Tampa Bay Lightning Goalscoring Records: The Captain, the Mighty Mouse, and the Streaky Sniper

For all the Tampa Bay Lightning's success, the relatively young hockey club hasn't been around long enough to compete with all of the franchise-record goalscoring statistics of Toronto, Detroit, or New York. But the cool thing about the Bolts' goalscoring records is that many of the numbers are eye-popping regardless, thanks to the supreme talent of Lightning snipers who've graced the club.

Tampa Bay's tied list of three single-game goalscoring record holders includes two household names of the National Hockey League's past and present. Was the Bolts' original record-holder from 1992 a blue-collar athlete who doesn't belong in the same retrospective as the others? You be the judge.

The former Tampa Bay Lightning forward Chris Kontos was among the stranger stories of the NHL in the 1990s. Kontos, thought to be an inconsistent player and a defensive liability, was never trusted to play a full season with a non-expansion team of the National Hockey League. His offense didn't usually appear to be anything special. But in a single game, or a short span of a season, Kontos was capable of taking the league by storm, carrying the expansion-era Bolts on many occasions when only a flurry of goals would save the club's defense corps of journeymen.

Kontos' four-goal game against the Chicago Blackhawks helped Tampa Bay earn a surprise blowout in its first ever regular-season contest in the league. Kontos scored at 19:32 of the third period to tally the Bolts' final goal of a joyful 7-3 romp over the historic 'Hawks. After setting such a tough-to-beat goalscoring record that could just as easily have been negligible after a team's first game, Kontos went on to score 27 goals in 66 games played for the nascent Tampa Bay Lightning of 1992-93.

It's unclear what happened to Kontos' pro career in the seasons that followed. He wound up on 1994's Canadian roster at the Olympics that earned only a silver medal and was said to stir little interest among NHL general managers of the time despite his promising season in Tampa.

Martin St. Louis, a "Mighty Mouse" style National Hockey League skater at just 5-foot-8, was already one of the most beloved Tampa Bay Lightning athletes in the club's history when he tied Kontos' four-goal record in a single game, performing in his final season with Tampa Bay in 2014.

St. Louis blasted a slap shot to light the lamp on a power play at 2:07 of the third period of a Jan. 18, 2014 contest against the San Jose Sharks, his fourth goal of the contest giving Tampa Bay a 4-2 lead. Regretfully, St. Louis would become a rare NHL sniper to score four goals in a single game and be forced to watch his team lose it anyway. The San Jose Sharks roared back to win the encounter 5-4.

Tampa Bay centerman Steven Stamkos drew a luckier night for his record-tying four goals in a single game, although the Lightning appeared to have the misfortune of going up against Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers. Stamkos' empty-net goal at 19:53 of the third period sealed Tampa's 7-4 victory over the talented Oilers following a hat trick of goals scored against GK Stuart Skinner.

Why keep it so short on Stamkos, compared to St. Louis and Kontos' single game records? Don't worry, Stamkos' vast litany of franchise records for the Lightning gives him more to come.

As the 2011-12 Tampa Bay Lightning failed to qualify for the Stanley Cup postseason, Steven Stamkos' amazing season of offense gave the fans something to celebrate in springtime.

Stamkos set the Bolts' franchise record for 60 goals in an 82-game slate that season, first breaking Vincent Lecavalier's previous mark of 52 goals in the 2007-08 season with Stamkos' buzzer-beating goal at 19:58 of the first period that helped Tampa Bay defeat Philadelphia 5-3 on Monday, March 26, 2012. Less than two weeks later, on April 7, Stamkos beat Winnipeg's goaltender Ondrej Pavelec with a wrist shot at 3:29 of the third period, making him only the 20th player in NHL lore to manufacture 60-or-more goals in a single season.

It's curious that when Steven Stamkos scored to break another of Vincent Lecavalier's records, the mark for career goals with the Tampa Bay Lightning, almost no one at Amalie Arena reacted with overwhelming joy. The game featured a modicum of crowd noise, and the announcers seemed confused as to what had just happened until a friendly statistician gave them a reminder.

If Stamkos really reacted "with relief" after scoring his 384th goal for Tampa on March 18, 2019, it was probably because he was too excited about the team to worry about personal milestones. The Lightning team captain was leading a contingent that would win the 2018-19 Presidents' Trophy with 62 regular season wins, though the Bolts were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs.

Tampa Bay returned to the playoffs with a vengeance and won the Stanley Cup under Stamkos' leadership the following season. Stamkos left Tampa Bay for the Nashville Predators in 2024 after scoring 555 goals for the Tampa Bay Lightning over the course of an amazing 16-year stint.