Wild play Lightning close but drop third straight to end road trip

Steven Stamkos’ objective – on the night time he was honored for beforehand reaching 500 profession targets – was the difference-maker within the Minnesota Wild’s 4-2 loss to the Lightning in Tampa Bay Tuesday night time. 

It formally goes down as Stamkos’ 505th profession objective and it got here with 5:38 left within the third interval. Making issues worse was a penalty on the Wild simply 40 seconds after the go-ahead objective that put Tampa Bay on the facility play and pushed Minnesota up agains the wall. 

The Wild killed the facility play but additionally erased two minutes of invaluable sport time. 

Wild coach Dean Evason determined to drag goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury with 2:30 to play and it it almost paid off a couple of occasions as Minnesota utilized a ton of stress within the offensive zone, however Nikita Kucherov grabbed a unfastened puck despatched it into the vacant Minnesota internet with 14 seconds remaining to seal the Tampa win. 

The sport was performed tight begin to end, with no targets within the first interval adopted by the groups buying and selling two targets every within the second body. Joel Eriksson Ek’s short-handed tally acquired the scoring began. Corey Perry then tied it 1-1 six minutes later, adopted by Kirill Kaprizov scoring his twenty seventh of the season to place Minnesota up 2-1. 

Perry’s second of the night time tied the sport 2-2 with 1:55 to left within the second and the sport remained tied till Stamkos scored late within the third. 

The loss is the third straight for Minnesota as they wrap up a 4 sport highway journey on the East Coast, having received in Washington, D.C. earlier than consecutive losses at Carolina, Florida and Tampa Bay. 

Minnesota will get a day to catch their breath earlier than internet hosting the Philadelphia Flyers in St. Paul Thursday at 7 p.m.