The high-rolling Tampa Bay Lightning will look to complete a perfect road trip when they visit the Calgary Flames on Sunday.
The Lightning, especially Nikita Kucherov, have dominated their opponents so far during the trek. The team has racked up a trio of one-sided victories so far, the latest a 5-2 win over the Edmonton Oilers Saturday night.
Tampa Bay (43-21-4, 90 points) reaches Calgary having outscored the opposition by a 17-6 margin in a run that began with successive 6-2 wins over the Seattle Kraken and Vancouver Canucks.
“Another step in the right direction to get us out of this little funk,” forward Brandon Hagel said. “One more on the road and get back home.”
Prior to winning four of five games, the Lightning lost six of their previous seven outings.
Thanks to the red-hot Kucherov, those struggles appear to be a thing of the past.
Kucherov racked up two goals and two assists in Edmonton, vaulting him to the top of the league’s scoring race with 118 points.
The numbers Kucherov is posting are jaw dropping. He has collected three or more points in five consecutive road games. In the first three games of this road trip, Kucherov has racked up six goals and six assists.
“It’s not even talked enough about how impressive it is to perform like this night after night,” defenseman J.J. Moser said.
As they vie to finish the road trip with a clean slate, the Lightning have won 12 of 14 games this season against Pacific Division clubs.
The Flames are all but mathematically eliminated but have opened a six-game homestand with consecutive wins, the latest a 4-1 victory over the two-time defending Stanley Cup-champion Florida Panthers on Friday.
Calgary (28-34-7, 63 points) lead only the Vancouver Canucks in the overall standings but continue to plug away at playing spoiler or at least going down with a fight.
“I know there’s a lot of games left, but it could be easy to kind of let it slip,” forward Morgan Frost said. “I feel like everyone’s giving their all, especially these last two. I feel like we’ve given up less grade-A chances, which is something we talked about a lot.”
Offensive production continues to be Calgary’s bugaboo, but the club took a big step last outing by scoring a pair of power-play goals. The Flames failed to score with the man-advantage in six previous games and only once in nine matches.
“Once we scored the 5-on-3 goal, they settled down a little bit more and they were able to set Matt (Coronato) up for a nice one to put the game away,” coach Ryan Huska said. “It was important for the group to score a on the power play. It’s been a while.”
There was no word on Saturday whether Connor Zary would be able to play. Zary was sent head-first into the boards by Florida’s A.J. Greer, who received a major penalty for the hit from behind and will have a hearing with the Department of Player Safety.
Zary was able to leave the ice on his skates after gingerly laying on the ice after the hit.
