Although the entire Tampa Bay Lightning team made a solid effort on both sides of the puck against the Canucks after falling behind by two goals, they still lost the contest 5-4 in a shootout thanks to a lone goal by Mason Raymond in the shootout.
In what was another slow first period for Tampa Bay, it fell behind by two goals. The first goal was a bit unlucky for the Lightning. It was a power play goal scored by Edler seconds after Martin St. Louis was sent off for supposedly interfering with Vancouver goaltender, Cory Schneider. Although the men wearing stripes thought it was worthy of a goaltender interference call, it certainly did not appear to have been a penalty at all. St. Louis was in fact run into by a Canucks player. Nonetheless, the Canucks took the early lead.
When it seemed like the Lightning could take advantage of its own power play call, the Canucks instead grabbed momentum and extended their lead on a shorthanded goal from Jannik Hansen.
Even though the Lightning were down by two goals, Steven Stamkos cut that two goal deficit in half when he scored at 10:12 of the second period after Ryan Malone fed it to him from the corner boards. Then, Manny Malhotra, who has lacked in the scoring department lately, scored minutes later to extend Vancouver's lead to 3-1.
The Lightning didn't back down though and continued to push, generating more pressure and quality shots on Schneider in the second period. Schneider though, was focused on occupying the net, and he did that quite well in the middle stanza. With only 60 seconds left in the second period one did go in, thanks to a wrist shot from captain Vincent Lecavalier.
Seconds later though, Ryan Kesler ran into Tampa Bay goaltender Roloson and appeared to have interfered with him, but instead scored a goal and the on ice officials did not see it in the Lightning's favor, giving the Canucks a two goal lead going into the third period. The Lightning played strong in the third period and Steve Downie banked in a goal on the rebound past Schneider at 6:14, making it a 4-3 game. Tampa Bay, now with 11 points in the Eastern Conference, outworked, outmuscled, and outplayed the Canucks in the third period, who are first place in the Western Conference. In the winding minutes of the third period, Roloson was pulled, and with the extra attacker, the Lightning tied it up thanks to a goal by Ryan Malone. With no goals scored in overtime, the game led to a shootout where Canucks' Raymond scored the lone goal when he made a spin around move to beat Roloson. Even though the Lightning lost this game, there were a lot of positives throughout the game tonight. Here Tampa Bay is playing a first place Vancouver team, and they battled for an entire 60 minutes with them. Although they were behind 4-2 in the second period, the Lightning scored two unanswered goals to send it into overtime. THAT is a solid effort and something the team can surely build upon.