Lightning spoil St. Louis' return, lose 7-2 at San Jose

Lightning spoil St. Louis' return, lose 7 2 at San Jose Image SAN JOSE, Calif. —

Not even the heroic return of Marty St. Louis was enough to wake up the Lightning late Wednesday night. Tampa Bay looked like it was nap time back east instead of game time out west.

St. Louis made a surprise return to the lineup less than two weeks after being struck in the face with a puck, even scoring a goal, but it was San Jose that looked inspired in routing the Lightning 7-2 in front of an announced sellout crowd of 17,562 at HP Pavilion.

The Sharks scored five goals in the opening 15 minutes on Wednesday to snap Tampa Bay's modest two-game winning streak. The five goals allowed was a season high for the Lightning in a single period this season, while San Jose set a team record for the fastest five goals to start a game.

"That's just an awful way to start a game and we clearly were not ready to play the type of game they were," defenseman Eric Brewer said. "In the first period, we were really junk."

Ben Ferrriero, Joe Pavelski and Andrew Desjardins scored once each and Logan Couture twice to put Tampa Bay in a deep hole.

After a failed Lightning power play 36 seconds into the game, poor coverage around the Tampa Bay net allowed San Jose to get to those areas without much resistance, and the Lightning paid for it five times over.

"We were outworked, out-battled, outplayed. Period," Lightning head coach Guy Boucher said. "Coming out like that, it's very disappointing."

The loss was Tampa Bay's fourth in a row in San Jose. Tampa Bay's last victory at the Shark Tank came March 24, 2003, and it is 1-7-1 in the past nine trips to northern California.

In four visits since the 2005 lockout, Tampa Bay has been outscored 22-6.

Ferriero skated through the crease to find a loose puck and deposit it in the open net at 3:26. Pavelski came down the left slot to collect a rebound and backhand a puck past Mathieu Garon for a power play goal at 4:51. Desjardins came from behind the net for a wraparound and found the five-hole on Garon at 6:21, ending Garon's night after allowing three goals on eight shots.

"I wanted to spark something," Boucher said of the change in goal. "This year, when we've made a goalie change, it's really helped us, changed this around no matter who we were playing. I thought changing would give us something, get us going, but it was too late."

Dwayne Roloson came on in relief, but the change in goal did not result in the desired shakeup. Couture scored goals one minute, 34 seconds apart, both the result of a lack of coverage around the net.

"Guys were soft on the coverage," Boucher said. "This team is lethal around the net. We got prepared for it, looked at the video and they just overpowered us, plain and simple. "We got out-muscled the whole game. If you don't come out against a Stanley Cup contender that has a big, physical team, that's first on puck, that has all the tools with no flaws … you can't come out and be soft like we were and expect anything positive to come out of it."

Dominic Moore got Tampa Bay on the board, redirecting an Eric Brewer shot from the right point at 15:38 to make it 5-1 after the first period.

"We didn't come out ready to battle," St. Louis said. "You can have all the Xs and Os, but against that team, you have to be willing to battle in your own end, you can't give them time and space. You have to anticipate their play and jump them so you crowd their space right away, and we didn't do that. You don't want to give that team momentum. They thrive on scoring goals and they start to feel good about themselves."

After a scoreless second period, San Jose made it 6-1 when defenseman Brent Burns fired a quick shot from the right point to the far upper post off a faceoff win by Michael Handzus 1:15 into the third period.

St. Louis scored his 10th goal of the season after taking a nice pass in the slot from Teddy Purcell behind the net at 7:45 to make it 6-2.

"I felt better than I thought; I felt better as the game went on," St. Louis said of his return after missing five games. "Coming back from that injury and putting a cage on, a lot of things come into play."

Patrick Marleau finished the scoring for San Jose when his attempted pass into the crease popped into the air and defenseman Marc-Andre Bergeron, trying to whack it out of midair, knocked it off the back of Roloson's pad into the net.

Tampa Bay also lost another player to injury as Ryan Shannon did not play in the third period after being hit into the boards by Sharks center Andrew Murray in the second period. Shannon hobbled to the bench, but left after the play. He returned to the bench, but did not take another shift.

Lightning spoil St. Louis' return, lose 7-2 at San Jose

Lightning spoil St. Louis' return, lose 7-2 at San Jose

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