The Tampa Bay Lightning beat the Dallas Stars at Amalie Arena in Tampa, Florida on February 14, 2019 Credit: Twitter (@PR_NHL)

We’re 14 days into February, and for some reason the Tampa Bay Lightning’s Tyler Johnson and Braydon Coburn spent part of their Valentine’s Day at Tampa International Airport playing with Southwest Airlines jets. Sadatay — it’s a fun time to be on this team. The Bolts entered their Thursday contest against the Dallas Stars riding their second-longest point streak (seven) and having not lost in regulation all month. The good times rolled, in a very big way, during a 6-0 undressing in front of a lovely Amalie Arena crowd.

It only took 13 minutes, but Steven Stamkos, Mikhail Sergachev and Tyler Johnson all scored goals within eight minutes of each other to chase Stars goalie Anton Khudobin out of the net after facing just seven shots. Backup goalie Landon Bow (on the roster since the Stars’ Ben Bishop was out after he tweaked something during Dallas’ 5-4 victory against the Arizona Coyotes last Monday) got a rude welcoming from Nikita Kucherov who scored his 26th goal of the season less than two minutes later.

Khudobin returned to the net in the second period, but didn’t fare much better than he did in the first. Blame the soul-crushing frame on Lightning center Alex Killorn, who dinged one off of the Stars netminder to bring the tally to 5-0 with 11:37 left in the second, and Stamkos who added his second power play goal of the game to move within three goals of tying Vincent Lecavalier for most goals by a Lightning player in franchise history. By the time the horn sounded on the second, Khudobin had stopped just 16 of the 21 shots that a very confident Lightning team sent his direction.

Needless to say, Stars fans were not treated kindly on this Valentine’s Day.

The third period saw Bow back in net, and despite two Bolts power plays, the Lightning mercifully pumped the brakes in mustering up just two shots in a frame that found Tampa Bay sweeping its two-game season series against the Stars. Andrei Vasilevskiy, for his part, is now 5-0-1 against Dallas all-time and tied for most shutouts in Lightning franchise history with 17.

With the win, the Lightning became the first team in the NHL to reach the 90-point mark while Kucherov extended his league lead in points by notching four on a night that saw him finish with 92 points in the 2018-19 campaign so far.

The Lightning close out their three-game homestand with a Saturday night game against the Montreal Canadiens. Puck drop at Amalie Arena is at 7 p.m.

This article appears in Feb 14-21, 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...