The Canadian Press
Darren Haynes
CALGARY—Falling behind early to one of the hottest teams in the league could have been a recipe for disaster for the struggling Lightning.
But Brian Boyle made sure it wasn’t.
Boyle erased the deficit by scoring the next two goals before the first period was through, and Tampa Bay held the lead for good en route to a 6-3 win over the Flames—snapping Calgary’s six-game winning streak.
“That’s a really good team over there,” noted Boyle. “A lot of speed, a lot of skill.
“They’re tough to play at home and they’ve been hot,” he added.
“It’s never a perfect game but we made some strides tonight.”
After Troy Brouwer’s power-play goal gave the Flames a 1-0 lead, the Lightning tied it at 10:04—converting their first man advantage with Boyle neatly re-directing Victor Hedman’s point shot past Chad Johnson.
Hedman, who had three assists on the night, also had a hand in Boyle’s second goal four minutes later when Boyle got behind TJ Brodie after a nifty give-and-go with Valtteri Filppula and beat Johnson with a deke to his backhand.
“[Hedman] was a monster tonight,” Boyle lauded. “He’s such a huge part of our team.
“Head up on the first one,” he noted. “I just kind of had my stick out in the air and he hits it, sandlot style.”
Another big contributor offensively was Alex Killorn, who scored a pair, including an empty-netter, and also added an assist.
Braydon Coburn and Andrej Sustr had the other goals for Tampa Bay (15-13-2), which won for just the second time in nine games (2-6-1).
Filppula also had three assists.
“It wasn’t the start we wanted but I’m pretty happy with the resiliency of our group coming back,” said Killorn.
“You can’t always control the way that the game starts, but you can control how you respond to that and I think we responded really well.”
Brodie and Micheal Ferland also scored for Calgary (16-14-2).
Sean Monahan had an assist to extend his career-best scoring streak to eight games.
It’s the second-longest active streak behind Sidney Crosby’s nine.
“I give them [the Lightning] credit,” said Flames’ coach Glen Gulutzan.
“I thought they were the hungrier of the two teams and the margins were small, and they deserved to get points out of there.”
The Flames had two chances to tie it early in the second but Johnny Gaudreau hit a goal post while Ferland squandered a breakaway.
Shortly after, Coburn put the Lightning up 3-1 when his slapshot from the blueline beat a screened Johnson.
It was Coburn’s first goal in 102 games.
Sustr’s first of the season at 18:47 made it 4-1.
“There are going to be games where you just don’t have it,” said Brouwer.
“It’s a shame because I actually thought we were pretty good to start the game and I liked where we were at.
“But then we let a couple floater shots from the point get through—things that are uncharacteristic of us,” he added.
Gulutzan replaced Johnson with Brian Elliott to open the third period and, just as his season has gone, it didn’t start well for the veteran.
A juicy rebound was buried by Killorn 37 seconds in for a short-handed goal.
Goals 21 seconds apart from Brodie and Ferland got the Flames back in it with just over 15 minutes still to go, but they could get no closer.
Ben Bishop made 19 stops to improve to 9-10-1.
Johnson, who yielded four goals on 21 shots, was tagged with the loss to fall to 13-5-1.
Elsewhere in the NHL, San Jose beat Ottawa 4-3 (SO), Pittsburgh nipped Boston 4-3 (OT), and Philadelphia edged Colorado 4-3.
