Second-period explosion lifts Lightning to blowout of Canucks

Darren Raddysh, Yanni Gourde and Nikita Kucherov produced a three-goal blitz early in the second period as the Tampa Bay Lightning overwhelmed the host Vancouver Canucks 6-2 on Thursday.

Kucherov and Anthony Cirelli each had a goal and two assists while Brandon Hagel and Raddysh posted a goal and an assist each for the Lightning (42-21-4, 88 points), who won their second straight game.

Tampa Bay's Jake Guentzel also scored, Erik Cernak notched two assists, and goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy made 19 saves.

The victory comes at a key juncture of the season for Tampa Bay, which struggled coming out of the Olympic break after being one of the NHL's hottest teams in December and January.

Liam Ohgren and Linus Karlsson scored goals, Marco Rossi had two assists and Kevin Lankinen stopped 24 shots for the Canucks, who have lost four of their past six (2-3-1) and are last place in the league with 50 points (21-39-8).

Home ice has not been kind this season to the Canucks, who were trying to win back-to-back games against the Florida teams. They beat the Panthers 5-2 on Tuesday.

Guentzel opened the scoring late in the first period with his 30th goal of the season, deflecting a Charle-Edouard D'Astous point shot past Lankinen at 17:37.

The Lightning broke the game open during the first 5:31 of the second period.

Raddysh made it 2-0 just 49 seconds into the second. He took a nice feed from Kucherov and one-timed a slap shot from the top of the right faceoff circle to beat Lankinen, who had lost his goal stick.

Gourde outdueled forward Elias Pettersson, and with one hand on his stick he tipped in a Raddysh point shot from the side of the net to make it 3-0 at 4:16.

Just 45 seconds later, Kucherov's shot from the side boards deflected in off the right skate of Canucks defenseman Filip Hronek to make it 4-0.

Ogren finally got the Canucks on the board at 12:06 of the second, firing a shot through traffic.

Karlsson batted the puck out of the air and in after Rossi took the initial shot to make it 4-2 at 7:04 of the third.

Tampa Bay answered quickly with goals by Cirelli and Hagel at 7:36 and 10:35 of the final period.