TAMPA, Fla. — Dwayne Roloson played like a youngster, again.
The 42-year-old Roloson made 34 saves, Teddy Purcell scored in the sixth round of a shootout and the Tampa Bay Lightning beat the Edmonton Oilers 3-2 on Thursday night.
“Rollie played great,” Tampa Bay coach Guy Boucher said. “He was solid, looked in control. We really liked his game, definitely.”
Roloson got his first win since Feb. 16 against San Jose by beating another veteran goalie in 39-year-old Nikolai Khabibulin.
The pair have combined to play 1,381 NHL games.
“He looked 22,” Lightning centre Tom Pyatt said about Roloson.
Roloson was 0-3 in his previous six games, and has struggled all season after keying Tampa Bay’s surprise run into the 2011 Eastern Conference finals.
“It’s not personal or anything, just a team win,” Roloson said.
Steven Stamkos and Martin St. Louis also scored in the extra session, helping the Lightning win the shootout 3-2.
Ladislav Smid pulled Edmonton even at 2 with 3:47 left in regulation with his first goal in 38 games, coming from the low left circle off a nice pass by Ryan Nugent-Hopkins.
“Obviously you don’t want to give up that goal late,” Stamkos said.
“When someone works as hard as he (Roloson) does in practice, it was nice to get the win for him.”
Pyatt scored twice for Tampa Bay, which won for the second time in eight games.
Linus Omark also scored for the Oilers. It was the first time that Khabibulin, who stopped 19 shots, played in Tampa since Game 7 of the 2004 Stanley Cup finals, when he helped the Lightning beat Calgary 2-1 to win the team’s only NHL championship.
“We wanted to get this one for him,” Edmonton coach Tom Renney said. “The guys talked about that, and certainly he wanted it.”
Pyatt opened the scoring from just outside the crease during a power play at 3:24 of the second. After Omark tied with an in-close re-direction 9:57 into the second, Pyatt made it 2-1 on a rebound goal with 1:42 left in the period. Roloson made an early first-period save on Ales Hemsky, who had his first career hat trick in Edmonton’s 6-3 win over Nashville on Tuesday night, during a breakaway. The Oilers outshot Tampa Bay 15-7 in the first.
“I thought we worked hard and gave everything we could to claw our way back to get a point,” Renney said.
Khabibulin stopped NHL goals leader Stamkos’ breakaway backhander just over a minute into the second. Stamkos has not scored in four games since getting his 50th of the season against Boston on March 13. Stamkos finished with six shots on goal.
“It’s just not going in, that’s all,” Boucher said. “He’s getting tons of chances.”
NOTES: Edmonton LW Taylor Hall sat out his third consecutive because of a concussion. Oilers C Lennart Petrell, who left Tuesday’s game because of a groin injury, did not play. This was just the third time since 2003 that Edmonton has played at Tampa Bay.