Bruins host Lightning in important East contest

BOSTON -- The Boston Bruins and Tampa Bay Lightning, who play each other at TD Garden on Thursday night, sustained losses Tuesday night that hurt their respective playoff chances.

And on Wednesday, while neither was on the ice, more bad news hit both teams.

Victories by the Toronto Maple Leafs and New York Islanders added to the woes of the teams that bring three-game losing streaks into Thursday's contest.

Toronto's victory at Columbus moved the feisty young Maple Leafs past the Bruins into third place in the Atlantic Division, still with a game in hand on Boston.

The Islanders' win over the rival New York Rangers moved them within two points of the Bruins in the battle for the last Eastern Conference wild card, also with a game in hand. Boston and the Islanders play in Brooklyn on Saturday night.

Tampa Bay remained five points out of the final wild-card spot.

The Lightning, sellers at the trade deadline, clawed their way back into the playoff picture with a four-game winning streak while prevailing in six of their first eight March contests. But they lost their last three -- all at home, allowing 15 goals in the three games, including a 5-3 setback to the Arizona Coyotes on Tuesday night.

Tampa Bay gave up three goals to the Coyotes in the third period.

"This ranks up there, though with how important the game was to us, a 3-2 lead at home going into the third in a must-win game for us," Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. "To give it up like we did, it's ... yeah ... it's frustrating to say the least."

Said defenseman Victor Hedman: "It's back to the drawing board. Just remember there's still a lot of games left. We obviously are disappointed in the result. We can't lay down. We can't fold. We just have to refocus."

The Bruins outplayed the Ottawa Senators on Tuesday but fell victim to great goaltending by Craig Anderson. They dipped to 5-5 in their last 10 games and are 12-6 in 18 contests under interim coach Bruce Cassidy.

Boston is trying to end two years of frustration that saw the Bruins barely miss the playoffs both seasons.

"Every year writes its own story," Cassidy said. "There's a lot of guys in that room that weren't here last year, including myself. So we'd like to write our own story.

"Clearly the last two games (Monday in Toronto, Tuesday at home) were important games for us and I thought we played very well. We had some break downs. I don't think I'm going to wake up tomorrow and see us eliminated, so we're going to go back to work on Thursday against Tampa."

The Bruins have won all three games against the Lightning this season, one in a shootout. Tuukka Rask won all three games in the Boston goal and is 12-5-1 with a 2.60 goals against average, .904 save percentage and three shutouts lifetime against Tampa Bay.

Lightning goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy played only one game against the Bruins in his young career. Back on Nov. 3, he stopped 28 of 31 shots before losing a 10-round shootout to the Bruins and Rask, who improved to 6-0 to start the season.

Boston winger Jimmy Hayes, who scored the shootout winner, has only two goals in 54 games this season.