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Red-hot Lightning edge Islanders to extend streak

Jan 15, 2007 - 9:22 PM UNIONDALE, New York (Ticker) -- Vaclav Prospal and the Tampa Bay Lightning extended their longest winning streak of the season by continuing their dominance of the New York Islanders.

Prospal had a goal and two assists to pace the surging Lightning to their season-high fifth straight win, a 4-3 triumph over the Islanders.

It was Tampa Bay's seventh consecutive victory over New York, which has not beaten the Lightning since March 21, 2004.

"It was just us going about our business," Lightning coach John Tortorella said. "We just have to stay within ourselves and pay attention to details."

Martin St. Louis scored his team-leading 29th goal, Vincent Lecavalier netted his 28th and Brad Richards added a power-play tally for the Lightning, who staved off a furious late rally.

"Their top players played real well, and we couldn't contain them," Islanders coach Ted Nolan said.

The Islanders trailed, 4-2, midway through the third period when Trent Hunter tallied off a feed from Mike Sillinger to halve the deficit.

But Lightning netminder Johan Holmqvist made the lead stand up from there, turning aside a flurry of shots in the waning minutes, including a slap shot by Sillinger from the left faceoff circle with nine seconds left.

"We kept fighting, but it was too late," Islanders left wing Jason Blake said. "We have to be ready when the puck is dropped."

Holmqvist finished with 33 saves to improve to 3-0-0 this season vs. the Islanders. The Swedish goaltender has a .935 save percentage in the three meetings between the clubs.

"We're just building confidence," Holmqvist said. "That makes it a little easier every night."

"It was a 12 noon start," Prospal said. "So it was just a question of who wanted it the most."

Tampa Bay trailed, 1-0, seven minutes into the opening session when Prospal forged a tie with his seventh goal of the campaign, a rebound off Ruslan Fedotenko's slap shot.

Richards gave the Lightning the lead for good at 9:21 of the first period by taking a cross-slot feed from Eric Perrin and burying a shot past Islanders goaltender Rick DiPietro.

"The biggest thing about our power play is we're patient and we don't try to hit the home run right away," Tortorella said.

St. Louis made it 3-1 with 4:23 left in the middle session, banging home a rebound to extend his points streak to 11 games.