You know Jon Cooper told his players not to take the Edmonton Oilers lightly. You know Jon Cooper told his players to remain focused on the task at hand. It didn’t seem to matter. The Tampa Bay Lightning were virtually invisible on Monday night, as the Oilers beat them by a score of 3-2 at Rexall Place.
The Lightning’s first period struggles set the tone for their entire evening. They were listless. There was no urgency. There was no energy. One of the few players who did bring ‘it’ on Monday was Brett Connolly, who put the puck past Ben Scrivens in the first period only to have the goal called off because of goaltender interference.
That hiccup didn’t deter Connolly or his linemates, as they were the ones who generated Tampa’s first goal of the evening at the 1:21 mark of the second period. Brian Boyle banked the puck past Scrivens from a bad angle to give the Lightning a 1-0 lead. Despite looking anything but interested to start the game, the Bolts had their advantage.
That lead didn’t last long, however, as Edmonton’s Justin Schultz beat Ben Bishop with a backhand shot about three minutes later. The puck, which looked to be going wide, deflected off Bishop’s stick and into the net. Call it bad luck. Call it no luck. It doesn’t matter. The game was knotted at one, and the Oilers were about to take control in a big way.
Just as they did in Vancouver, the Lightning fell apart. Their board play was weak. Their ability to break out of the zone was non-existent. This time, though, they weren't able to eke out a win. Edmonton’s defenders did a great job of limiting the Bolts’s time and space by using their own speed and tenacity. The team that had zero wins heading into the contest looked like the team favored by many to be a contender… and vice versa.
The Oilers’s hard work paid off towards the end of the second frame when Taylor Hall was impeded on a breakaway. Awarded a penalty shot, Hall made a simple move and put the puck past Bishop for his fourth goal of the year. The emotion on his face at that point is hard to describe; the crowd at Rexall was energized in a way that it hadn’t been all year.
Though they were only down by one with 20 minutes left on the clock, it was tough to believe that the Bolts would mount a comeback. As mentioned time and time again through this blog, there was simply nothing inspirational about the way the Lightning were playing.
But the Bolts never fail to surprise. After being robbed by a goaltender interference call earlier in the game, Brett Connolly wired home his second goal of the season with about six minutes left on the clock. Just like that, the game was tied at two. Overtime, and a single point, was in reach.
…and then out of reach. Just more than two minutes after Connolly scored, Ondrej Palat committed an egregious turnover in the defensive zone that resulted in Ryan Nugent-Hopkins’s first goal of the 2014-15 campaign. Rather than play the puck off the boards and out of the zone like any peewee hockey player would, Palat sent the biscuit right up the middle and onto Jordan Eberle's stick. Eberle then passed it to Nugent-Hopkins, who made no mistake wristing the puck past Bishop to give his team the 3-2 lead they wouldn’t relinquish.
Losses are never great, but sometimes a great effort is spoiled by a bad result. That wasn’t the case on Monday night in Edmonton. The Oilers deserved to beat the Lightning. The Oilers did beat the Lightning. There is absolutely no excuse for a team that considers itself to be one of the top teams in the East to play like the Lightning did in Edmonton.
Moving away from the boxscore-like recap, here are some observations:
1) Brett Connolly, as mentioned, was phenomenal. It was inarguably his best game of the year to date, and he looked every bit like a player who can and will contribute at the NHL level. Few Bolts were noticeable on Monday, but the British Columbia native absolutely was. When given the opportunity to be creative and showcase his offensive abilities, Connolly delivered:
2) Another player who was very noticeable (in a positive way) was Jonathan Drouin. In only his first NHL game, the youngster was electric. He controlled the puck in a way that made my jaw drop on a few occasions. When he was out on the ice, the Lightning were creating chances. That’s a positive sign for the Bolts moving forward.
3) Why was Drouin in the lineup? The team planned on holding him out tonight, but an injury to Alex Killorn meant that his debut was pushed forward. The news isn’t good for Killorn, as it doesn’t sound like he’ll be able to play in Calgary tomorrow night.
4) You’ll note that Callahan’s name is also on that last tweet. He left Monday’s game with a lower body injury and did not return. Last year it was Stamkos who went down early. This season it’s Hedman, Callahan, Killorn, and Gudas. That’s a whole lot of quality.
5) Ondrej Palat was… dreadful. I can’t find another word for it. The player who finished as a Calder Trophy finalist last season is nowhere to be found. He isn’t creating chances. He isn’t winning puck battles. Quite frankly, he looks lost. Here’s hoping he finds his game soon, given that the Lightning committed to him in a big way over the summer.
6) Steven Stamkos was invisible too, but it's hard to complain about a guy who has five goals in six games to start the year. Everyone thought that he would victimize the Oilers's defense, but it was the Oilers's defense who made him look quite ordinary. Full credit to them.
7) If you were wondering whether or not the team would miss Victor Hedman, who is out four to six weeks with a fractured finger, you got your answer on Monday. The defense gave up way too many quality chances, and failed to move the puck up ice with any sort of precision. Would it be wrong to suggest that the Hedman injury might be more devastating to this group than an injury to anyone else, including the captain, would be? I don't think so.
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The best thing for the Lightning to do after a game like that is move on. There aren’t any positives to take away from that performance. What the team needs to do is forget about it and focus on tomorrow’s task: beating the Calgary Flames. Going winless in Alberta would be quite disappointing (read: embarrassing).
As always, thanks for reading.
Michael Stuart has been the Tampa Bay Lightning writer for HockeyBuzz since 2012. Visit his archive to read more or follow him on Twitter. 
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