Tampa Bay Lightning's Brayden Point, who scored two goals in the team's 3-1 win over the Carolina Hurricanes at Amalie Arena in Tampa, Florida on January 10, 2019. Credit: Twitter (@TBLightning)

It’s been almost three months since the Tampa Bay Lightning beat the Carolina Hurricanes 4-2 at Amalie Arena, and while the Lightning’s Tuesday night contest against Columbus was about starting a new winning streak, Thursday’s matchup between the Hurricanes and Bolts pitted two different kind of streaks against each other.

The Lightning entered the game having won eight in a row at Amalie Arena (and 11 of the team’s last 12 at home) while the Hurricanes blew into town riding a five-game winning streak of their own. It was a sloppy 52 minutes to start things off, but the Bolts somehow managed to eek out a 3-1 win despite trailing for most of the game after surrendering a goal to Carolina’s Justin Williams just four-minutes into the second period.

The Lightning got lucky in a first period which saw the Bolts work up just three total shots and struggle to counter an effective Carolina attack that managed to put 12 shots on Bolts goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy. The Big Cat, per usual, was sharp, and used his left leg to bail his defense out on a Lucas Wallmark chance from point blank range. The Lightning netminder bailed the Bolts out again late in the first during a 3-on-1 opportunity that was about frustrating as watching the Lightning fail to capitalize on a pair of Hurricanes penalties.

The MVP of the second period was easily Hurricanes goalie Petr Mrazek who stopped 12 Tampa Bay shots (including some beautiful chances from Kucherov), but give a gold star to the Hurricanes' replay room which phoned the bench to initiate a challenge on what could've been a beautiful Brayden Point goal. Boos rained down on the ice after the overturned call, but further review showed that Tyler Johnson was just barely offside as he entered the Lightning bench. Many argue that offsides should not be a challenge-able play, but the lines usually don’t lie, and replay paid off for the Hurricanes on the play.

It was a relief to see the Bolts wake up in the second on the way to allowing just eight Carolina shots in a frame that once again found the Lightning unable to capitalize on a pair of penalties that were negated after the Lightning committed penalties of their own. The shot count climbed in the third, and the Bolts finally took advantage of the power play when Ondrej Palat got one to trickle pass Mrazek, who had one hell of a game.

Point finally got the goal he deserved five minutes later when his 27th tally of the season put the Lightning up 2-1 with just over three minutes left in the game. Vasilevskiy survived a short flurry after the Hurricanes emptied their net, but Point netted his 28th goal of the season on an empty-netter that iced the game with just 25 seconds left on the clock.

Kudos to the boys in blue who deserve to pat themselves on the back after managing an ugly game and pulling out the W (and mega props to the "Uber Driver of the Night" who got to take the zamboni out for a post-victory lap — see below).

The Lightning travel to Buffalo on Saturday for a the first of three consecutive road games (the team plays the Islanders on January 13 and visits the Dallas Stars on January 15). The Bolts’ next home game is on Thursday, January 17 against the Toronto Maple Leafs.

This article appears in Jan 10-17, 2019.

Read his 2016 intro letter and disclosures from 2022 and 2021. Ray Roa started freelancing for Creative Loafing Tampa in January 2011 and was hired as music editor in August 2016. He became Editor-In-Chief...