The Tampa Bay Lightning began their three-game road trip through California in the same uneven manner that they have been during much of the current season.
The Eastern Conference champions will travel just a short distance to Anaheim to play the Ducks on Wednesday night after suffering a 4-2 loss to the Los Angeles Kings on Tuesday night.
Although the first game of the tour didn’t go well in terms of results, Lightning coach Jon Cooper said that his team played well in the first half and poorly in the second.
The visitors were only behind 2-1 after a half-hour of play, but the Lightning lost control of the game in the remaining 30 minutes.
Adrian Kempe’s screamer gave them a 4-1 deficit before Nikita Kucherov of Tampa Bay scored his first goal of the year to give them the final margin.
Cooper, whose team has four regulation defeats in its last seven games, said, “I thought midway through the game, we definitely carried the play.” Unfortunately, we fell behind and didn’t move forward. The frustrating aspect of this is that. After taking the lead, (the Kings) structured less.
“I enjoyed the action during the game’s opening 30 minutes. Usually, when you deviate from the plan and start acting independently, disaster is waiting to happen. That was how the game went tonight in the second half.
Tampa Bay lost the opener of a back-to-back set, falling to 2-1-0, snapping their 10-game winning streak against the Kings. The Boston Bruins’ ongoing streak of the league’s second-longest was surpassed by that mark.
