Gage Goncalves and Jake Guentzel each scored two goals as the Tampa Bay Lightning collected just their third win since the Winter Olympics break, beating the visiting Detroit Red Wings 4-1 on Thursday night.
Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov had two assists and recorded his 1,100th career point, became the 72nd player in NHL history to reach the milestone.
Goncalves set a career high for goals in a season with 10 as the Lightning moved to 3-6-0 since the festivities in Milan.
Brayden Point posted two helpers for Tampa Bay, and goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 24 shots.
J.T. Compher scored while netminder John Gibson stopped 25 shots as Detroit slipped to 4-7-2 in the past 13 games.
The Red Wings announced that two of their centers, captain Dylan Larkin and Andrew Copp, would be out two weeks after lower-body injuries sustained in separate defeats against the Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers over the past week.
The shots were distributed evenly most of the first period, but the visitors went on the first power play at 16:14 when Detroit defenseman Justin Faulk was hooked by Kucherov.
The Lightning killed that one off and nearly scored on their first man advantage in the first period’s closing seconds, but Faulk got a stick in on Jake Guentzel to keep the frame scoreless with the home side holding an 8-5 shot advantage.
That power play carried over into the second, and Kucherov quickly dumped a pass over to Guentzel. The winger then sent in his seventh power-play goal by beating Gibson on the glove side just 49 seconds into the period.
With 3:19 left in the second, Vasilevskiy preserved his club’s one-goal lead by denying Marco Kasper’s open wrister, and the period ended with the shots even at 18-18.
Ninety-five seconds into the third, a double deflection in front of Gibson went in for the second Lightning goal, which was credited to Goncalves for his career high in markers for a season.
Playing as the top-line center in place of Larkin, Compher got a piece of Alex DeBrincat’s shot at 7:05, cutting the Red Wings’ deficit to 2-1.
Goncalves netted another at 16:22 before Guentzel’s empty-net goal 33 seconds later put the game away.
–Field Level Media
