Raw Charge
Summary
If nothing else, the Tampa Bay Lightning can breathe a sigh of relief that they don’t have to play any more regular season games in Madison Square Arena. After a lackluster 5-1 loss to open their season against them two weeks ago, the Lightning followed it up with another sluggish game that led to a 4-1 loss. Alexis Lafreniere scored twice in the first period to give the home team the lead while Dylan Garand stopped 25-of-26 shots to pick up another win in place of the injured Igor Shesterkin. Zemgus Girgensons picked up his first goal of the season for the Lightning’s lone goal while Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 19-of-22 in the loss. While it was another rough night for the power play (0-for-4), the penalty kill was perfect, as they killed off all four opportunities against them. Jeff Viel was back in the line-up after missing the last game. Other than that, it was the same line-up that has propelled the Lightning to their four-game winning streak. Alright. Let’s talk about the first goal. Yes, it came way to way too early (1:02 into the game), but the Lightning were victimized by a bit of bad luck. The Rangers won the initial puck battle, but Brandon Hagel was in position to block the initial pass from behind the net. Instead of going harmlessly in any direction that would have benefitted the Bolts, it went right back to Tye Kartye. He tried the other side of the net and actually missed his intended target, J.T. Miller, who was tied up by two Lightning players. Somehow the puck trickled through all of the sticks and skates in the crease and right to Alexis Lafreniere, who fired it home. So, yeah, the goal was a bit unlucky. The rest of the period, well, it looked a lot like the first game against the Rangers. New York was winning just about every puck battle and they controlled the puck for the majority of the period. If the Lightning’s game plan was to test youngish Dylan Garand, they failed by not having the puck enough. A lone foray into the zone by Brayden Point was the highlight of their offensive output for most of the period. The Lightning did manage to kill a penalty-and-a-half in the period (and Zemgus Girgensons had a nice chance short-handed), but their own abbreviated power play was very much wanting. Lafreniere made it 2-0 midway through the period when he was at the end of an alley-oop pass from Kartye. Lafreniere warded off the stick check of Anthony Cirelli and beat Vasilevskiy. Down two goals, Jeff Viel swallowed some courage pills and picked a fight with Matt Rempe. Viel may not have won the fight, but he held his own after an early stumble. Since the Lightning scored shortly after, we can confidently say that he inspired his teammates. Or, it could have been a coincidence. Either way, Girgensons locov-motored down the right side of the ice and snapped a nice shot over the shoulder over Garand to make it 2-1. The Lightning did pick up the pace a little after the goal, as they added had one last flurry of shots before the buzzer sounded. Instead of giving up a goal in the first two minutes of the period like they did in the first, the Bolts decided to go shorthanded. The good news, they killed it off. Despite spending the entire two minutes in their own zone, they did a fairly good job of forcing everything to the perimeter. As the penalty expired, Hagel and Erik Cernak zoomed down the ice on a two-on-one, but they couldn’t hook up on the pass. The Lightning had a power play of their own a few minutes later and it.,,well…it wasn’t great. Once again, the first unit struggled getting the puck into the zone and they never picked up any momentum. The second unit came on with about 40 seconds to go and showed a little life. Gage Goncalves made a nice pass to Cirelli, who was charging out of the corner, but Cirelli’s backhand was stopped by Garand. Charle-Edouard D’Astous launched a shot from the top of the slot that Garland snagged and that was it. The rest of the period was a little sluggish and Coach Cooper started mixing the lines as Jake Guentzel joined Brayden Point and Goncalves for a shift and Kucherov played with Cirelli and Hagel. Not only did it not work out, the Rangers increased their lead. It wasn’t a complex play. Sean Durzi launched a shot into traffic and Will Cuylle, who was being checked by Viel, managed to deflect it past Vasilevskiy to make it 3-1. Down by two goals the Lightning needed to up their tempo and put some pressure on the Rangers defense. Unfortunately, they just seemed stuck in first gear. They were making the correct reads in terms of passes and plays, but they weren’t executing them cleanly, and it led to slow breakouts, blocked passes, and a lot of easy clears for New York. Which played perfectly into the home team’s hands as they were more than happy to bleed the clock down by dumping the puck in deep and forcing the Lightning to move their way up the ice. Tye Kartye’s retaliatory hit on Brandon Hagel gave the Lightning a power play with just over four minutes to go. It was no surprise that Coach Cooper pulled Vasilevskiy for the 6-on-4 advantage, and they generated some pressure as Garand had to make stops on Jake Guentzel and Nikita Kucherov. That pressure dissipated after a puck jumped over Hagel’s stick and left the zone. The Lightning never really got their flow back and Mika Zibanejad eventually put the little round disk into the empty net to make it 4-1. With the win, the Rangers ran their record to 5-0 at home, and the Lightning fell to 0-2 against the Rangers (but 4-0 against the rest of the league). The Lightning will have a long plane ride home to think about the loss before shaking it off and getting ready to host the Seattle Kraken in Tampa on Thursday. The Goals Alexis Lafreniere (6) [Tye Kartye, Adam Fox] 1-0 Rangers New York goal!Scored by Alexis Lafrenière with 18:58 left in the 1st. Assisted by Tye Kartye and Adam Fox.NYR: 1 | TBL: 0#TBLvsNYR #NYR #GoBolts — NHL Goals (@nhlgoals.bsky.social) 2026-10-13T23:31:34.902293Z Alexis Lafreniere (7) [Tye Kartye, J.T. Miller] 2-0 Rangers New York goal!Scored by Alexis Lafrenière with 07:13 left in the 1st. Assisted by Tye Kartye and J.T. Miller.NYR: 2 | TBL: 0#TBLvsNYR #NYR #GoBolts — NHL Goals (@nhlgoals.bsky.social) 2026-10-13T23:56:58.194823Z Zemgus Girgensons (1) [Pontus Holmberg, Victor Hedman] 2-1 Rangers Tampa Bay goal!Scored by Zemgus Girgensons with 02:34 left in the 1st. Assisted by Pontus Holmberg and Victor Hedman.NYR: 2 | TBL: 1#TBLvsNYR #NYR #GoBolts — NHL Goals (@nhlgoals.bsky.social) 2026-10-14T00:07:58.364163Z Will Cuylle (3) [Sean Durzi, Marcus Pettesson] 3-1 Rangers New York goal!Scored by Will Cuylle with 01:34 left in the 2nd. Assisted by Sean Durzi and Marcus Pettersson.NYR: 3 | TBL: 1#TBLvsNYR #NYR #GoBolts — NHL Goals (@nhlgoals.bsky.social) 2026-10-14T01:04:02.159363Z Mika Zibanejad (2) [Unassisted] Short-handed, Empty Net, 4-1 Rangers No replays for empty net goals unless it’s the goalie shooting it. The Numbers Box Score Time On Ice – Lightning Natural Stat Trick #NHL Game Score Impact Card for Tampa Bay Lightning on 2026-10-13:#GoBolts — HockeyStatCards (@hockeystatcards.com) 2026-10-14T01:59:48.188Z