Blue Jackets spoil St. Louis' night in Tampa
TAMPA, Fla. -- Columbus rallied to spoil Marty St. Louis night in Tampa on Friday.
The Blue Jackets scored three consecutive goals to pick up a 3-1 victory at Amalie Arena.
Joonas Korpisalo finished with 31 saves for the victory. Josh Anderson and Nick Foligno scored for the Blue Jackets, which won for just the second time in five games since winning 16 consecutive. Boone Jenner added a shorthanded, empty net goal with 1:05 left to secure the victory.
Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 28 shots in losing his fifth consecutive decision. Jonathan Drouin scored his 13th of the season for Tampa Bay's only goal.
The Lightning looked electric to start the game, feeding off the emotional pregame ceremony to honor former captain St. Louis with a jersey retirement. Tampa Bay came out putting the Blue Jackets on their heels for a good portion of the first period and wound up outshooting Columbus 19-6 in the opening 20 minutes.
But the only payoff for Tampa Bay's work came at the 16:18 mark on a passing play finished off by Drouin at the left point, one-timing a backhand pass from Valtteri Filppula to give the Lightning a 1-0 lead heading in to the first intermission.
Columbus, though, heard it from the coaching staff at intermission and completely turned the game around in the second period and pushed the Lightning back in their zone time after time. But just like Tampa Bay in the first period, the Blue Jackets did not get the payoff until late in the period to tie the game.
After Gabriel Dumont failed to get the puck out of the zone, Matt Calvert kept the puck in the zone and skated over toward the left circle and sent a shot on net that was deflected on the way to the net.
That deflection threw Vasilevskiy off and he was caught just out of position enough to all Anderson to find the puck in the crease and lift it over the left pad at 16:40 to tie the game after outshooting Tampa Bay 16-7 in the period.
Columbus would grab its first lead of the game as the top-ranked power play in the league cashed in as Foligno was left open down low to put home a rebound from Zach Werenski's shot for a 2-1 lead at 4:29 of the third period.
NOTES: Columbus recalled LW Markus Hannikainen from Cleveland of the American Hockey League on Thursday. ... Lightning RW Ryan Callahan (lower body) and RW J.T. Brown (upper body) each missed their third consecutive game. ... Columbus G Joona Korpisalo started for the Blue Jackets though Sergei Bobrovsky was scheduled to originally start. Bobrovsky missed the previous game with the flu and Columbus plays at Florida on Saturday. ... Tampa Bay scratched RW Erik Condra, who was called up earlier in the day, and D Luke Witkowski. ... The Blue Jackets scratched D Dalton Prout, D Scott Harrington and Hannikainen. ... The game started 20 minutes later than scheduled to the length of the pregame ceremony.