Returning to home ice could not have felt sweeter for the Tampa Bay Lightning Tuesday night as they came into the Amalie Arena and defeated the Detroit Red Wings 4-1. Tampa bay has now won all three contests against Detroit so far this season.
For the first time in a while, the Lightning put together a complete against the Red Wings where they looked strong in all aspects of play. What stood out the most was the success the team had on special teams, both on the power play and penalty kill.
An effective power play is nothing new for Tampa this season. They have the third best power play percentage in the league and are tied for the most power goals with 28. The unit was successful once again last night, going two for six with goals from Jonathan Drouin and Brayden Point.
For how good the power play has been for the Bolts this season, the penalty kill has been exactly the opposite. Luckily, last night showed some signs of promise and improvement in this area. Tampa killed off all of Detroit's power play opportunities with ease and even came away with some shorthanded chances. However, the Lightning continue to take too many penalties and need to start playing a more disciplined game.
Moving away from special teams, Tuesday night's victory also provided more signs that Drouin could very well be that elite player Tampa was hoping to receive with the third-overall pick in 2013. He recorded his eighth goal and ninth assist, giving him his fourth multi-point game of the season. Not only is Drouin providing scoring for a team in desperate need of it, the confidence he is showing along with the jaw-dropping moves he's been making is just astonishing.
The one negative that came out of last night was losing goaltender, Ben Bishop, midway through the first period of action. Bishop was forced to leave the game with an apparent lower-body injury. The severity of the injury has yet to be determined but the Lightning cannot afford to lose another key piece to their puzzle for an extended period of time.
Andrei Vasilevskiy came in relief and produced a performance worthy of recognition. For this reason, he is my player of the game (even though he wasn't one of the games "three stars"). Vasilevskiy stopped 22 of the 23 shots he faced and had a shutout going for most of the game. Detroit's Anthony Mantha ended the shutout with eleven seconds left in the third period. Coming into a game cold as a netminder is not an easy thing to do. Being able to keep a team scoreless until the final seconds after spending the beginning of the game on the bench is impressive.
The Lightning have to be feeling very good after last night's dominant performance against the Red Wings. However, the reality is that this was only one game. Tampa has to play like this more consistently if they want to wind up back in the playoff picture.
The Lightning will head to the ice on Thursday night at home to take on the St. Louis Blues. The Blues are having a strong season thus far and sit in third place in the Central Division with 41 points.