Tampa Bay’s Ilya Mikheyev scored twice against his former club, and the Lightning stayed spotless at home against the NHL’s worst road team by toppling the Chicago Blackhawks 4-1 on Thursday night.
Victor Hedman and Ryan McDonagh also tallied for the Atlantic Division club, which extended its franchise-record home winning streak to 8-0-0 to start a season. Erik Cernak had two assists.
Goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy made 25 saves in his 600th start, joining Sergei Bobrovsky (802) and Connor Hellebuyck (618) as the only active backstops to hit the milestone. He improved to 15-1-0 against Chicago.
Roman Kantserov scored, and goalie Arvid Soderblom stopped 31 shots as the Blackhawks were swept in back-to-back games in Florida and fell to 0-7-1 on the road.
Chicago’s four-game stretch, which includes Saturday’s contest at the Carolina Hurricanes, features matchups against 6 of the past 7 Stanley Cup winners.
The Lightning earned a 1-0 lead when Hedman worked a give-and-go with Anthony Cirelli. The big captain took the return pass and drove the slot, burying his fourth goal at 4:12 just as the match’s first power play was about to expire.
Mikheyev, a former Blackhawks winger, potted his third tally on a long shot above the left circle. Vasilevskiy kept the Central Division club off the board with a snappy glove save on Frank Nazar late.
The second frame opened with a heavyweight bout between Chicago’s Dillon Boucher and Tampa Bay’s Jeff Viel.
Boucher, who played his first NHL game Wednesday in a 5-3 loss to the Florida Panthers, engaged in his first league fight with his former Quebec Major Junior Hockey League foe, knocking Viel down briefly but also suffering a nasty, bloody cut above his right eye in the tussle at 1:59.
Soderblom opened the third with a point-blank stop of Brandon Hagel inside of two minutes, but McDonagh came off the bench on a line change and belted his second goal at 2:38 for a three-goal margin. Mikheyev later added his second goal.
Kantserov moved his point streak to seven games by scoring with 49 seconds left to spoil Vasilevskiy’s shutout.
–Field Level Media
