Lightning at Red Wings
The Tampa Bay Lightning look to match the franchise record for victories in a season and extend their winning streak in the series to 15 regular-season games when they visit the struggling Detroit Red Wings on Thursday night. The Lightning set club records with 54 wins and 113 points last season and are one shy of matching the most road wins in franchise history after recording No. 24 with a 6-2 rout at Toronto on Monday.
“Our consistency throughout the season has been phenomenal, but we’re not patting ourselves on the shoulders,” Tampa Bay defenseman Victor Hedman told reporters. “We are looking at the big picture. We have 11 games here before the fun starts, so we have to keep going and keep playing games like these and have that in the back of our head, like (Monday), of how good we are when we play the right way.” The Lightning have won the first three matchups with the Red Wings this season, but had the most trouble in the meeting in Detroit on Dec. 4 when they rallied for a 6-5 shootout victory. The Red Wings gave Tampa Bay trouble in a 3-2 loss Saturday, but were pounded 6-1 at Florida on Sunday and lost 3-1 at Montreal on Tuesday to finish a 0-3-0 road trip and fall to 1-8-3 in the last 12 contests. “You want to make sure your effort is there on a nightly basis,” Detroit forward Justin Abdelkader told reporters, “and the last two games I felt like we lost a lot of 1-on-1 battles and we were a step behind a little bit all over the ice.”
TV: 7:30 p.m. ET, FS Sun (Tampa Bay), FS Detroit
ABOUT THE LIGHTNING (53-13-4): Fourth-line center Cedric Paquette scored twice in Monday’s victory to match his career high with 12 goals that he set in his first full NHL season in 2014-15. “It’s nice to see when these guys work their tail off doing all the right things they get rewarded for it,” Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper told reporters of Paquette. Right wing Nikita Kucherov leads the league with 111 points after notching an assist Monday and captain Steven Stamkos remains one goal behind Vincent Lecavalier (383) for the franchise record after managing one the last 10 games.
ABOUT THE RED WINGS (24-36-10): Forward Andreas Athanasiou scored the goal Tuesday for Detroit to extend his career highs to 24 tallies and 42 points - behind only Dylan Larkin (27 goals, 62 points), who has missed four straight games with a back injury. Defenseman Jonathan Ericsson, who is two assists shy of 100 for his career, is expected to miss Thursday’s contest after leaving the Montreal game with a lower-body ailment. Veteran forward Thomas Vanek scored twice in the last three games to push his total to 14 on the season and boasts 786 career points.
OVERTIME
1. Tampa Bay G Andrei Vasilevskiy’s next game will be his 200th in the NHL and the Russian is 7-0-0 all time versus the Red Wings.
2. Detroit F Darren Helm needs one goal to reach 100 in his career and C Luke Glendening is sitting on 99 points.
3. Lightning D Anton Stralman (lower body) skated at practice Wednesday and could return to the lineup after missing two games.