TEMPE, Ariz. (AP) — Arizona is in the midst of a daunting scheduling quirk, facing teams that have won the past six Stanley Cup titles in consecutive games.

The Coyotes failed on the first attempt. They’ve been stellar in the past two.

Michael Carcone scored twice, Connor Ingram stopped 31 shots in his second straight strong performance and the Coyotes beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 3-1 on Tuesday night.

“We know we can compete in every game and we also know mistakes are kind of shooting us in the foot previous games,” Carcone said. “Once you see it, you can kind of nip it in the bud I think that’s kind of being the difference here.”

Arizona started its tough six-game stretch with a sloppy 6-5 loss to St. Louis, which raised the Cup in 2019.

The Coyotes bounced back to beat reigning Stanley Cup champion Vegas 2-0 on Saturday and followed it up with another strong performance against the Lightning, back-to-back champions in 2020-21.

Ingram was sharp against one of the NHL’s highest-scoring teams after stopping 34 shots against Vegas for his second career shutout. He also had his second assist this season and Travis Boyd scored his first goal of the season.

That puts the Coyotes at 2-1 against recent Stanley Cup champions, with games against Colorado, St. Louis and Washington coming up.

“It’s another good game and we’re stacking them on top of each other,” Ingram said.

The Lightning are trending in the wrong direction.

Coming off a five-game point streak, Tampa Bay has lost two straight after dropping a 4-1 game at Colorado on Monday night.

Brayden Point scored and Jonas Johansson had 22 saves for the Lightning, who went 0 for 2 on the power play.

“If you’re not getting power plays in the game, it’s not going to do it for you so you have to score 5 on 5,” Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said. “It’s just been tough for us.”