Lightning strikes late in win
Tyler Johnson broke a tie on a power play midway through the third period to help the Tampa Bay Lightning beat the Florida Panthers 5-3 on Sunday.
Yanni Gourde and Brayden Point each had a goal and an assist, Alex Killorn and Mathieu Joseph also scored, and Curtis McElhinney stopped 29 shots to improve to 3-3 1. The Lightning opened a four-point lead over Florida in the Central Division standings.
Patric Hornqvist, Carter Verhaeghe and Gustav Forsling scored for Florida, Aleksander Barkov had two assists, and Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 19 shots.
Johnson drove down to tap in pass from Gourde to make it 4-3. Point added an empty-netter with 14.3 seconds left.
The game marked the fifth time the state rivals faced each other while holding down first and second place in the division through at least 15 games. In happened twice in 2015-16 and twice in 2003-04.
Tampa Bay defenseman Ryan McDonagh left after the first period with an undisclosed lower-body injury and did not return. McDonagh’s final shift ended with 21 seconds remaining in the period.
Devils 2, Penguins 1 — Jesper Bratt scored on a wraparound at 2:50 of overtime and New Jersey beat Pittsburgh in the third consecutive meeting between the teams.
Bratt took a pass from Pavel Zacha and quickly circled the net, tucking a shot between the post and the skate of Penguins goaltender Tristan Jarry for his first career overtime gamewinner.
“(Jarry) was kind of covering everything for me to shoot at, and I didn’t want to force a bad-angle shot, so I just tried to wrap it,” Bratt said. “I saw he kind of got caught with one of his legs that he couldn’t push through to the other side and I saw my chance to wrap around quick.”
The Devils won for the third time in four games.
The Devils had three wins in their previous 13 games before Sunday.
Bratt scored his second of the season and continued a four-game point streak, while Sami Vatanen also scored his second of the season for New Jersey. Mackenzie Blackwood stopped 35 shots for the Devils. He played his first game since aggravating an upper-body injury during warmups on Thursday.
“Mackenzie came up huge for us and had some big saves,” Bratt said. “I think we played harder as a group. We wanted to compete and we wanted to win.”
Sidney Crosby scored his 12th of the season for Pittsburgh. The Penguins lost for the third time in four games, following a six-game win streak. Jarry made 33 saves for Pittsburgh.
“We generated some decent changes, but we couldn’t capitalize,” Crosby said. “It was a close game and in overtime anything can happen. We had our looks and we didn’t put them in.”
Crosby opened the scoring at 3:37 of the first period. He was near the goal line when he took a crossice pass from Jake Guentzel and snuck a shot between Blackwood’s outstretched skate and the post.
“It was disappointing to have that first goal go in, but I thought our response was really good,” Devils coach Lindy Ruff said. “We stuck with it and we got rewarded by the end of the game.”
Vatanen tied the game at 4:48 of the second period. The Devils swarmed the Pittsburgh net following a power play and Vatanen converted when his slap shot beat Jarry to the glove side. Vatanen, who is one point from 200 in the NHL, has points in three of his past four games.
Kings 3, Golden Knights 1 — Sean Walker and Dustin Brown scored 51 seconds apart in the second period, and Los Angeles snapped the Golden Knights’ fivegame winning streak.
Cal Petersen made 41 saves and fell just short of his second career shutout as the Kings avenged the Knights’ 4-2 win at Staples
Center on Friday. Captain Anze Kopitar had two assists.
Tomas Nosek scored for the first-place Golden Knights to end Petersen’s shutout bid with 3:27 to play, but Jeff Carter scored a breakaway goal 55 seconds later to seal the Kings’ first win over Vegas this season.
Marc-Andre Fleury stopped 28 shots, but Vegas lost for only the third time in 14 games.
Petersen’s only shutout was on Nov. 19, 2018, in the Iowa native’s third NHL start and fourth appearance. He spent much of the next two seasons in the minors with occasional shots in Los Angeles, but the Notre Dame product has solidified his NHL spot this season, sharing the Kings’ net with Jonathan Quick.
After a scoreless first period, Walker put the Kings ahead with his first goal of the season, shoving the puck under Fleury during a prolonged scrum at the edge of the crease. The stay-at-home defenseman hadn’t scored a goal since
Feb. 12, 2020.
Vegas handed a power play to the Kings by unsuccessfully challenging Walker’s score for goalie interference, and Brown cashed in moments later from close range for his 14th goal of another solid season.
The Knights had a twoman advantage for 91 seconds early in the third period after a questionable delay-of-game call against Drew Doughty, but the Kings killed it all.
Vegas sharply increased its offensive pressure in the third, and Nosek scored when Petersen got only a piece of his hard shot with the glove.
The Kings lost defenseman Olli Maatta in the first period to an upper-body injury.
Before the game, Kings defenseman Matt Roy agreed to a three-year, $9.45 million contract extension. The former seventh-round pick has played his way into a regular role in Los Angeles over 120 games, recording seven assists in 25 games this season.