The Lighting bombarded the Ottawa Senators with shot attempts in last evening’s deflating 7-4 loss. While the Lightning spent most of the game trailing by multiple goals, they did generate 14 more Scoring Chances than the Senators and bested the Senators by 20 shot attempts. The first two lines poured on the offensive pressure, moving the puck swiftly and effectively. And J.T. Miller was the beneficiary, with a hat trick and two power-play goals. Other shots nearly missed, as Senators goaltender Mike Condon was saved by the bar. However, conceding seven goals is atrocious! Even if there was a measure of bad luck on a few of the Senators’s tallies, some things stood out that accounted for the three-goal defeat.

When Braydon Coburn plays, he is a problem. On the first goal, Mikhail Sergachev dove into the fray and fell, leaving Coburn vulnerable to a speedy opposing forward tearing up the weak side. When Senators forward Tom Pyatt received the puck, Coburn had little chance of catching him, and it was a collapse by the Tampa Bay transition defense to fail to hinder the trailer from converting on the rebound.

Speaking of Coburn, his penalty for interference that led to the fourth Senators goal was dumb. Coburn obstructed Jean-Gabriel Pageau’s path to the puck, and even if it was a glancing collision, the penalty still demonstrates a stunning lack of discipline for a veteran defenseman. Blocking an opponent’s avenue to the puck is both illegal and lazy, and it was because Coburn had skated too far forward and did not have the lateral agility and foot speed to cut and beat Pageau to the retrieval. Even if Coburn was trying to do the accidentally-on-purpose disruption due to his lack of foot speed, he has roughly nine inches and several medicine balls worth of weight on Pageau – no way is he going to invoke any sympathy from the black-and-white. It was a clear opportunity for Pageau to embellish, and the Lightning, who are dreadful on the penalty kill, ended up surrendering a power-play goal to Marian Gaborik.

The penalty kill is an entirely separate issue that chafes at one’s optimism. On the Gaborik goal, the Senators gained entry too easily, and the Lightning were caught chasing the puck and failing to seal off passing lanes, especially in precarious dead spots. On both Gaborik’s and Ryan Dzingel’s power-play goals, Anton Stralman offered his body for the shot block, but the puck passed him. On the Dzingel goal, which gave Ottawa a 2-1 lead, Stralman made the choice to go for the shot block instead of boxing out the screen by Alexandre Burrows. On the Gaborik tally, goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy can accept fault, but on the Dzingel rocket, Vasilevskiy didn’t see the puck because he was eclipsed by Burrows. If Stralman is going to decide to jump out to close on the shooter, he needs to succeed in the shot block. Considering he failed on both shot blocks, boxing out might be the move going forward.

Unlike on Gaborik’s power-play goal, the Senators didn’t cleanly enter the zone to set up Dzingel’s marker. Fifteen seconds before Dzingel picked a top corner, Thomas Chabot dumped and chased and Victor Hedman was unable to fight off the pressure by the defenseman on his backside to steer the puck toward support. It was a strange play by Hedman because Chabot was interfering with his right arm and body, yet Hedman tried to shuttle the puck toward the side Chabot was pressing and where there were no Lightning teammates in sight. If he had guided the puck away from Chabot’s pressure, Stralman was all alone to receive the pass and clear the zone. A decision like that can have quick ripple effects.

The last goal worth commenting on was the deflection by Tom Pyatt to give the Senators a 3-1 lead. Coburn – are you sensing a theme here? – rode Mark Borowiecki into the corner after Borowiecki swung the puck cross ice to find Cody Ceci. The next few seconds were a painful lapse in communication, as Coburn stuck to Borowiecki while Nikita Kucherov, the winger who became a de facto center with the switching by Steven Stamkos, globbed onto the Senators’s defensemen as well. This left a two-on-one on the right side that Sergachev had no hope of defending. Ceci found the shooting lane and shot into the screen by Pyatt, changing the direction of the puck before it reached Vasilevskiy. Kucherov clearly expected Coburn to release off Borowiecki and join Sergachev, but Coburn followed Borowiecki because he was defending him on the entry and pinned him against the glass after the dump-in.

The Senators were assisted by good puck luck on Tuesday night, but the problems described here are unsettling. The penalty kill stinks. Good teams will exploit the Lightning’s weak defensemen, whether that is Coburn, Jake Dotchin, or Dan Girardi. The Lightning’s offense is high-scoring and can win them games. But that does not mean they can’t help themselves with better own-zone coverage and transition defense. There is also significant room to grow in their discipline (they are just outside the top ten in times they have been shorthanded) so that they avoid putting themselves on the penalty kill, a category in which they are ranked 26th. The Lightning are a powerhouse at even strength, and their forward group is explosive. But their forwards’ effect is diminished by sloppy play.

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