|
Defense Remains Tampa Bay's Weakness |
|
|
|
|
|
After last season's bump in the road, the Tampa Bay Lightning are primed and ready to establish themselves as legitimate Stanley Cup contenders in 2017-18. There may be some skepticism about the Bolts actually making it all the way to the cup finals after last year's failures, but the truth is that it can happen.
Still, even the best teams in the National Hockey League have weak aspects of their game. Unfortunately, it appears that Tampa's is once again going to be its blueline. The team looked to make improvements to the defense over the summer. However, they missed out on some of the bigger fish and settled for options that were quite underwhelming.
After Victor Hedman and Anton Stralman, the Bolts blueline has a load of question marks. Braydon Coburn and Dan Girardi are third-pairing defensemen at this point in their careers if Girardi is even that. When it comes to Andrej Sustr, he has yet to establish himself as a legitimate NHL defenseman. As for Jake Dotchin and Slater Koekkoek, the potential is definitely there but we still haven't seen enough of them to determine how good they are going to be.
Besides for Hedman and Stralman, the most promising blue-liner most likely won't even be on the team. Mikhail Sergachev brings with him a ton of potential and could very well become an elite defenseman for the Lightning in the future. That future could be the present if there wasn't such a logjam at the position. Seeing that he has one more year of eligibility in juniors, it is likely that he will end up back there.
Of course, Tampa Bay's defense could turn out fine enough to get them where they need to go. There are teams with far-worse situations on the blueline. However, as I mentioned before, every team has a weakness and the situation on defense is it for the Lightning.
Calgary Flames Blogger • 
Join the Discussion:
»