Goncalves finished with a goal and two assists for a career-high three-point performance. He played much of the night on a line with Kucherov and Point, and all three players finished with three points.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a conversation on the bench and then in between periods that we thought Gonzo has been playing really well, and he’s played really well with that line in the past, so we thought we’d give that a shot,\u201d Zettler said. \u201cAnd he (Goncalves) responded. I thought he played really well tonight. And then (Brandon Hagel) has always been a fit with (Jake Guentzel), they play well together. So that gave us three solid lines that you can play against anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kucherov\u2019s assist on the 2-0 goal was the 700th of his NHL career. He became the ninth-fastest player in NHL history to reach the mark by doing so in his 855th game, and he joined active NHLers Alex Ovechkin and Evgeni Malkin as the only Russian-born players to collect 700 assists.<\/p>\n
Kucherov made it 3-0 with his 30th goal of the season in the third period, ripping a one-timer from the right circle after a touch pass from Goncalves. Toronto got on the board thanks to a power-play goal from John Tavares with 3:41 left in the game, and Point\u2019s second goal of the night 11 seconds later offset a late tally from Matthew Knies for the 4-2 final score.<\/p>\n
Defenseman Charle-Edouard D\u2019Astous also posted a multi-point performance with two assists in his return to the lineup from a five-game absence due to injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously it’s nice to be back, be playing with the guys again and being part of the success,\u201d D\u2019Astous said postgame. \u201cI think we have such a good group of guys, and we’re doing really good on the ice. So being back at it, it’s really good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy made numerous stops on Toronto rush chances, including multiple breakaway stops on Nylander. He finished with 32 saves on 34 shots and is now 17-0-1 in his last 18 games since Dec. 20 while leading the NHL in wins this season.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay\u2019s win improved them to 20-1-1 over their last 22 games, and that\u2019s no coincidence if you ask the players in the room.<\/p>\n
“I think everyone’s on the same page,\u201d D\u2019Astous said. \u201cEveryone\u2019s working toward one goal, and it’s to win. I think we’re playing really good in our zone and when we have a little breach, Vasy’s there to save us, or JoJo (Jonas Johansson) too. I think everyone is stepping up when we have injuries and everyone’s coming in to play big roles. I think overall everyone is buying in where we have that same goal in mind.”<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay had added motivation on Thursday\u2014they played the back-to-back without head coach Jon Cooper, who was on personal leave following his father\u2019s passing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Goncalves finished with a goal and two assists for a career-high three-point performance. He played much of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-171043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}