TAMPA, Fla. _ Take your hand off the panic button. The Lightning is all right. In fact, the Lightning are more than all right, much more.
The Lightning have won four in a row with a total of 22 goals.
Tampa Bay added that fourth win on Thursday, with a 6-0 win over Dallas.
The Lightning hasn't had a stretch like this since it started the 16-game point streak with four wins of five goals Nov. 20 though Dec. 4.
How'd the team turn it around?
"It's hard to score at rate we've been scoring for 82 straight games," coach Jon Cooper said before the game. "I think I said this the other day, it's a testament to the group when you get shut out in regulation in a two-out-of-four-game stretch and you still get three points out of it. That's a good sign. It's just a matter of time. The power play has been pretty consistent all year and our ability to score throughout our lineup has helped us. As the season goes on, the defense gets a bit tighter which makes it harder to score which makes it more impressive when the guys are scoring the way they are. I don't know if anything's really changed other than the puck is going in the net."
On Thursday, the Lightning started with four goals in the first period. Tampa Bay had five goals from five scorers before Steven Stamkos notched his second for No. 6.
Stamkos also had the Lightning's first. He scored a one-timer from the bottom of the left faceoff circle for a power-play goal, 7:19 into the game.
Later in the period, Mikhail Sergachev and Tyler Johnson scored 14 seconds apart. Sergachev sent an impressive wrist shot over Anton Khudobin. Johnson caught up to the puck, tipped ahead by Stamkos, and sent it between Khudobin's legs.
Nikita Kucherov rounded out the period with a wrist shot from the slot with 5:20 to play.
Alex Killorn added the fifth goal 8:23 into the second period. His shot banked off Khudobin's pad and into the net. Stamkos' second power-play goal came eight minutes later, again from the left circle, but this time he settled and took a wrist shot.
Andrei Vasilevskiy recorded his fifth shutout of the season, tying Ben Bishop for the Lightning record with 17 all-time shutouts.
