Kari beats old team

(Tampa) - It has been a very weird season so far for the Tampa Bay Lightning and it continued on Monday night. The Lightning hosted the New York Rangers and Kari Lehtonen started against his former team, looking for his 5th win in a row. The Lightning, who started off so poorly, have played well lately and with other teams starting to fall back a little, are now closer to making the playoffs, then they were a month ago. With a little help and some better play the team is looking to win the division and make the playoffs again to defend the Cup. Last night, the Lightning wanted to get a quick start on the ever improved Rangers and hopefully come out on top with another victory.

NYR 3 - TB 4
Looking at the score, you figure that the Lightning were in control of the game but the Rangers were the dominate team from start to finish. The shots will tell it all, with New York outshooting the Lightning 37 - 18. The only stat that Tampa was able to win, was the scoreboard and once again it is the oldest player on Tampa that lead the way.

First Period
The Lightning did exactly what they wanted to do. They scored early to get the fans into the game and make the Rangers play catch up hockey. 1:41 into the first period, Sullivan scored a PP goal to give the Lightning an early 1-0 lead. Savard made a great pass to Stevie and he ripped a shot over the glove hand of Dunham with Hejduk providing the screen. Five minutes later Varlamov was sent in all alone on Dunham, made a quick move to his backhand and tucked the puck behind a sprawled out Dunham for a big 2-0 lead. From that point, the Rangers really clamped down and didn't allow another shot on net, and really pressed the Lightning. The Rangers scored 2 PP goals before the period was over to tie the game at 2. Redden scored his 5th on the PP when his point shot hit Svehla's leg and the re-direction was too much for Lehtonen to handle. At 17:01, Nash scored his 8th of the season when he took a down low pass from Pyatt and slammed it into the back of the wide open net, again on the PP. After the 1st period, the game was tied 2-2 and the Rangers had a 14-6 lead in shots.

Second period
The game was a bit closer in the second period with the Rangers outshooting the Lightning 11-8. Again, Lehtonen was extremely busy and very good in the period and he stopped all 11 shots in the period. The Lightning regained the lead early into the period, when a wide open Lemieux one timed a pass from Hejduk to beat Dunham on the stick side low. The period was a close battle with very little hitting and looked like both just wanted to get the game over with.

Third period
A very early goal again, 3rd goal in 3 periods to be early proved to be the game winner. Mario did it again, scoring his 2nd of the night and 24th in 42 games at the 19 second mark in the 3rd to give Tampa a 4-2 lead. Tampa only had 4 shots on net in the period and seemed to play a very defensive game, trying to hold onto the lead. Bure scored his 26th of the season, when he tipped a shot in from Redden to make it 4-3 but that is how the game ended. The Rangers outshot the Lightning 12-4 in the 3rd but could not get the tieing goal against Lehtonen.

Lehtonen has now won 5 in a row, the Lightning have won 4 in a row as a team and are tied with 53 points with 4 other teams. They have tied the Leafs and Bruins on top of the division and look to move even further up in the standings. Gm Sprackman has decided to play Kari until he loses the job. He has played well over the last 5 games and right now has the hot hand. Look for him to play a significant amount of games down the stretch and hopefully get the team into the playoffs.