The Lightning forward received special recognition for appearing in his 1000th NHL game .

St. Louis leads Lightning past Rangers

**Well, to all the "and all without Stamkos" remarks...I'd say the Bolts are 15-8 because their entire team is better than last year. Stamkos great player and scores plenty and makes a lot happen out there. But as the TBL fans have seen one man does not a team make. New coach new players good goaltending and a new attitude..that's what gets you on the winning track. Stamkos being hurt and the Botls still playing at a high level...4 game losing streak aside...are not in this position because their team is sub par. They're seriously better. I was hoping the Rangers were better than this but it's one game...maybe next time.

**Congratulations Marty. I can't stand the way you do shootouts against the Hawks but you are one classy guy. Your performance in this game was the cherry on top.

**That was painful to watch, the first Leaf game that I actually sit through and I had to witness that debacle ! I thought maybe they could have pulled Reimer in the second, the goals wern't his fault but just to save his confidence. I'm sure they'll rebound.... against my Habs on Saturday night probably lol

**Congrats to Marty and the whole team. That was one of the more perfect games I've ever witnessed. Only sad thing about this game was, I thought it'd be a better match up, an actual hockey game. But it was just a mop the floor with them kinda game.

**Great to see Stammer walking without crutches. And congrats to St. Louis! 2 goals and an assist on his 1000th game, pretty awesome!

**Marty is one of my favorite players of all time. Great player and he really deserved every second of the ceremony. Stamkos walking to Marty without crotches just made the moment even better.

**So Marty has 2 goals and 1 assist playing in his 1000th game and he doesn't get 1 of the 3 stars on NHL.com..... shame on you guys!

**Rangers have a habit of making other teams goalies look amazing, anyways congrats to marty st louis (hes on my fantasy team) and congrats to Kucherov and congrats to bishop on the shutout. Rangers need to fix their offensive problems

**What a night. That was quite the ceremony for Marty. Seeing Marty and Richie together really brought back some great memories, and Stammer coming out was awesome. Great to see him pot a couple, on his night. Also, Kucherov has a bright future ahead of him. Offensive star in the making.

**Very happy for Nikita. Played indoor soccer with him for a year in NY while he was recovering from shoulder surgery. There are still marks on the mat where he practiced the slapshot

**Always like the Bolts, glad to see them get a nice big win. Devils were stinking it up last night, but at least the Bolts got a cheer out of the crowd when they showed your highlights on the big screen during intermission!

**That's good to hear (the cheer during intermission). I'm sure that at least part of that cheer is because of who our opponent was, but we'll take it!

**What a game for the Bolts. Outside a few dumb penalties, played a near perfect game, all without Stamkos, Malone, Gudas, Pyatt or Aulie in the lineup. How about Filppula serving up those pretty outlet passes for the breakaways? Marty is a legend and Bishop has been a monster for us, but Flip to me has been the unsung hero doing all the little things right early on.

**other than the last game Hank playeed, he consistently gets outplayed by the other teams goalie. Hank is still great but the other goalies against him have been better. On the other side of that the Rangers don't play as well in front of him with Cam is there and they don't score as much either. This has to get fixed with the next homestand coming up.

**I'm surprised the NHL didn't make some corny reference to chess like Ben Bishop to King Lundqvist. Check mate!

**Congrats Marty! And great to see Stammer walk out on the ice with no crutches or assistance. The fans went bezerk. Bishop was awesome in goal. Nice to get a solid win after a rough west coast trip.

**Forgot to mention Nikita Kucherov. Like Mario, he scores a goal on his very first shot in the NHL. Good to get a look at part of the future Lightning dynasty Stevie Y is building. Woohoo!

**Outplayed and still won 5-0, thats the sign of a good goalie! Great job Bishop and congrats Marty! It was incredible to see Stamkos walk out there the way he did, that guy is such a gamer. Can't wait to see the Lightning at full strength again, we can make a good run at the cup this year if we can get it all together by season's end

**Ok so this was a bad game. 5 goals against is a rare occurrence for the rangers and i'd say defensive wise the Rangers just gotta learn from their mistakes and forget about this one. However, as much as I love the fact that the Rangers can consistently get a ton of shots, they still can't score. They gotta make a move or do something because they won't go anywhere with 30+ shots and no goals

**tonight was honestly about defensive breakdowns and Bishop, I don't know how anyone would expect Hank to stop all of those, they were almost all odd man rushes, it was completely the defense who is at fault, and then their was Bishop, chance after chance and Bishop stood tall good game bolts

**It was a rare history marker for the third star. It was Kucherov's first shot on goal in the NHL and it went in, I think last time that has happened was Mario Lemieux. He also we top notch in his remaining ten minutes of ice time. He made at least two plays in the d-zone that stopped a surging Rangers team. With the injury to Stamkos Tampa has been shuffling a bit with the lineup. Kucherov was a 2nd round pick in 2011, or was it 2012???, and has been lighting the lamp in the AHL. Tonight was his first call up, and he impressed. When he was drafted the scouts said he had a scoring instinct but was completely irresponsible on defense. Well, evidently he's been elevating his defense as he looked great. I expect him to center the Purcell /Killornline at some point and Johnson, Palat, and Panik will be reunited; but first he's gotta prove he will be responsible before his minutes are elevated. Look out, this Lightning team is for real.

**My post from earlier: Calm down! Rangers are playing well! Rangers just ran into a very good team with an outstanding goaltender in Bishop! The Rangers can't win every single game on the road!!! They just lost to a better team tonight!! Doesn't mean the Rangers can't be the better team by season's end! Lundqvist may have let in 4 goals tonight but he has been on a heck of run since getting over that injury!!! I kinda blame AV for not rolling with Hank more often! Don't get me wrong, Talbot is playing really well against the lesser teams that he faces BUT I think Hank should be starting way more games in a row to get and stay in a groove!! No reason to alternate Talbot in every week, Talbot should only be playing when the Rangers play on back to back nights!! But after 24 games, the Rangers are .500, I'd prefer that then a losing record!! By halfway thru the season, the Rangers should be well above .500!!! Becuz they are rolling, we as fans just gotta accept a few bumps in the road from time to time!! Becuz this the NHL, alot of great teams, no one can be perfect!!

**Same thing happened to the Bolts after we fired Torts. Tampa fans loved him, unfortunately we had some bankrupting new owners that thought Dan Boyle and Brad Richards were overpaid and that Torts would be bettered by the mullet that is Barry Melrose. Did I mention that those cowboys tried to deal rookie Stamkos to Pittsburgh? Could you imagine the dynasty that would be Pittsburgh today if the league hadn't stepped in and essentially blocked the trade? Our GM disagreed and but Len Barrie went behind the GM's back and made the trade. The league stepped in and made a league wide declaration that only the GM of a club can move players, so Stamkos stayed. So glad Vinik bought the team and gave Yzerman an ownership stake. I'm still uneasy this year about things, but I think next year is when we become a real force. Hell, we have ten guys on the club that were playing significant time in the AHL last year. Brown, Palat, Johnson, Panik, Gudas, Sustr, Labrie, Barberio, Kucherov, and Connolly, though Connolly played a bit two years ago in the bigs. Tampa is young, but they are playing like veterans.

**You also gotta remember, each team we played out West are monsters at their houses. The Coyotes are undefeated I think at home I think, at least in regulation, the Shark Tank is always a tough place to play, the Kings are good, and the Ducks have the best record in the west. Bolts fans shouldn't worry too much about our performance on that road trip although it would have been nice to steal a victory, hell we almost got out of Anaheim with a W if we would have made it to the shootout where we havent lost yet

**We did beat both the Kings and Ducks here this year by 5-1 scores. We are 15-8 and still in really good shape in the standings. If someone told me before the season that we would be 15-8 after that trip I would have taken it.

**This season's trend is that western teams struggle in the east and eastern teams struggle out west. As long as it holds up all is well, however, if one team figures out how to win on the road, after the trip over the rockies, they'll have a few more points. We'll just hope the trend continues.