Martin St. Louis leads Tampa Bay Lightning over New Jersey Devils 4-3 -NHL Update
Martin St. Louis was the leading man for Tampa Bay as the veteran forward picked up an amazing hat trick on led the Lightning past New Jersey Devils, 4-3, Sunday night, February 26, 2012, at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey.
Tampa Bay was playing their second matchup in two nights straight and coming out of a hugely disappointing contest against Pittsburgh Penguins, in which they lost 8-1, things were not looking high for the struggling Lightning.
Still out of the playoff race, Tampa Bay is terming every single game to be crucial and winning right now is the need of the moment.
"You want to fight to the end," St. Louis said. "Every game is important. They are fun games to play, especially when you are in them. Yesterday was obviously not a fun game to play. Tonight, it was a good experience game for our young guys. For us, our
playoffs have started. This is our playoffs right now. We are just trying to survive and I think we did that today getting two points."
Alexei Ponikarovsky got New Jersey off to a good start with his 12th of the 2011-2012 National Hockey League (NHL) regular season on a breakaway unassisted, but unfortunately, Devils could not maintain their momentum in the second period.
St. Louis brought Tampa Bay right back with his 20th at 6:39 in the second and another with a little over five minutes remaining on the power play.
Lightning is now six points away from tying eighth place Winnipeg Jets and are still confident that they will manage to grab a playoff spot well before the end of the season.
"We still do believe," Tampa Bay’s Steven Stamkos, said. "We have 20 games left and that's a lot of hockey. If we get going and get on a streak, anything can happen."
Petr Sykora levelled the game 2:28 into the third and final period but another two-goal run, this time by Matt Gilroy and St. Louis, was too much for the Devils.
New Jersey captain, Zach Parise, brought Devils within reach of the score by one at 17:25 with the extra skater on board but failed to add any more to force another chance in overtime.
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