March 3, 20197 yr The scheduling Gods could not have picked a better team to play after the disastrous minute and a half in the 3rd period of the last game in Boston. Ottawa is not good at all and the Bolts rebounded all over them in Tampa, last night. Victor Hedman and Ryan McDonagh got the Lighting off to a 2-0 lead, but former Blue Jacket, Anthony Duclair, cut the lead to 2-1 about 40 seconds after McDonagh's goal. Then Tampa Bay took over. Erik Cernak and Nikita Kucherov scored in the second and Mikhail Sergachev added one about 2 minutes into the 3rd to round out the game. Andrei Vasilevskiy had 36 saves. With the win, Tampa Bay tied the NHL record, set by the 1995-96 Redwings, for the fastest team to get to 50 wins in a season. Fun with math: Boston won, so the Bolts maintain a 17 point lead in the Atlantic and for home ice throughout the playoffs. They have a 27 point lead over the last playoff spot. With Columbus having 18 games left, they and Pittsburgh (17 games left) mathematically have the possibility to get to 111 points. The Bolts (16 games left) have 104 points, now. Therefore, the magic number for the Lightning to clinch a playoff spot is about 7 points.
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