Nikita Kucherov and Jake Guentzel scored for the Lightning (9-7-2), who defeated the Florida Panthers 3-1 on Saturday. Jonas Johansson made 12 saves.
“Losses are disappointing, but it’s how you got there that you should be judging everything on,” Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said. “And I have to give Vancouver all the credit in the world. They’re down halfway through a hockey game, they’re down 2-0, we probably had more goals than they had shots on net halfway through the game. And what did they do? They just kept going and they kept trying, understanding the game was 60 minutes, not 30. One team got comfortable, and in this league the second that happens, you’re done.”
Jake DeBrusk started the Vancouver comeback with a power-play goal to make it 2-1 at 9:26 of the second period. He poked in a loose puck off the rebound of a shot from Elias Pettersson.
“They were all over us in the first, we didn’t like how it was,” DeBrusk said. “Then comes the response in the second and in the third it just felt like everything was going in. We haven’t had one of those periods as a team, so it’s always exciting. It was good to see some guys get some goals.”
Kiefer Sherwood tied the game 2-2 at 4:11 of the third period with a power-play goal that went off his stick and then the skate of J.J. Moser to get past Johansson.
Linus Karlsson gave the Canucks a 3-2 lead just 43 seconds later at 4:54 when he deflected in MacEachern’s backhand shot from above the hashmarks.
Drew O’Connor extended the Vancouver lead to 4-2 at 5:51 when he redirected a shot from Hughes into the net.
Charle-Edouard D’Astous appeared to have brought the Lightning back within a goal at 12:16 but it was overturned in the third period on a coach’s challenge when video review determined Guentzel played the puck with a high stick earlier in the sequence that led to the goal.
MacEachern made it 5-2 at 13:52. Marcus Petterson added an empty-net goal at 16:57 for the 6-2 final.
“It speaks volumes of the character in the room,” MacEachern said. “There is a lot of emotion obviously, so you have to kind of reinforce that you’ve got to play the right way because the right way got us to that situation. So we had to keep doing that. Just put pucks behind them and keep putting them on the net because that was the recipe to get a goal in the third.”
Kucherov gave Tampa Bay a 1-0 lead at 19:25 with a one-timer from the right circle off a pass from Darren Raddysh.
