Bruins Beat Tampa Bay
TAMPA, Fla. - Brett Connolly scored the go-ahead goal for the Boston Bruins in a 3-1 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning on Saturday.
Connolly gave Boston (6-3-1) its fifth straight road win with a wrist shot that went above the stick of Lightning goalie Ben Bishop to give the Bruins a 2-1 lead at 5:54 in the third period.
Bruins center Brad Marchand added an empty-net goal with 1:10 remaining in the game. He also had the assist on Connolly's goal.
Tampa Bay (5-5-2) took a 1-0 lead on a power-play goal from forward Nikita Kucherov, who scored his third goal of the season. Kucherov came in late to make give the Lightning a 3-on-2 advantage and sent a snap shot high on Bruins goalie Jonas Gustavsson.
Boston tied the game at 1-1 at 16:53 of the first period when left wing Matt Beleskey made a great individual effort to send a shot past Ben Bishop while on his knees.
Gustavsson, making a spot start for Tuukka Rask, had 21 saves and improved to 3-0-0 on the season. Bishop had 32 saves for the Lightning.
NOTES: Lightning D Matthew Carle is a healthy scratch. He does not have a point this season in 11 games and has a minus-3 rating. Carle told the Tampa Bay Times that it was a coach's decision. "I'll let (Jon) Cooper make comments about that," Carle said. "Better coming from him than me. I'll let him speak to that." ... Bruins G Jonas Gustavsson started in place of Tuukka Rask with the Bruins being on the second part of back-to-back games. ... Lightning C Tyler Johnson was in the lineup after missing practice Friday with a "body maintenance" day. Forwards Jonathan Drouin (lower body) and Cedric Paquette (ankle) were both out. ... Coming into Saturday, the Bruins were scoring 35.5 percent of the time on their power play, best in the NHL.
