SEATTLE \u2014 Nikita Kucherov scored three goals for his sixth career hat trick and added two assists as the Tampa Bay Lightning beat the Seattle Kraken 6-2 on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
Brandon Hagel had a goal and three assists for the Lightning, who remained four points behind first-place Buffalo in the Atlantic Division. Anthony Cirelli added a goal and two assists, and Gage Goncalves had a goal and an assist.<\/p>\n
Bobby McMann and Jared McCann scored for the Kraken, tied with the Los Angeles Kings at 71 points for the final playoff spot in the Western Conference.<\/p>\n
Kucherov entered tied for 10th in the NHL in goals and added to his total with 1:11 remaining in the first period. The six-time All-Star made it 3-0 less than a minute into the second and scored his 37th of the season into an empty net with 2:44 left in the third.<\/p>\n
It was Kucherov\u2019s second multigoal game this month and seventh of the season. Seattle, which won back-to-back games last weekend, trimmed its deficit to 3-2 with a couple of second-period goals.<\/p>\n
McMann, acquired from Toronto at the trade deadline, scored his fourth goal in three games with the Kraken. His debut was delayed because of a visa issue that was resolved on Friday.<\/p>\n
McCann brought the Kraken within one when he put a nifty move on Tampa Bay goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy and scored over his left shoulder. Vasilevskiy made 16 saves.<\/p>\n
That was it for Seattle, though. Cirelli put the Lightning up 4-2 on a wraparound goal early in the third, and Hagel scored on the power play at 16:54.<\/p>\n
Philipp Grubauer stopped 19 shots for the Kraken, who made their only playoff appearance in 2023.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Lightning: Play at Vancouver on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
Comment with Bubbles<\/p>\n
JOIN THE CONVERSATION (2)<\/p>\n
Kraken: Play at Nashville on Thursday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEATTLE \u2014 Nikita Kucherov scored three goals for his sixth career hat trick and added two assists as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-196289","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\/196289","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=196289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}