Brandon Hagel scored three goals, including the go-ahead marker with 1:44 left and an empty-netter 21 seconds later, as the Tampa Bay Lightning beat the New York Islanders 5-3 Saturday at UBS Arena. The win stretched Tampa Bay’s winning streak to four games and improved its record to 4-1-0.
Jake Guentzel scored twice, including a power-play strike that put the Lightning up 3-1 in the second period.
The Islanders answered with three straight goals to tie it at 3 before Hagel took over late. Tony DeAngelo led New York with a goal and an assist, but the Islanders fell to 2-3-0.s winning streak to four games and improved its record to 4-1-0.
Jake Guentzel broke the game open with two goals, including a power-play strike that put the Lightning up 3-1 in the second period. The Islanders answered with three unanswered goals to tie it at 3 before Hagel took over late, finishing with four points on the night. Tony DeAngelo led New York with a goal and an assist, but the Islanders fell to 2-3-0.
Key Moments And How It Was Won
Guentzel opened the scoring 5:45 into the first period, and Hagel made it 2-0 with less than five minutes left in the opening frame on a breakaway. New York answered in the second when DeAngelo beat Lightning goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy with a wrist shot from the point at 6:27, cutting the deficit to one.
Guentzel restored the two-goal cushion on the power play at 7:54 of the second, but the Islanders stormed back. Matthew Schaefer slipped past Anthony Cirelli along the blue line to score at 11:41, and Brayden Schenn tied it at 3 late in the period when his cross-ice pass deflected off Lightning defenseman Erik Cernak and into the net on the power play. The teams played the entire third period scoreless until Hagel struck twice in a 21-second span late in the frame, first with a wrist shot at 18:16 and then on a snap shot off a Nikita Kucherov assist at 18:37 for the empty-net dagger.
Top Performers
Hagel had four points, adding two blocked shots and three hits. Guentzel scored twice and played 19:29, including 5:36 on the power play. Vasilevskiy stopped 20 of 23 shots for Tampa Bay, while Islanders goaltender Ilya Sorokin made 21 saves on 26 shots.
Kucherov tallied two assists, and Maxwell Crozier picked up two helpers as well. Schaefer logged 27:07 of ice time for New York, the most of any skater in the game, and finished with a goal on nine shots.
What It Means
Tampa Bay sits at 8 points in the Atlantic Division standings, tied with Ottawa and Boston through five games, and leads the early season series with New York 1-0. New York dropped to 4 points in the Metropolitan Division, tied with New Jersey and Columbus. The loss was the Islanders’ third of the season against two wins. Lightning defenseman Logan Stanley and an Islanders forward fought in the second period.
What’s Next
Saturday’s game was the first half of a brief two-game New York road trip for Tampa Bay. The Islanders host the New York Rangers next. Tampa Bay visits the Rangers on Tuesday night.
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