scorers, Malone and Stamkos, who have combined for 32 goals on the season. Wednesday's game marked the first time all season that neither of the players scored a goal in consecutive games.

"We know how to score goals, we have the talent, it's just a matter of bearing down on the power play, which has been struggling of late," Stamkos said. "You just have to keep throwing pucks at the net, and eventually they have to start going in and you will end up with both the goal and a shot. Right now we are struggling to score goals, and as long as we keep working hard, we're going to get them.

"We have to find a way to bear down here. We can't let this slide on too long."