Hagel fires away as Lightning tilt the ice against Flyers

Tampa Bay carried the run of play and earned a 4-1 win because they kept creating the better looks shift after shift. By the math, the Lightning’s chances were worth more — expected goals, or how much their looks should have produced, ran 4.83 for Tampa to 1.86 against. And they owned the puck-territory battle too, controlling 64.8 percent of the shot attempts at five-on-five.

The engine was Brandon Hagel: eight shots and a post, constantly forcing Philly’s defense to react. Nikita Kucherov added touch with two helpers and another post, while Brayden Point and Pontus Holmberg chipped in finishes that spread the threat. Tampa rang iron three times overall, a sign the score could have stretched further on another night.

In net, Andrei Vasilevskiy needed just 13 saves, a byproduct of Tampa’s defensive lid. Across the rink, Dan Vladar stopped 32 of 35 to keep it within reach, but that workload exposed the Flyers’ difficulty sustaining pressure and generating shots at five-on-five.

For a club that’s 1-0-0 at home, this looked like repeatable control; for Philadelphia, the fix starts with more volume and quality before anything else.