The Tampa Bay Lightning’s slow start is a distant memory, while the New York Rangers hope their home woes can start fading away.
The Lightning will attempt to run their winning streak to seven games on Saturday afternoon when they visit the Rangers.
Tampa Bay opened with a 1-4-2 record when it lost five one-goal games. Since then, the Lightning are 14-3-0 and are on their second lengthy winning streak.
Tampa Bay has outscored opponents 26-9 in this streak, which continued with Friday’s 6-3 win over the Detroit Red Wings that gave them a fourth straight road win.
Darren Raddysh, whose brother Taylor plays for the Rangers, scored twice after the Lightning allowed the first goal midway through the first period.
Nikita Kucherov added two assists for Tampa Bay. He has four goals and 11 assists during an eight-game point streak after he had 14 points in Tampa Bay’s first 16 contests.
Yanni Gourde also scored twice for the Lightning, who finished with six goals for the second time this season.
“That was a pretty complete team effort,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “(Andrei Vasilevskiy) kept us close while we were shooting ourselves in the first period, and after we weathered that, we kind of took over from there.”
The Rangers are on their third three-game winning streak of the season but are 2-7-1 at home as opposed to 11-4-1 on the road. New York has won two of its past three home games after a seven-game winless skid and Saturday will start a run of eight of 11 games at home.
New York began its winning streak with Monday’s 3-2 victory over the St. Louis Blues. It then earned road wins over the Carolina Hurricanes and Boston Bruins.
In Friday’s 6-2 win at Boston, the Rangers scored the first four goals. Artemi Panarin and Carson Soucy scored in the first period before Mika Zibanejad added a pair of power-play goals 45 seconds apart in the second when the Rangers were outshot 17-5 and conceded on two goals in the opening 5:49 of the third.
“The power play, obviously, was the difference maker in the game, but I thought after (they outplayed us early in the second period), we responded,” Rangers coach Mike Sullivan said. “It happened a couple of times in the game, beginning of the third. Everything we talked about in between periods, we tried to set out to do. We really didn’t.
“And that was playing a simplified game and playing straight ahead and making them have to go 200 feet to work to get their scoring chances. That’s the challenge when you get up with a four-goal lead going into the third period.
The Rangers scored at least six goals for the fourth time and produced multiple power-play tallies for the third time this season.
Panarin set up both Zibanejad goals and had his third four-point game this season. He also has six goals and 13 assists over his past 12 games, and that includes three assists in New York’s 7-3 win at Tampa Bay on Nov. 12.
Vincent Trocheck also set up Soucy’s goal and a tally by Vladislav Gavrikov, giving him five goals and 10 points since returning Nov. 10.
–Field Level Media
