By Mike Bonts
TAMPA (Florida Sports Wire) – The Tampa Bay Lightning earned their 9th consecutive win at AMALIE Arena on Thursday night, defeating the Vancouver Canucks, 5-4.
The Lightning will begin their season-long, 5-game road trip on Saturday night in St. Louis when they take on the Blues. The Lightning are 16-24-5 with 3 ties all time against the Blues, including a road record of 4-15-3.
LAST TIME OUT
The Bolts scored 2 power-play goals on Thursday night after matching a season-high 3 power-play goals on Tuesday night against Columbus. Tampa Bay has scored 8 power-play goals in their last 6 games.
The Lightning were outshot by the Canucks 40-35 and moved to 10-4-1 when being outshot by their opponent. Tampa Bay only outshot the Canucks in the second period when they posted 11 shots to Vancouver’s 10.
Lightning goaltender, Andrei Vasilevskiy made 36 saves on the 40 shots he faced to record his 18th victory of the season. Vasilevskiy’s 12 wins on home ice rank tied for the 2nd most in the NHL with Bruins netminder, Linus Ullmark.
STAMKOS STEAMS AHEAD
Steven Stamkos picked up his 29th assist of the season Thursday and 46th point with the primary assist on Nikita Kucherov’s goal at 15:44 of the second frame.
Stamkos recorded the 499th goal of his career with a one-time shot on a 5-on-3 power-play to make the score 5-2 at 5:30 of the third period.
The power-play goal was Stamkos’ 9th of the season which leads all Lightning skaters. His 21 power-play points this season rank 2nd among Tampa Bay skaters trailing only Kucherov (27).
Stamkos has pointed in 8 of his 10 career home games against the Canucks (7-8—15 pts.). Stamkos has registered points in 3 consecutive games (1-4—5 pts.) and has posted a multi-point performance in back-to-back contests (1-3—4 pts.).
Stamkos has picked up points in 23 of his last 26 games (11-23—34 pts.).
FOR THE RECORD
With the win the Lightning improved to 26-13-1, including a record of 17-4-1 on home ice. Tampa Bay’s 17 wins at home are the second most in the NHL trailing only the Boston Bruins (19).
The Bolts are 2 wins shy of tying their franchise record 11-game winning streak on home ice set in the 2019-20 season. The Bolt’s 9-game home winning streak is the longest active streak in the NHL.
Tampa Bay sold out their 308th consecutive home game.
NOTABLE
Vasilevskiy has won 7 of his last 8 starts against Vancouver, including 5 consecutive wins. Mikhail Sergachev played in his 400th career NHL game on Thursday.
(Mike Bonts is hockey editor for the Florida Sports Wire and SportsDay)