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Tribune News Service
Sport
Diana Nearhos

Lightning end Sabres' winning streak in exciting game

TAMPA, Fla. _ It was up and down and back and forth. The Lightning led. The Sabres led. The Lightning led. The Sabres led. The Lighting won. The Sabres' winning streak ended at 10 games.

Neither team ever had more than a one-goal lead.

Defenseman Dan Girardi called it a playoff-like atmosphere.

"If you're a fan of hockey and you're in the building tonight, you're pretty happy with that one," coach Jon Cooper said after Thursday's 5-4 win.

Three of those lead changes were in the first period, one of the most exciting periods the Lighting have played all season.

Girardi scored first, three minutes into the game. He pinched in and was in at the post to bang in a rebound on Alex Killorn's shot.

"Just stood in front of the net," the defenseman said. "Somehow I get down there and no one covers me. (Killorn) made a great play. I had a good look at it. The rebound sitting there, put it in."

That lead stood for almost six minutes, the longest of any in the period.

Zemgus Girgensons redirected a shot by Rasmus Ristolainen from the point to knot it up 1-1. About a minute later, Sam Reinhart scored to put the Sabres on top. Goaltender Louis Domingue got a piece of the shot but it deflected up into the air and behind him.

No problem. Alex Killorn responded to tie it up 43 seconds later. Goalie Carter Hutton left the crease to cut off J.T. Miller's angle, but the puck bounced out to Killorn with a wide open net. Nikita Kucherov gave the Lightning the lead late in the period on a beautiful shot from the slot, placed just under the crossbar in the top corner.

The rest of the lead changes weren't quite so dramatic, but there were a couple more of them through the latter two periods.

The Sabres took a 4-3 lead early in the third period, and Steven Stamkos tied it back up with the first power-play goal of the game less than two minutes later.

Cedric Paquette scored the game-winner with 5:41 to play. Mikhail Sergachev left a nice drop pass at the top of the circle. Paquette picked it up and wristed it past Hutton.

It wasn't just all the lead changes that made it exciting, though. That first period was also one of the chippiest the Lightning have played all year.

"They're a top team in the league, winning 10 in a row," Girardi said. "Coming into this building, they wanted to send a message. I thought that was a really good first period for us. Really physical in each others faces."

Girardi temporarily a victim of that physicality. He took a hit from Tage Thompson that was part-collision, part-hit with knee-to-knee contact and had to be helped off the ice and to the dressing room.

"I got pretty lucky," he said. "My knee really hurt, but it was just a little bump and the pain went a way I got lucky I wasn't injured more."

Ryan McDonagh was less lucky. He was boarded by Jack Eichel, a hit made worse by the fact that McDonagh was already leaning forward and went head first into the boards. He left the game in the first period, about the same time Girardi returned, and did not come back.

That was when the game really picked up in physicality as the scrums got bigger after the whistle. Nathan Beaulieu was called for a 10-minute misconduct after he and Zach Bogosian hunted down Cedric Paquette at the end of the first period.

It never got out of hand, but there was a little extra electricity running beneath the current of the game.

"Just a run of the mill Tampa-Buffalo game, I guess," Cooper joked.

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