The Tampa Bay Lightning again struggled mightily Saturday afternoon, losing to the Dallas Stars, 8-1. Joe Pavelski had a goal and two assists as Dallas handed Tampa Bay their fourth consecutive loss.

The Lightning looked listless throughout the game and never could answer the offensive charge the Stars brought to American Airlines Arena. Along with Pavelski’s three points, Jason Robertson scored twice and Jake Oettinger stopped all but one of the 33 shots he faced.

The Stars jumped out to the early lead just over a minute into the game when Tyler Seguin put one past all-star goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy. By the 8-minute mark of the first period, Dallas had opened the lead to 3-0 with goals by Robertson and Jamie Benn.

Victor Hedman scored the lone goal for the Bolts with a wrist shot off a feed from Nakita Kucherov midway through the first period. However, it was apparent the damage of yet another slow start would doom the Lightning to a fourth-straight loss in what has been a frustrating week.

Vasilevskiy had his worst outing since returning from back surgery last week. The star goaltender only was able to stop 19 of 25 shots before being relieved by Jonas Johansson.

“Listen, there are times that are unlucky for a goalie,” Lightning Coach Jon Cooper said. “We’ve put him in these circumstances. He’s just getting his legs back.”

“He’s the best in the world, and that’s who we want in the net.”

Oettinger was brilliant on the other side of the ice, stymying a Lightning squad that has struggled to produce in recent weeks. For as many looks the Bolts received through the afternoon, Oettinger and the Dallas defense matched accordingly.

Tampa Bay’s defense could not respond yet again.

“You have a game like this. With 82 games, you’re going to be some stinkers,” Cooper lamented. “It feels like every shot (for Dallas) goes in the net, and every one you take does not.”

“And usually you just burn the tape, turn the page, and move on to the next game.”

Struggles Aplenty for Tampa Bay

The Lightning are certainly strangers to losing often. While it seems more prevalent this season than in recent years, Cooper believes that good things lie ahead for the Bolts.

“What makes it tough is the three before where we feel for sure we could’ve taken two of them or probably taken points in all three. We don’t,” Cooper said. “Now all of a sudden we’ve lost four in a row.”

“You can’t bury your head in the sand and move on to the next one. Fortunately, we’ve got these guys again coming up….when something like this happens, you want to play the same team again. We have the opportunity in a few nights.”

When asked about the recent slump, Cooper pointed out that just five games ago the team was 8 of 15 against Carolina.

“Now, we are something like 5 of 150. We’ve got some pretty good players that are used to scoring and putting the puck in the net, and it’s not going in for them.”

“There are going to be some dry spells. But we have to keep the puck out and for us that has to be paramount.”