Lightning fall at home to Blue Jackets, 5-2

Eduardo A. Encina, Tampa Bay Times on Mar 10, 2026

Published in Hockey

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TAMPA, Fla. — The Tampa Bay Lightning’s focus coming into Tuesday’s return home against the Columbus Blue Jackets was to get back to playing the kind of defense that made them the best team in the Eastern Conference a few weeks ago.

It would be a tall task against a Columbus team that put up eight goals on the Lightning in their last meeting Jan. 24. The Lightning also were coming off a 15-goal game Sunday night in Buffalo, when they relinquished their Atlantic Division lead.

The Lightning entered Tuesday night having won just two of their first seven games coming out of the Olympic break. Their schedule didn’t let up against the Blue Jackets, who came to Tampa two points out of a playoff spot.

You could say the Lightning made some strides defensively in their 5-2 loss at Benchmark International Arena. They didn’t leave open big gaps in front of the goal, and they didn’t allow Columbus much in terms of high-danger scoring chances.

But a penalty-kill unit that had been one of the best in the league this season continued to leak oil.

Columbus scored a pair of power-play goals, each extending the Blue Jackets’ lead to two. Before Sunday’s loss at Buffalo, the Lightning ranked third in the league with a 83.4% success rate last week. Their penalty kill is just 6 for 11 over the last two games (54.6%).

The Lightning couldn’t manufacture much offensively Tuesday — they had just 17 shots on goal, including four in the first period — and that was the difference.

The loss, combined with Buffalo’s win over San Jose, put the Lightning (39-20-4, 82 points) four points back of the Sabres for the division lead. They’re clinging to second place in the Atlantic, one point ahead of Detroit and two ahead of Montreal after the latter two also won Tuesday.

Tampa Bay took a one-goal lead into the first period, but after allowing a pair of Columbus goals within 30 seconds of each other, they quickly found themselves chasing.

Columbus built a two-goal lead on Kirill Marchenko’s power-play goal with 8:17 left in the second. Lightning defenseman J.J. Moser cut the lead to one with his seventh goal of the season, scoring from the center point with 3:37 to play in the period. But Conor Garland’s second goal of the night came on the power play four minutes into the third to extend Columbus’ lead to two again.

Dante Fabbro provided the final margin with 4:32 left.

Forward Gage Goncalves, who had missed the last four games with a lower-body injury, jumped back into a top-six role and opened scoring with 6:22 left in the first period.

The Lightning needed to recall right-shot defenseman Steven Santini just to dress six defensemen. They were without Erik Cernak (injured during a fight Sunday) and Darren Raddysh (in Toronto attending a memorial service for his father, Dwayne).

And that was in addition to Emil Lilleberg (facial fracture) and Max Crozier (lower-body injury) getting sidelined even earlier.

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