Reeling from the painful news that Steven Stamkos will be out for the rest of the regular season, the Lightning entered Saturday’s game against Calgary looking to snap their four-game losing skid and find an equilibrium without their captain. They achieved both. They significantly outplayed the Flames, winning 4-3 in a contest where the score was not indicative of how much the Lightning controlled the puck and monopolized the scoring chances. To wit, at 5v5, the Lightning finished with eight high-danger chances while allowing zero.
It is a cliché in hockey, but an injured player breeds opportunity for those soaking up his minutes. How the Lightning play on special teams and even strength without Stamkos will be revealing in the subsequent weeks.
The Power Play Stirs As great as the Bolts’ power play can be with Stamkos in the lineup, my biggest complaint with his unit is how stagnant and predictable it was. The puck would zip around the top of the circles, and occasionally be moved down low or into the bumper to Brayden Point, but the valuable chess pieces mostly stayed put. Nikita Kucherov rarely moved off the top of the right circle, Point was rooted in the middle slot, and Stamkos mostly idled around the top of the left circle.
No longer. With Mikhail Sergachev replacing Victor Hedman at the point, Point moving to the right circle, and Kucherov switching to the left circle, the flow and movement of players is far more fluid. Suddenly Point and Kucherov are looping up to the blue line, and then attacking the space below with speed. Tyler Johnson and Anthony Cirelli are providing their sticks and bodies for a shot-pass or the double screen. With Sergachev manning the point, more wrist shots for deflections can be realized.
The Johnson goal demonstrated the possibilities that more movement on the power play can offer.
After the Lightning claimed the puck off the faceoff, it was moved back to Sergachev. He carried the puck toward the left side, and in response, Point retreated to the blue line, but on the right side of the ice. Sergachev passed the puck to Kucherov on the left circle, and he quickly moved the puck back to Sergachev. Stop the video at the fifteen-second mark and Point is accelerating back into the offensive zone like a boomerang. The possibility that the Lightning just isolated Point on the right side so they could slingshot him into the slot forced two Calgary penalty killers to step toward Point just as Sergachev shot into the Johnson and Cirelli double-screen.
The extra space Point afforded allowed Johnson an unfettered stick and he deflected the shot past David Rittich. The Lightning never toyed with this much high-low action when Stamkos was healthy. The space that they were attacking from was more concentrated, for better or worse. Obviously, the unit with Stamkos was brilliant, and only recently suffered a cold spell. But too often it depended on the shooting of Kucherov, Stamkos, and Point. Their opponents knew that, if they could take away the seam passes and try to get into the shooting lanes as best possible, the Bolts’ power play could only beat them with a truly great one-timer.
Blake Coleman on the First Line With Stamkos absent, who should play with Point and Kucherov instantly becomes one of the most intriguing questions for the remainder of the season. Jon Cooper offered Palat the first opportunity to play on the first line, and Palat notched a goal on the power play that was aided by Derek Forbort.
But Palat was also served up prime scoring chances by Point and Kucherov that he couldn’t convert. Palat can bring a strong two-way game, but finishing scoring chances from the wing has never been his forte. Over the next 17 games, Cooper should check out whether Coleman would be a better fit on the left wing. After all, Coleman would still bring that same pressure on the forecheck and in transition defense, so the Lightning wouldn’t losing anything by replacing Palat with Coleman. But when Point and Kucherov engineer goal opportunities for the left wing, Coleman may be better suited than Palat to smack those shots past the opposing netminder.