Jake Guentzel scored the lone shootout goal and the host Tampa Bay Lightning rallied from a four-goal deficit to beat the Boston Bruins 6-5 Sunday night in a Stadium Series game played at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ football stadium.
Guentzel, who had two assists, beat goaltender Jeremy Swayman (41 saves) for the go-ahead marker in the top of the third round, and netminder Andrei Vasilevskiy (29 saves) watched as David Pastrnak hit the post on Boston’s third try, giving Tampa Bay its largest comeback victory in franchise history.
Nikita Kucherov scored and had three assists, and Brandon Hagel had a goal and two helpers. Darren Raddysh produced a power-play goal and an assist, and Oliver Bjorkstrand and Nick Paul netted on power plays to help the Lightning win their first home outdoor game in franchise history.
Boston’s Morgan Geekie tallied twice in a three-point outing, and Alex Steeves, Viktor Arvidsson and Matthew Poitras hit the net. Charlie McAvoy posted two assists.
After each club arrived in unique attire – the Lightning in the Buccaneers’ creamsicle orange original uniforms and the Bruins as patriots from the Revolutionary War – the Lightning ignited the crowd 11 seconds in when Hagel ripped a shot over Swayman on a historically cold night with the temperature in the 30s for the 64,617 fans in attendance.
But Boston capitalized when Michael Eyssimont fed Steeves for a tying one-timer in the slot at 11:24 then grabbed its first lead with 4:24 remaining in the first when Geekie got a piece of McAvoy’s shot and trickled a score between Vasilevskiy’s pads.
On the club’s third power play, Arvidsson clipped in a tally on a similar effort from McAvoy at 18:03 to put the Bruins up 3-1.
In his second NHL game of the season, Poitras lifted a backhander into the net just 2:22 into the second for his first goal of the campaign. Geekie added his second at 8:18 for a 5-1 lead, which seemed safe.
However, the contest became chippier after Bjorkstrand made it 5-2 on the power play at 10:28. Minutes later, Swayman and Vasilevskiy soon squared off in a rare goalie fight, the first of each of their careers, at center ice.
With four Bruins in the penalty box, Raddysh and Paul each tallied on five-on-three power plays to cut it to 5-4 as Tampa Bay scored three man-advantage goals in less than six minutes.
In the third, Kucherov wired a tying goal with 8:10 remaining for the Lightning’s fourth unanswered tally.
–Field Level Media
