TAMPA, Fla. – How to rally a team and a crowd of more than 60,000 as the temperature dropped back into the thirties? Why, of course, have Andrei Vasilevskiy administer a pummeling.
The Lightning goalie and his counterpart, Boston’s Jeremy Swayman, warmed up the atmosphere at Raymond James Stadium by several notches as the two met at center ice and began swinging away a little more than halfway through the second period. Vasilevskiy got a couple of good lefts in on Swayman, who emerged from a scrum by his own net after tangling with Brandon Hagel.
The fight certainly lifted the spirits of the Lightning bench. Trailing 5-2 at the time of the bout, the Bolts scored a pair of powerplay goals 23 seconds apart to cut the deficit to one. That is how the period ended, setting up an edge-of-your-seat third period.
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