Tampa Bay’s Alex Killorn scored in the shootout’s sixth round as the Lightning won their sixth straight home game, rallying to beat the New York Rangers 2-1 on Thursday night.
After Tampa Bay’s Brayden Point and New York’s Artemi Panarin scored in the first three rounds, Killorn entered with speed and beat Rangers goaltender Igor Shesterkin with a shot past the backstop’s blocker.
Andrei Vasilevskiy (45 saves) then denied defenseman Adam Fox to lift the Lightning to a 2-1 win in the session and improve them to 14-4-1 on home ice.
With the win, Vasilevskiy moved to 15-9-1 and won for the second straight night after beating Montreal 4-1 on Wednesday. He is 17-7 in shootouts.
In the second of his team’s three-game homestand, Point scored a goal for Tampa Bay, which is 9-3-0 in December. The club is 6-4-1 against the Metropolitan Division.
Tampa Bay survived a full four-on-three power play by the Rangers in overtime after defenseman Victor Hedman committed a tripping penalty.
For the Rangers, Mika Zibanejad found the net, and Shesterkin made 39 saves. The goalie fell to 4-6 in his career in the shootout.
Zibanejad, who scored four goals in three games last season against the Lightning, opened the scoring by taking a pass from Ryan Lindgren and sending it home from the high slot at 12:45. The goal was Zibanejad’s 16th of the season.
In the crease for the second consecutive night on back-to-back matches, Vasilevskiy was strong and kept the deficit at one goal by making saves on breakaways by Vincent Trocheck and Vitali Kravtsov. He also stuffed Kravtsov from in close after the young left wing deked his way past Hedman.
At 4:49 of the second, Shesterkin held a puck near his blocker, but Brandon Hagel grabbed it, tossed it onto the blue paint and had it slide in for a goal. However, after a quick review, the tying tally was disallowed for a hand pass.
The netminders again were the stars of the scoreless second. Over the 20 minutes, Shesterkin stopped 14 shots, and Vasilevskiy denied 19 by the Rangers, including a robbery of Filip Chytil from below the right circle.
In the third at 5:32, Point notched his team-leading 20th marker on a short feed from Steven Stamkos by bouncing a shot off Shesterkin to tie the game at 1.
-Field Level Media
