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St. Louis brilliant; Lightning hold off Capitals

Dec 20, 2006 - 4:20 AM WASHINGTON (Ticker) -- Martin St. Louis continued his stellar play, and it finally paid off for the Tampa Bay Lightning.

St. Louis scored two goals and Vincent Lecavalier added a goal and two assists as the Lightning snapped a four-game losing streak with a 5-4 victory over the Washington Capitals.

Tampa Bay avoided its first five-game skid since dropping six in a row from November 1-11, 2005.

"We wanted to have a good start. We wanted to play a simple game," Capitals coach John Tortorella said. "We wanted to try to get as many pucks to the net as we possibly could. I thought we did a really good job in ... holding that neutral zone so it could cause some transition game for us."

St. Louis, who entered the game with a team-high 20 goals and 43 points, now has six goals and seven assists in his last six contests. Recently, his hot play has been wasted by the struggling Lightning, who are 1-7-1 in their last nine games.

On Tuesday, however, the 5-9 speedster glided in and beat Capitals goaltender Olaf Kolzig on the glove side at the 7:06 mark of the first period to make it 2-0. He added a power-play goal with 1:35 remaining in the second session to give Tampa Bay a commanding 4-1 advantage.

Lecavalier assisted on both of St. Louis' goals, including a pinpoint feed in front of the net that St. Louis tapped in for his second tally.

"It was just a good play," St. Louis said. "He knows I'm ahead of the guy and just throws it in the area for me to get to."

Trailing 5-2, entering the third period, the Capitals tallied two goals to make it 5-4 at the 7:48 mark. In the final six minutes, the Lightning staved off a spirited Washington power play and several point-blank attempts by star left wing Alex Ovechkin.

"They were back in the game and feeling good about themselves," St. Louis said. "They threw everything but the kitchen sink at us. I'm just glad that we were able to hang on. I thought the last five minutes we got back into playing at their end."

"None of these games are easy. Washington is a very good club that (has) just played so very well and we knew they weren't going to give in," Tortorella said. "I look at this as an opportunity to scratch one out, and we did, so we're happy. Would you like to win 6-1 and breeze through? Yeah, but it doesn't happen that way."

Despite his strong play, St. Louis was more concerned with his team letting Washington back in the game, and he hopes its serves as a lesson for future contests.

"We played tentative for about five or 10 minutes, enough for them to get back in the game," St. Louis said. "They were playing physical. They had the puck for quite a bit for that span. We got the penalties and just couldn't get back to the good forechecking we had been doing."

Ovechkin had a goal and assist and Kolzig made 30 saves for Washington, which had its two-game winning streak snapped.

"I don't know if we were overconfident going into the game or thinking that we're better than we really are," Kolzig said. "We didn't show that team enough respect, and as a result, we were looking at a 5-2 deficit. We came close, but because we dug ourselves that big a hole, we couldn't ultimately come out of it."