If losing to the team chasing them in the standings wasn’t bad enough, the Tampa Bay Lightning are also facing the possiblity that two more players on their roster may be injured. In their uninspired 6-2 loss to the Buffalo Sabres, Gage Goncalves and Dominik James went to the locker room early. Goncalves was shaken up by hit along the boards in the second period and James had his leg twisted underneath (similar to the Brayden Point injury against Philadelphia) late in the third.
The injuries were the icing on the cake in a game where the Lightning were played off of home ice by the visitors. Just like in their last game against Carolina, Tampa Bay was down early as Buffalo scored three times in the first eight minutes. Rasmus Dahlin scored first, followed by a pair from Josh Norris.
Unlike the Carolina game, there was no comeback for the Bolts in this one. Tage Thompson added a fourth goal before the period expired and then Zach Metsa’s early second period led to an odd sight – Jon Cooper pulling Andrei Vasilevskiy. The Lightning neminder finished his night with 9 saves on 14 shots. Jonas Johansson was solid in relief as he stopped 16 shots in the second period alone. James scored his second of the season to finally put the Lightning on the board.
In the third period, it looked like Tampa Bay might make a game of it when Oliver Bjorkstrand deflected a Jake Guentzel pass into the net on the power play. Upon review it was determined that the puck was sent in with a “distinct kicking motion”. Which, sure, by the letter of the law it was, but it was only a kicking motion because Bjorkstrand was tackled by Beck Melenstyn.
Guentzel reacted to the news poorly and was kicked out of the game for abuse of the officials. As the Lightning had started with an 11/7 line-up and Goncalves was already out of the game, that took the Bolts down to 9 forwards. Alex Tuch made it 6-1 shortly after the Lightning killed off the minor penalty that was assessed to Guentzel along with his game misconduct.
Victor Hedman scored his first goal of the season to make it 6-2, so at least he finally has that big zero off of his stat sheet. That was pretty much the only good news in the loss. It didn’t help that Ukko-Pekka Luukonen was sharp. He stopped Guentzel on a breakaway when the game was still relatively up for grabs and finished the night with 36 saves on 38 shots.
The Lightning have now played three games since the Olympic break and it hasn’t been that pretty. They managed to beat the Maple Leafs, but that was part Vasilevskiy playing well early and Toronto not being engaged. Tampa Bay did get their act together after getting behind against Carolina, but that game was filled with defensive miscues as well.
It seems like they’ve been struggling with reintegrating some of their defensive players and their in-zone coverage has been shoddy at best at times. On Saturday, their problems were compounded by the fact that they were simply outworked by Buffalo, something that hasn’t happened much at all this season.
They have a couple of days off before heading out on a tough road trip that begins in Minnesota. They will need to get their act back together or else the Wild, led by Quinn Hughes and Kirill Kaprizov, will absolutely pick them apart. The Bolts built themselves a little bit of a cushion prior to the break, but they need to figure things out quickly if they want to continue to control their destiny.
Highlights
Pretty Colors
#NHL GameScore Impact Card for Tampa Bay Lightning on 2026-02-28
#GoBolts
— HockeyStatCards (@hockeystatcards.com) February 28, 2026 at 10:03 PM