Down seven starting players against a bitter rival, the Tampa Bay Lightning turned to 23-year-old rookie forward Jack Finley to win an important bounce-back game.
The Lightning and Finley, who scored the game-winning goal on Saturday in a 3-1 road victory over the Florida Panthers, will host the Vancouver Canucks on Sunday in Tampa, Fla.
In a 1-1 match against the reigning Stanley Cup champions, the Lightning saw Finley net his first NHL goal in his seventh career game with a nifty backhander on a breakaway over standout goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky.
Not bad for a young center from St. Louis who was a 2020 second-round draft pick.
“A little bit of blackout,” said the 6-foot-6 center, who credited teammates who collected assists on the play. “It was obviously really cool to share that goal with (Scott Sabourin) and (Curtis Douglas). We’ve only played with each other the last two games, but we’ve been building a little bit of chemistry.”
Finley had a chance on Bobrovsky earlier, but the goalie came out and stuffed it. So Finley changed his approach on the next one.
“I told myself on the bench, if I get another one, I am going to make a move on him and I actually did, so it was good,” Finley said.
Before the win over the Panthers, coach Jon Cooper updated the injury status, saying, “If we’re going in order of coming back, I would say those two (center Anthony Cirelli and defenseman Victor Hedman) and (forward Brandon Hagel) are probably in the next little bit of, hopefully, coming back.”
Goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy improved to 6-5-2 in 13 games but likely will turn the net over to Jonas Johansson in the back-to-back Sunday tilt and third game in four days.
Johansson is 3-1-0 with a 2.83 goals-against average and a .913 save percentage.
Lugging a losing skid (0-1-2) to Tampa, Vancouver will continue its three-game road trip with the middle game of the swing.
Coach Adam Foote’s club has netted 10 goals in the three setbacks but is having a hard time keeping the puck out of its own net.
In the opener of its road trip on Friday, a 4-3 overtime loss to the Carolina Hurricanes, Foote said the home team’s talent, speed and forecheck presented a playoff-style contest for his club. Vancouver was without netminder Thatcher Demko (injured reserve) and team captain and defenseman Quinn Hughes (undisclosed).
“(The Hurricanes) are in your face,” Foote said. “We’re going to learn a lot from a game like that. It’s the closest you’ll see to a playoff game we’ve had so far. You learn a lot from games like that. They pressure, and you have to manage the puck or you’ll get burned. … It’s a good game for everyone to go through.”
As the Canucks prepared to head south, Foote was not sure of the status of the 26-year-old Hughes, who already has missed four games this season with a lower-body injury. He left Tuesday’s 5-3 loss to the Winnipeg Jets with an upper-body injury but later returned.
“He didn’t feel like (the injury) was right where he needed to be,” Foote said of Hughes, who has one goal and 12 assists in 14 games. “He wants to win and he wants to play, so we respect that call.”
In a corresponding move to Demko’s IR designation on Friday, the Canucks activated defenseman Victor Mancini.
Vancouver signed veteran center David Kampf on Saturday to a one-year deal with an average annual value of $1.1 million. Kampf, 30, was with Toronto, which terminated his previous contract. He had 13 points (five goals, eight assists) in 59 games with the Maple Leafs last season.
–Field Level Media
