Guentzel and Kucherov Pepper Pickard as Lightning Escape St. Paul
Tampa Bay finally wins a road game that should have been comfortable, with three shots off the posts keeping the Wild alive into overtime.
Tampa Bay owned this game from start to finish, and the final score barely shows it. The Lightning outshot Minnesota 34-22 and more than doubled the Wild in total shot attempts, 83-42, yet needed extra time to escape with a 4-3 win.
The chances tell the same story. Tampa Bay piled up 4.19 expected goals, a measure of how many goals their chances were worth, while Minnesota's added up to about half that. The power play did the heavy lifting, scoring 3 times on 6 chances.
Calvin Pickard kept the Wild in it with 30 saves, including 12 of 13 shots from in close. The posts helped too: Brandon Hagel, Jake Guentzel and John Carlson each rang one off the iron.
Guentzel still finished with 2 goals and 3 points on 7 shots. Nikita Kucherov fired 9 shots, and Charle-Edouard D'Astous added 3 points. At the other end, Dennis Hildeby made 19 saves on 22 shots and gave up more than Minnesota's chances deserved. Max Shabanov scored both of his goals on just 3 shots in 13:19 of ice time.
The Lightning improve to 10-3-2 and win on the road for just the third time. The Central-leading Wild had their three-game winning streak snapped.
