The Tampa Bay Lightning handed the Vegas Golden Knights a 6-2 loss Tuesday night at T-Mobile Arena, improving to 7-2 on the season — their best start since the 2020-21 campaign when they repeated as Stanley Cup champions. Vegas entered the game having won seven of its previous eight contests.
Anthony Cirelli led the offensive charge with two goals in the second period, the first coming off a Nikita Kucherov assist to make it 3-2, followed by an unassisted tally that pushed the lead to 4-2. Brandon Hagel, John Carlson and Victor Hedman also scored for Tampa Bay, which tallied five goals on just 14 shots through two periods. Kucherov added a breakaway goal early in the third to cap the scoring.
Kucherov finished with a goal and two assists, bringing his career total to 1,137 points and tying former teammate Steven Stamkos for the franchise record. The Russian forward has now recorded at least one point in all 15 career games against the Golden Knights, a streak surpassed only by Mario Lemieux (26 games vs. Calgary) and Tomas Sandstrom (17 games vs. Tampa Bay) in NHL history.
Andrei Vasilevskiy turned aside 32 shots for the Lightning. For Vegas, Ivan Barbashev scored his first goal of the season and Mark Stone netted his fifth in three games. Carter Hart stopped 15 of 21 shots in net. Golden Knights forward Brett Howden, a 2016 first-round pick by Tampa Bay, appeared in his 500th career NHL game.
Sources: 8 News Now
Original reporting: 8 News Now →
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