Tampa Bay (18-15-3) rallied from two goals down with 10 minutes to play and then won in overtime against the Montreal Canadiens, and Toronto (15-12-7) gave up the lead in the third period, only to outlast the Florida Panthers with a shootout win.
“Definitely motivated for this one — big points for us,” said Toronto’s Frederik Andersen after the win against Florida. “We’re close in the standings, so we’ve got to be ready for these kind of games. I think we played well.”
Toronto has won three straight, including a 6-0 win at Colorado and 4-1 win at Arizona before the holiday break, so they come to Tampa ranked seventh in the league in scoring at 2.9 goals per game.
Leading that charge are a pair of 19-year-old rookie phenoms in center Mitch Marner and Auston Matthews. Marner, the team’s top pick in 2015, has eight goals and 18 assists, and he added the game-winning goal in shootout Wednesday. Matthews, the top pick in this year’s draft, added a goal and assist Wednesday to give him 17 goals and 11 assists on the season.
The Lightning got a familiar spark in Wednesday’s win as the “Triplets” line of Tyler Johnson, Nikita Kucherov and Ondrej Palat, back together after injury absences, combined for three goals and three assists in a 4-3 win over Montreal.
“It’s a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately league,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “So by the time 7:30 starts tomorrow, it’s not going to matter too much, but we’re two points farther ahead than we were a few hours ago. When you have a bad loss, you have to turn the page, and when you have a good win like we did tonight, you want to hold onto that feeling, but you have to understand we have to carry that into tomorrow and can’t hang our hat on it.”
Tampa Bay got key players back in Palat and Kucherov, but was still without forward Cedric Paquette, who remains injured, and forward Valtteri Filppula, who was scratched after missing a team meeting on Wednesday morning. Filppula will be available and needed on Thursday against Toronto.
The Lightning saw Vladislav Namestnikov skate off after getting boarded hard in the third period, and rookie Brayden Point also was unable to finish the game, so Cooper said he expected to have another call-up or two from Syracuse to help his team fill out its lineup against Toronto. Tampa Bay has another home game Saturday, so the team is getting healthy at a time where their depth and conditioning will be tested after the holiday break.
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