Oddly, this indefinite break from play could end up helping the Lightning. Tampa Bay had won only four of its last ten games before play was suspended. Steven Stamkos was recovering from his core-muscle surgery and wasn’t expected to be ready to play until the last week in April. If the NHL resumes in May or June, Stamkos should be healthy, and his teammates will have had a long layoff to ruminate about what went wrong before the respite and how they can succeed come playoff time. I’ve thought of several questions worth considering during their quarantine, and ours.
How do the Bolts get Blake Coleman going? The scoring hasn’t been there for the Lightning’s big trade-deadline acquisition. Since joining Tampa Bay, Coleman has posted zero goals and one assist in ten games. He was seeing it affect his playing time. In his initial four games, he played a minimum of 15 minutes, and against the Flames he played 17:39. But in the ensuing six games, he logged under 15 minutes and saw less than 12 minutes of ice time against Detroit. Only Carter Verhaeghe played less. But Cooper shouldn’t give up on Coleman, and one hopes that during this stoppage someone shows him the following numbers.
In the ten games since Coleman joined the Lightning, he has posted really strong 5v5 stats. Coleman has the most high-danger chances of any player on the Lightning in the ten games since he joined. He is second only to Ondrej Palat in expected goals. The only forward who has more shots during that time span is Nikita Kucherov. With a zero percent shooting percentage, it is safe to say Coleman is suffering from poor puck luck.
Who Coleman should play with is maybe the more interesting dilemma. In 66 minutes with Alex Killorn and Anthony Cirelli, Coleman has had mixed success. They’ve produced three goals while allowing zero, which is exciting, and they also are +3 in high-danger-chances differential. But their expected goals percentage is 51.24 and they have actually surrendered more shots than they have generated.
Since Stamkos is likely going to be fully healthy when the NHL resumes, the first line is spoken for as the captain will be joining Kucherov and Brayden Point. But whether Coleman should play with Killorn and Cirelli on the second line, or if he’d be better utilized on a third line with some mix of Ondrej Palat, Tyler Johnson, and Barclay Goodrow is an open question, and one Cooper should mull over during this break.
I lean toward Coleman joining up with Killorn and Cirelli, who are more adroit at playmaking. In contrast, if Coleman plays with Palat or Johnson as his best linemate, they become more of an energy line. In the case where Stamkos plays on a different line than Kucherov and Point, I would love to see Coleman playing left wing with the latter two. Point and Kucherov are both gifted distributors, and they’d certainly give Coleman plenty of chances to shoot off the wing and stab at pucks around the crease.
Should Ryan McDonagh and Erik Cernak stay together as a defensive pair? In 2018-19, McDonagh and Cernak played 810 minutes together. They had a +13 goal differential at 5v5, their expected goals percentage was 53.85, and their high-danger-chances percentage was 53.70. When they were on the ice, the Lightning controlled 20 more shot attempts than they allowed. McDonagh had his highest shooting percentage since 2015-16, and his nine goals and 37 assists, in addition to his role as a defenseman who could play the hard minutes, delivered on what the Bolts were hoping for when they traded for him.
This season, McDonagh and Cernak have a +3 goal differential, an expected goals percentage of 52.46, a 53.07 high-danger-chances percentage, and are exactly even in terms of the Lightning controlling shot attempts. McDonagh has one goal and 11 assists in 50 games. Together, their play has seen a slight dip, and McDonagh has been unable to chip in offense at the same clip as last season. With McDonagh more offensively impotent, and neither possessing the speed to skate the puck out of their own zone on retrievals, do they make sense as a pair anymore against future postseason opponents?
The data from their two games against the Maple Leafs, the Lightning’s probable first-round opponent, is worth thinking about. In 30 minutes against the Leafs this season, McDonagh and Cernak had a 21.92 expected goals percentage and a -7 high-danger-chances differential. They were being utilized to stymie the Leafs’ gunners, but with little success.
Other than not having to worry about Dan Girardi’s presence in the lineup, the dramatic difference between this season and last is that Mikhail Sergachev has established himself as a mobile, dependable top-four defenseman. The composition of the defensive corps is different, and the McDonagh-Cernak duo may be an unworthy vestige of last season. Instead of using them as the “shutdown… pair, perhaps it is best to utilize Sergachev or Victor Hedman as the playmaking aggressor on the left side to pair with the less mobile, more stay-at-home types like McDonagh or Cernak on the right side. (McDonagh would be on the off-side, but he has demonstrated he can play that way.)
When Cernak has played with Hedman, the two have been awesome. Cernak is happy to be a backstop for Hedman’s offensive forays, and when Cernak wants to step up in the neutral zone to disrupt a stretch pass, Hedman has the agility to make sure Cernak is covered underneath. McDonagh has also played well with Kevin Shattenkirk, which means that Sergachev would end up playing with Jan Rutta, which would allow Sergachev to stay on the left side. Cooper needs to consider how he wants to use his defensemen when the games start mattering.
If the Stamkos-Point-Kucherov line isn’t producing, what is the next best option? When Stamkos played with Kucherov and Point this season, the trio could be so dominant that I think the Lightning would be wise to start with that line when play resumes. The argument is simple: They can win a contest singlehandedly, and the Lightning have enough depth so that the other three lines can survive a merely adequate performance by the top line. But if the star line sputters in multiple playoff games, Cooper should move Stamkos to play with Killorn and Cirelli. The evidence reveals there is chemistry there. In 160 at 5v5 minutes, they scored nine goals while allowing zero. They had a 56.73 expected goals percentage and a +7 high-danger chances differential.
In the Lightning’s series with the Blue Jackets, coach John Tortorella made a few key adjustments and Cooper could never counter. Yes, the Lightning players failed him, but he was also outcoached. At what time Cooper should look to utilize this Plan B for Stamkos, if and when the star line begins to fade, is a question worth discussing during this time of reflection.