Safe is Death

The 2004 Tampa Bay Lightning used the mantra all the way to winning the only Stanley Cup title in franchise history. It's something assistant coach Craig Ramsay refined and head coach John Tortorella preached.

It means, don't sit back and allow the opponent to keep coming and coming. It means try to remain upright, instead of adopting a bend-but-don't-break mentality. Because if that approach is adopted, eventually it will break.

That's how I sort of feel about the first two games for Tampa Bay in the Eastern Conference finals. Yes, they earned the split that every road team looks for in a best-of-seven series. But the formula put forth by the Lightning in the first two games is not a formula for sustained success.

Tampa Bay has to be better if it wants to be the first team to repeat as Eastern Conference champions since the 2009 Pittsburgh Penguins.

The Lightning want to be a puck possession team. In the regular season Tampa Bay finished sixth in SAT (shot attempts) percentage at 52.18 percent. As the theory goes, the more often a team is in possession of the puck, the chances of scoring goals increases.

Yet in the first two games against the Penguins, the Lightning never seem to have the puck. And that's not an illusion. Pittsburgh has a total of 139 shot attempts in two games compared to 85 for the Lightning. That equates to a SAT percentage of 62.05 in favor of the Penguins.

Pittsburgh does have the benefit of a hefty advantage in power play time, with over 13 minutes on the man advantage compared to just under five for Tampa Bay, which knocks the 5-on-5 percentage to a more manageable percentage of 58.79 in favor of the Penguins. But that is still a sizable advantage for Pittsburgh.

Watching Monday's Game 2, which was tied 2-2 heading in to the third period, Tampa Bay started to take on the look of a team sitting back and hoping not to lose. The shots in the third period were 16-6 for the Penguins as the Lightning tried to once again be an opportunistic team and wait for a mistake to capitalize on, which came when Alex Killorn broke up ice on a 2-on-1 but had his shot carom off the crossbar.

But here's the thing when a team tries to sit back and wait for something to happen - it usually doesn't. Teams have to go out and make something happen and in Game 2, Tampa Bay simply didn't do enough of that in the third period and eventually it led to Sidney Crosby scoring in the first minute of overtime to even up the series.

When I see that I can't help but think back to the 2004 Eastern Conference finals between Tampa Bay and Philadelphia. In Game 6 the Lightning had a one-goal lead in the third period with the chance to advance to the Stanley Cup Final staring them in the face. But Tampa Bay played it safe, tried to just protect the lead instead of extending and it cost them as Keith Primeau tied the game in the final two minutes and Simon Gagne won it in overtime to force a seventh game.

It was in that next game the Lightning learned their lesson and put the Safe Is Death mantra to full practice. Once again holding the lead on a first period goal from Ruslan Fedotenko, Tampa Bay stayed on the attack, outshooting the Flyers 18-8 in the second period and extending the lead on Fredrik Modin's goal. Though Philadelphia would cut the lead to 2-1 before the third period, Tampa Bay held the Flyers to just seven shots on goal in the final frame and advanced to the Stanley Cup Final for the first time in franchise history.

So as the series gets set to shift to Tampa for Games 3 and 4, the Lightning need a bit of a mental shift. Just as we saw in the second-round series against the New York Islanders, when Tampa Bay goes on the attack and establishes a forecheck by utilizing their speed, it puts the opponent on their heels. That did not happen in the first two games.

The Lightning need to start using that part of their game, have more of an attack mentality with the puck on a more consistent basis.

"We were just too much one and done and not taking advantage of what we're good at,'' Lightning head coach Jon Cooper said following the Game 2 loss. "We do it in spurts, but we
haven't done it for six periods now against these guys.''

Safe Is Death

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