ELMONT, N.Y. — After Saturday afternoon’s 3-2 shootout loss to the Islanders, the Lightning left unsatisfied. Not because of the way they played but because given the way they dominated the game after falling behind by two goals early, they probably deserved a better outcome.
The Lightning don’t make their schedule, and Saturday’s game at UBS Arena was their third meeting with the Islanders in 12 days. And they might have caught them at a bad time as New York surged into first place in the Metropolitan Division on the shoulders of a stellar defense and a Vezina-type performance by goaltender Ilya Sorokin.
“Sometimes you just run into a team that has your number and has your number on the scoreboard,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “Have I been happy with the way we’ve played these three games? I have been. … You’ve got to give them credit; they took us out. But it can be frustrating at times because there’ll be probably a lot of stats that would say otherwise, but they got the most important stat in the wins.”
The Lightning came out of those three games with just one point, but all three were reminiscent of some of the postseason wars these teams had during Tampa Bay’s recent Stanley Cup runs, where every shot — and point — was hard-earned.
“Tight-checking games, not a lot of space,” Cooper said. “We were behind a bit. We needed to find a way to fight back, and we did, and then it came to the skill competition at the end [in the shootout] and they bettered us.”
With the point they salvaged from the shootout loss, the Lightning (18-11-3, 39 points) remained on top of the Atlantic Division standings. They earned five of a possible eight points on their four-game road trip, rebounding from a shutout loss in Toronto with two high-scoring wins in Montreal and New Jersey before Saturday’s final regular-season meeting with the Islanders.
“It’s OK, but you were hoping for more,” said Lightning defenseman J.J. Moser, who scored the tying goal at the 3:20 mark of the third period that eventually sent the game into overtime. “It’s just a little bit of that in-between that we’re feeling. But I think you got to take it.”
The Lightning put themselves in a quick two-goal deficit midway through the first period. Two penalties in the first 2:11 forced them into having to defend a 4-on-3 Islanders power play that ended with rookie sensation Matthew Schaefer’s goal 3:05 into the game.
An offensive-zone turnover by Nick Paul gave former Lightning forward Anthony Duclair a rush going the other way, and he was able to separate himself when defenseman Max Crozier stumbled in the neutral zone trying to retreat and found Cal Ritchie unmarked trailing for an open shot near the left hash.
Given the way Sorokin had played against the Lightning in the season’s first two meetings, stopping 62 of 63 shots, the Lightning faced a tall challenge moving forward.
“It’s not ideal to fall behind, especially against the team we haven’t really scored much on,” Cooper said.
The Lightning outshot the Islanders 17-1 in the second period, holding them without a shot for the first 13:32 of the period. They had six minutes, 23 seconds of power-play time, but managed just one goal out of the period.
Defenseman Darren Raddysh scored his fourth goal in three games on a 5-on-3 power play, rifling a shot from the high point past Sorokin to cut the lead to 2-1 with 9:47 left in the second period.
But Sorokin clamped down from there, making two remarkable saves in the remaining 54 seconds of 5-on-4 power-play time, executing a lunging blocker save on Oliver Bjorkstrand’s one-timer from the left circle and swatting Yanni Gourde’s rebound attempt out of the air in front.
“The other night [against New Jersey] we get eight, and then, tonight, we only get two,” Raddysh said. “You know, the chances are coming. I like the way we’re playing. I like everything about our game. … Maybe bear down a little bit more.”
The Lightning held New York to just seven shots in the second and third periods combined.
Moser tied the score early in the third following Jake Guentzel’s offensive-zone faceoff win. Nikita Kucherov gathered the puck and quickly found Moser wide open jumping up for a wrister at the left dot that beat Sorokin.
“I think we’ve obviously showed in the past that we’re never out of it, that we’re never giving up,” Moser said. “We kind of showed the patience today. I think that’s the one thing we didn’t always have.”
Lightning goaltender Jonas Johansson, who made his sixth straight start for injured starter Andrei Vasilevskiy, needed a bit of help in the third. Raddysh threw his foot in the way of a puck that had gotten by Johansson and was heading for the goal line in traffic. Raddysh also saw his wrister hit harmlessly off the left post with 22 seconds remaining in regulation.
After a scoreless three-minute 3-on-3 overtime, Sorokin saved two of the three penalty shots he saw — stopping both Guentzel and Kucherov — while Emil Heineman’s goal in the third round of the shootout was the difference after Mathew Barzal scored in the first round.
“It’s tough to not walk away with two points,” Cooper said. “But when they needed to defend, they did, when they needed the save, the goalie made it. And when they needed the post, they got that, too. So you add those up and it turns into only one of two for us.”
