Lightning at Rangers
The Tampa Bay Lightning continue to hang in the race for a playoff spot despite digging deep into their farm system and continue their quest with the opener of a short, but important, road trip Monday against the New York Rangers. The Lightning, who are down five regular forwards due to injuries and traded two others, rallied from a two-goal deficit to beat Florida 3-2 on Saturday and have earned points in 13 of their last 15 games (10-2-3).
Tampa Bay enters the week three points behind Toronto for the second wild card in the Eastern Conference, and coach Jon Cooper told reporters: “It’s desperation mode. And the guys are playing with it.” Lightning centers Tyler Johnson, Vladislav Namestnikov and Cedric Paquette all missed Saturday’s game with lower-body injuries and are questionable for the trek, which concludes Tuesday in Ottawa. The Rangers had cooled off a bit before winning three of four on a road trip that started with a 1-0 overtime triumph at Tampa Bay and ended with a 4-1 victory in Detroit on Sunday. Antti Raanta won both of those contests and likely will get another start with No. 1 goaltender Henrik Lundqvist out 2-3 weeks with a hip injury.
TV: 7 p.m. ET, TVA, FSN Sun (Tampa Bay), MSG (New York)
ABOUT THE LIGHTNING (32-26-9): Yanni Gourde, one of the team's recent callups, scored while short-handed Saturday for his first NHL goal, prompting Cooper to tell reporters that “He’s really seizing the moment up here.” Nikita Kucherov is one goal shy of 100 for his career and has scored 10 in his last nine games to push his team-leading and career-best total to 31 – a dozen more than his closest teammate. Backup Peter Budaj could start one of the next two games in net, but Andrei Vasilevskiy has gone 5-0-1 with a .956 save percentage since Ben Bishop was traded.
ABOUT THE RANGERS (44-23-2): Derek Stepan snapped a 23-game goal-scoring drought when he recorded his 13th of the season Sunday and Kevin Hayes netted his second in 13 contests while defenseman Ryan McDonagh tallied twice. Michael Grabner (hip) returned to the lineup after missing five games to record a pair of assists Sunday and Rick Nash also was back after sitting out one contest with an upper-body injury. Grabner shares the team lead of 26 goals with Chris Krieder, who has registered three tallies in his last five contests and notched an assist against the Red Wings.
OVERTIME
1. New York LW J.T. Miller tops the team with 50 points after notching his 31st assist Sunday but has gone nine games without a goal.
2. Tampa Bay LW Alex Killorn is one goal away from matching his career high of 17 but has not registered a point in nine contests.
3. The Rangers have allowed a total of five goals while winning four straight meetings with the Lightning, including two this season.