Conor Garland scores 2 to send Blue Jackets past Lightning, 5-2

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Conor Garland scored two goals for the second consecutive game and the Columbus Blue Jackets defeated the Tampa Bay Lightning 5-2 on Tuesday night.

Kiril Marchenko, Dante Fabbro and Ivan Provorov also scored for Columbus, who improved to 15-2-3 in the past 20 games. Blue Jackets goaltender Elvis Merzlikins made 15 saves and registered his second assist of the season.

Gage Goncalves and J.J. Moser scored for Tampa Bay, which fell to 2-6 since the Olympic break and has just one win in the past seven games. Andrei Vasilevskiy finished with 26 saves. The Lightning have allowed 34 goals in the past six games and six power-play goals in the past two games.

Garland, who was acquired from the Vancouver Canucks at the trade deadline, had not scored a goal in his previous 24 games with Vancouver. But after scoring twice on Monday against Los Angeles, Garland had two more on Tuesday, including an insurance power-play goal in the third period.

Tampa Bay took the first-period lead when Nikita Kucherov sent a fake-shot pass across the ice to Goncalves for the one-touch pass to Victor Hedman, whose slap shot was tipped by Goncalves at 13:38.

Provorov and Garland scored goals 30 seconds apart to give the Blue Jackets the lead. Provorov sent a center point shot toward goal that hit Lightning defenseman Ryan McDonagh and deflected into the net at 5:57. Garland scored his third in the past two games at 6:27.

Marchenko scored a power-play goal at 11:42. Moser cut the deficit to one with a wrist shot at 16:23 of the second period. Fabbro scored into an empty net with 4:32 left.

Up next

Blue Jackets: At Florida on Thursday.

Lightning: Host Detroit on Thursday.

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