Girardi, J.T. help carry Lightning
Given a second chance in overtime, Victor Hedman didn’t miss. And he helped run the Lightning’s winning streak to a perfect 10.
Hedman scored at 3:25 of the extra period and the Lightning extended its franchise-record stretch with a 4-3 victory over the Rangers on Wednesday night.
Tyler Johnson and former Rangers J.T. Miller and Dan Girardi also scored for Tampa Bay, which has an NHL-lead- ing 102 points. Nikita Kucherov added three assists to give him a league-leading 74. An- drei Vasilevskiy collected 33 saves.
Kucherov sent a drop-back pass to Hedman, who skated toward the net and wristed a shot for his eighth of the season. Hedman saw a breakaway earlier in overtime stopped.
“You have to give them credit, they found a way again,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said of his team. “Kind of what they’ve been doing all year.”
Tampa Bay has not lost since a 1-0 OT defeat against St. Louis on Feb. 7.
“It means it’s hard for teams to catch us,” Cooper said. “More importantly, it’s how you win the games.”
The Lightning will try to keep it going when it heads to Boston to face the second-place Bruins tonight. The Bruins are also on a roll as they have at least one point in 14 consecutive games.
“Now we’ve got to go to Boston and they’re waiting for us, back to back for us, so this should be a good test for us,” Cooper said.
Jimmy Vesey scored a goal and picked up an assist for the Rangers. Mika Zibanejad and Boo Nieves also scored. Alexandar Georgiev had 26 saves.
The Rangers got off to a slow start in their first game since the trade deadline on Monday when they sent forward Kevin Hayes to Winnipeg and defenseman Adam McQuaid to Columbus.
“I felt for the first time we were a bit nervous about how we were going to look without the guys we traded, especially against that team.” Rangers coach David Quinn said.
“I thought once we got that goal to start the second, our whole mentality changed, felt like on the bench a bubble burst. I thought we got back to doing what we’ve been doing.”