NEWARK, N.J. — Tyler Johnson scored 1:16 into overtime and the Tampa Bay Lightning rallied to beat the New Jersey Devils 7-6 on Wednesday night, avoiding their first three-game losing streak since late March 2018.
Ondrej Palat scored twice for the banged-up Lightning, who surrendered a tying goal to Kyle Palmieri in the waning seconds. Alex Killorn, Brayden Point, Anthony Cirelli and Mathieu Joseph also scored, and Curtis McElhiney made 36 saves.
Palmieri scored three goals and Jesper Bratt had two for the Devils. Sami Vatanen scored early in the third period for a 5-3 lead and Cory Schneider had 16 saves.
Johnson’s fourth of the season came from the inside of the right circle.
It looked as if Tampa Bay was headed for a win in regulation when Palat broke a 5-all tie on a turnaround shot from the right circle with 3:57 left.
But Palmieri forced overtime by scoring on a rebound with 7.4 seconds to play. It was his first hat trick with New Jersey and the second of his career.
BLUES 2, WILD 1: Jordan Binnington made 35 saves and Alex Pietrangelo snapped a tie in the third period, helping St. Louis win at home.
Sammy Blais also scored for St. Louis, which won for the fourth time in five games. It was the first game for the Stanley Cup champions since star forward Vladimir Tarasenko had reconstructive surgery on his left shoulder.
OILERS 4, BLUE JACKETS 1: Leon Draisaitl had two goals and an assist, Mike Smith stopped 23 shots and visiting Edmonton beat Columbus.
James Neal and Jujhar Khaira also scored for the Oilers, who had dropped two in a row. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins added two assists.
NOTES
OBIT: Hockey Hall of Famer and popular longtime NHL executive Jim Gregory, best known for being one of the first to start bringing European players to North America, has died at the age of 83.
The league said Gregory died Wednesday at his home in Toronto. A cause of death was not disclosed.
Gregory spent a decade as general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs from the late 1960s until the late 1970s and was one of the first to import European players, most notably Swede Borje Salming. He spent almost 40 years with the NHL as director of central scouting, executive director of hockey operations and senior vice president of hockey operations and supervision.
Known around the sport as “Mr. Gregory,” he served as chairman of the Hockey Hall of Fame selection committee from 1998-2014 and was a fixture at the NHL draft and other league events. He’d hand out silver sticks to players for reaching 1,000 games played, present new Hall of Famers with their rings and call names on the second day of the draft.
Gregory was elected to the Hall of Fame as a builder in 2007. Beyond his years running the Maple Leafs, he was central to the NHL’s use of video to review goals and the expansion of the league’s Central Scouting system.
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