The Tampa Bay Lightning gained a point Saturday night.
Still, it lost ground.
The Lightning dropped a 2-1 game in overtime against the Montreal Canadiens, but watched as both of its playoff competitors won. Tampa Bay now trails Boston by four points for the final wild-card spot and both Toronto and Ottawa by five points for third place in the Atlantic Division.
Montreal’s winning goal came from Alexander Radulov 51 seconds into overtime.
The Bolts lost despite 34 saves by Andrei Vasilevskiy, who gave up a questionable goal in the second period.
“Well, you can look at it a couple of ways. You can say, ‘Well, that was a bad one to give up.’” coach Jon Cooper said. “Or you could look at it and say that Vasy made like six 10-bellers and we still pushed that game to overtime. It was one of those games, they’re a good team and we’ve been asked for so much from our guys and they just keep delivering and delivering.
“Kind of the signature of this team, they found a way in the third to will us at least a point and give us the chance that we had in overtime. So I look at it as a complete positive because we got a point out of the game and we can sit here and say, ‘They got the better of us tonight.’ I guess there’s not much wiggle room left, but not getting a point out of that game would have been devastating.”
Yanni Gourde scored for the Bolts for the third straight game to force overtime.
Tampa Bay plays at home tonight against Dallas.
