Jake Guentzel's hat trick leads Lightning to rebound win over Devils

Eduardo A. Encina, Tampa Bay Times on Nov 18, 2025

Published in Hockey

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TAMPA, Fla. — Given what happened in their last game, a case could be made that with the Lightning up two goals after one period, the Devils had them right where they wanted them Tuesday night.

Two nights before, Tampa Bay was up two goals on Vancouver going into the first intermission, but the night ended with the Canucks scoring six consecutive goals to send the Lightning to a four-goal loss.

The Lightning didn’t let that happen again, this time building on their early lead and taking a 5-1 win over the Devils at Benchmark International Arena.

Jake Guentzel recorded his 10th career hat trick — eight in the regular season, two in the playoffs — including two goals on a floundering power play that entered the night ranked 29th in the league.

One of Tampa Bay’s better defensive efforts came without three of their top defensemen: Ryan McDonagh is on injured reserve, Victor Hedman missed his fourth straight game with an undisclosed injury, and Erik Cernak was a late scratch with a lower-body injury.

Hit hard by injuries, the Lightning called up two defensemen from AHL Syracuse, Declan Carlile and Steven Santini, to make up their third pairing.

The Lightning (10-7-2) also were without head coach Jon Cooper, who missed the game due to “personal reasons,” the team announced just minutes before puck drop. Assistant Jeff Halpern served as interim head coach in Cooper’s absence.

It was just the second time Cooper has missed a game since beginning his NHL head coaching career with the Lightning in 2012-13. He wasn’t on the bench for a 4-3 win at Vegas in 2021 after entering COVID protocol before the game.

The Lightning did get centers Anthony Cirelli and Dominic James back from injury.

Goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 31 of the 32 shots he faced, winning for the fourth time in his last five starts.

Cirelli brings pace to Lightning

Cirelli had missed the last four games with an upper-body injury, and even though he returned to practice late last week he didn’t play in either of the weekend games.

He creates pace with his 200-foot game, and the way he set up Nikita Kucherov’s late first-period goal to put the Lightning up 2-0 was a perfect example of how he does that and what the team was missing without him.

The Lightning opened the scoring earlier in the period when Guentzel took an errant Devils pass off the wall in the neutral zone and created a breakaway for himself that he buried past Devils goaltender Jacob Markstrom.

In the final minute of the period, Cirelli chipped a puck down the ice and Brandon Hagel chased it down into a puck battle against the boards with Devils defenseman Brenden Dillon.

Cirelli jumped on the puck in the corner and made a backhand, no-look pass behind him as backchecker Dawson Mercer closed in on him. Cirelli put the puck on Kucherov’s blade for an open look from below the right hash for his ninth goal of the season.

Raddysh gets power play going

The Lightning power play still had plenty of weapons, but the players seem to be in their own heads in the offensive zone.

Toward the end of their second power play of the second period, they had created chance, but had nothing to show for it. But, with 40 seconds left on the man advantage, defenseman Darren Raddysh sent a pass to the front of the net and Guentzel redirected it past Markstrom to give the Lightning a 3-0 lead with 9:22 left in the second period.

It was the first goal in 11 opportunities spanning the past four games for the Lightning power play.

Raddysh recently took over the point spot on the top unit, even before Hedman went out with an injury, and it was his first power-play assist of the season.

Raddysh then added a 5-on-5 goal, his second of the season, on a rocket from the high slot 4:49 into the third, giving Tampa Bay a 4-1 lead.

Guentzel with a hat tip

Guentzel is such a presence in front of the net on the power play because he can score so many ways from in close, and he notched the first power-play goal by a Lightning player with his second redirection of the night on the man advantage.

Parked by the left post, Guentzel had just missed a tip on a pass from Kucherov, but the Lightning were able to maintain possession and Kucherov fed Guentzel a nearly identical feed. This time, he was able to tip it past Markstrom.