After the Lightning’s loss against Ottawa on Saturday, Jon Cooper pilloried his team for having a sense of “entitlement.… Peaks and troughs are an ineluctable consequence of playing a season that is probably twenty games too long. But Cooper has been coach since 2013. So when a veteran head coach rips his team, how they respond is fascinating. In the case of the Lightning, they produced a 5-2 victory.
In the first period, the Lightning glided past defenders with little-to-no resistance. Message received. In football, when a running back receives good blocking and struts into the end zone with no hands placed on him, the announcer will remark he made it “untouched.… Lightning defenseman Dan Girardi’s goal was of a similar flavor. The Lightning danced through three zones, and then Vladislav Namestikov chucked a pass through the middle to Girardi, who cut down the weak side for the tip-in goal.
On Tyler Johnson’s goal, Girardi was in the middle slot, and his tip slowed down the puck for Johnson to crush as he crouched along the weak side. Tampa Bay dressed eleven forwards and seven defensemen last night, so it was also interesting to watch the mash-up concoctions of depth players with the most skilled players.
The Red Wings did snap out of the fugue, and their hands-off approach was sharply reversed. The game got chippier, the Red Wings started to outperform the Lightning, and Tampa Bay lost orientation.
One dimension of the Lightning that is compelling on a nightly basis is the forwards’ reactions to their defensemen’s aggressiveness. Girardi’s role in the first two goals was an example of the Lightning exploiting a defense that was temporarily adrift, and Tampa Bay having four skaters below the circles was temporarily an unimpeachable strategy.
That hyper-aggressiveness took a tangible blow in the second period, as Mikhail Sergachev’s pinch left Girardi flailing after a missed poke-check on an odd-man rush that led to Detroit’s Gustav Nyquist’s strike. Alex Killorn did not make it back in time to affect Nyquist. But other mishaps that led to Detroit offense came from individual lapses by Lightning defensemen, like Hedman’s double turnover, which precipitated the Justin Abdelkader goal.
Detroit generated scoring chances, and Tampa Bay’s defensemen were not at their sharpest in terms of separating the player from the puck or winning battles around the net. And the Lightning forwards have been better of late when retrieving the puck below the goal line or finding their man in transition defense.
Red Wings center Henrik Zetterberg threaded a beautiful backhand pass to Jonathan Ericsson, but Ondrej Palat saved a goal with an outstanding shot block. The Lightning’s forwards and defensemen proved to be a bulwark on the penalty kill, allowing no goals on four attempts.
Ultimately, it was the goals that the Lightning stitched together when they had no room that decided the game. Namestikov, Yanni Gourde, and Killorn displayed scrappiness and strong puck support as the line’s straight-ahead hockey paid dividends in a goal in the final minute. It was a gutsy effort, and it proceeded gradually, making the final outcome a satisfying surprise.
Nikita Kucherov’s goal in the late third came off a faceoff, and the shot demonstrated the sharpshooter’s quick release. The offensive-zone draw came off of a contentious icing by Detroit. The Red Wings had a set play where center Frans Nielsen would win the faceoff, the puck would go D-to-D, and defenseman Trevor Daley would ring the puck around the boards for winger Darren Helm to obtain in a race for possession.
Unfortunately for Detroit, it was decided that Hedman matched Helm’s speed and forced an icing. Once the puck was dropped in the offensive zone to penalize the Red Wings for their icing, center Steven Stamkos cleanly won a faceoff that Kucherov collected and fireballed at net. It happened with Detroit’s skaters virtually on top of Tampa Bay, but the Lightning have the talent to create even in traffic and with only a centimeter of room.
Winning high-scoring and low-scoring games, generating scoring in space and without, and being able to defend and move the puck with both forwards and defensemen, bespeaks a taxonomy of success. That diversification will help stave off creeping complacency.