TAMPA — Brian Boyle scored the game-winning shorthanded goal 7:42 into the third period to lift the Tampa Bay Lightning to a 6-4 win against the Edmonton Oilers at Amalie Arena on Tuesday.
Tampa Bay (25-17-4) has won six straight games and got goals from six different players. Ondrej Palat, Vladislav Namestnikov,Nikita Nesterov, Nikita Kucherov and Alex Killorn also scored for the Lightning.
“Kucherov, Johnson, Killorn all played well,” Palat said. “It’s huge to be able to roll out four lines and have chances. We found our swag, we are playing with more confidence and making plays.”
Zack Kassian, Mark Letestu, Leon Draisaitl and Iiro Pakarinen scored for Edmonton (19-24-5), who had its two-game win streak end.
Boyle’s ninth goal of the season came on a miscue by Oilers goalie Anders Nilsson. After clearing the zone, Nilsson left the crease to play the puck out at the right circle and Boyle beat him to the spot and scored into the open net.
“That’s a great bounce for us,” Boyle said. “Great block. (J.T. Brown) sells out, blocks a shot and it starts right there. I saw [Braydon Coburn] had full control so I just took off. I saw it land and it almost bounced backwards, maybe it didn’t, but it stopped pretty dead. Almost like he had a 60-degree wedge there. It was rolling on me and the angle was getting worse and worse but it found a way in. Thank goodness.”
Killorn added an empty-net goal with 26.7 seconds remaining.
The Oilers rallied from a two-goal deficit early in the third period to tie the game 4-4.
Down 4-2, Draisaitl’s 11th goal of the season came at 2:10 in the third off an assist from Taylor Hall. The Oilers caught the Lightning on a line change and left defenseman Jason Garrison alone to defend a 2-on-1. Hall forced Garrison to commit to a side and placed a pass to Draisaitl, who beat Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy on the stick side.
Pakarinen then tied the game at 4-4 when he sent a shot from the right circle on net and it got pass Vasilevskiy on the short side.
“We’re not going to win too many giving up five,” Oilers coach Todd McLellan said. “Misplay or not, at the end of the night that’s too many. They’re too talented a team for us to play as loose and poorly as we did in our zone. I thought some of our grinders did their thing tonight. I wasn’t overly impressed with a lot of our skill players. I don’t think they produced or performed to the level we needed to.”
Palat gave the Lightning a 3-2 lead at 6:09 of the second period. Namestnikov made a drop pass to Palat in the crease, and he scored his fourth of the season. Namestnikov added to the lead at 17:12 in the period with a tip-in off a shot from Palat.
Steven Stamkos had assists on each goal.
“A win is a win, we’re take it with the way things are going right now,” Stamkos said. “But not great when you give up a two-goal lead in the third period. We’ll adjust those.”
Stamkos said the team is showing more maturity by staying composed after faltering early in the period.
“We’re finding ways in situations where earlier in the season we might have panicked and lost complete control of the game,” Stamkos said. “It’s probably going to happen a couple more times this season and we have to stay calm and collected.”
Letestu had a shorthanded goal with 34 seconds remaining in the first period for Edmonton to tie the game 2-2.
“We beat ourselves,” Letestu said. “Last three games, we’ve been getting points and making teams earn their offense. [Tuesday] we gave easy offense, whether it was breakdowns or not competing in areas. I thought we played into their hand a lot. We didn’t manage the puck well.”
Vasilevskiy had 22 saves for the Lightning, who will host the Chicago Blackhawks in a Stanley Cup Final rematch on Thursday. Nilsson had 25 saves for the Oilers.
“You know we’ve turned the page on last year, but the storylines are going to read, ‘Stanley Cup Final [rematch],’” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “But they won [Tuesday] and their streak is at 12 and we’re at six so that’s 18 wins between us. It’s going to be good one.”
Source: Lightning win sixth straight, defeat Oilers by Corey Long