NEWARK, N.J. — The Lightning went into the final minutes of Thursday night’s game against the Devils on their heels.
They had momentum going into the third period when Steven Stamkos scored 20 seconds after killing off a 5-on-3 power play to put Tampa Bay up 2-1, temporarily silencing the home crowd at the Prudential Center. Then Timo Meier’s goal midway through the third shifted the game.
Stamkos fired off another go-ahead goal, this one on the power play with 4:47 left in regulation, but Meier answered inside the final three minutes.
The Lightning earned two points, as Alex Killorn and Ross Colton scored in a shootout, taking four points from two road games in New Jersey.
As soon as the power play ended in the second, Stamkos and Erik Cernak sped into their own end and to the rescue. Cernak got the puck and pushed it up the ice along the far wall. Behind the net, he found Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, who has just jumped over the boards to give a gassed Antony Cirelli relief for the late moments of the penalty kill.
Stamkos was trailing and circled around the left dot before getting the puck and rifling a shot from the left hash past New Jersey goaltender Akira Schmid.
The Lightning captain had missed Tuesday’s game while recuperating from a left knee injury. Stamkos left Saturday’s game against Chicago when his knee locked up.
He feared he had torn his meniscus, because it felt just like his right knee meniscus tear in 2018. But when he got good news, he jumped back into the lineup on Sunday against Winnipeg. It was probably too soon, and he needed Tuesday off to recover.
Stamkos’ two-goal night was not only a big one for the Lightning, but also himself. He entered with just three goals over his last 21 games and was a minus-12 over that stretch. It was his first multi-goal game since Jan. 18, the night he scored his 500th career goal and notched a hat trick.
He played well on a new line, matched with Ross Colton and Nick Paul.
Colton, who grew up 50 miles down the New Jersey Turnpike in the Trenton suburb of Robbinsville, scored his first goal against a Devils team he grew up rooting for.
Colton opened scoring when Mikhail Sergachev’s shot on net hit off the lower right leg of Colton, who was camped by the right post, and past Devils goaltender Akira Schmid.
The score was created when Stamkos collected the puck from Paul’s faceoff win, took a Devils skater with him as he dropped the puck to Sergachev, who skated to the top of the left circle and rifled the puck toward the net.
