NHL Game Night: 3/3/11 Lightning at Bruins

Much more entertaining than last night... but the same result.

TB-1
BOS-2

Mike Smith allowed 2 goals on 28 shots for the loss. It's a shame. He played well in his first start since being recalled.

First Period
NO SCORING

Second Period
04:04 TB Brewer (9), B. Jones (2), Downie (20)
06:06 BOS Kampfer (5), Kelly (13), Peverley (21)

Third Period
16:18 BOS Lucic (28), Krejci (39), Horton (24)

It's a disappointing result because the Lightning had so much stacked against them with Smith in net and Lecavalier out hurt and they still performed so well. But's it's a disappointing result with a silver lining for the resiliency the club showed. I feel like I learned something valuable about the team's character tonight, and I really liked what I saw.

Mattias Ritola had 2 shots and 1 hit in 11:19. Holy cow, what did they sprinkle on Ritola's cereal this morning? He threw a colossal hit and actually did some board work tonight. Nice.

Blair Jones had a helper and was +1 with 2 shots and 1 hit in 9:33. He skated well and he played hard. He also got popped pretty hard a couple of times, but he looked good. I really believe this guy would be an NHLer if the Lightning weren't so deep at forward right now. He really has the makeup of a pretty good fourth line soldier.

Box score and extended statistics from NHL.com.