Asking questions is a way to obtain clarity. It takes self-awareness to gain insight. We are not even halfway through the tome that is the Lightning season, but two nagging questions arose out of last night’s 5-2 game.
Why are the Lightning allowing so many shots & shot attempts at 5v5?
At 5v5, the Lightning have surrendered more than 50 Corsi Against seven times this season. Two of those seven came in the last three games, with the Winnipeg Jets generating the second most shot attempts and the Toronto Maple Leafs the fifth most. Even last night, the Vancouver Canucks produced 47 Corsi Against and 25 Scoring Chances. The score belies how hard fought the game was. It is not exactly like the Canucks’ offense was impeded.
One issue is the cursory attention the forwards exhibited towards breakouts and transition defense. On breakouts, the Lightning forwards are creeping higher in the zone, allowing opposing forecheckers to prey on the growing distance between the scrambling defensemen and disengaged forwards. If the enemy F1 can rattle the Lightning defenseman, then his teammates will be in closer proximity to the puck then the Lightning forwards, who already have one skate in the neutral zone.
On the Tyler Motte goal, Mikhail Sergachev tried to split two Canucks forwards by going through the middle. That is a high-risk play. He then let Motte gain inside position on him for the tip in. That is a no-no. But one of the reasons Sergachev spat the puck into the slot was because Steven Stamkos was the only forward who sank deep enough on his curl to give him an option as an outlet. Shrewdly, Jake Virtanen eliminated the passing lane to Stamkos by attacking from the left post, taking away Sergachev’s only forward passing option. When Sergachev was flushed out into the middle, Yanni Gourde and Ondrej Palat, crossing over above the dots, were too far above the play, allowing the Canucks’ F2 to ensure that Sergachev lost control of the puck.
Things got worse. Yanni Gourde failed to win the puck battle with Virtanen, and Palat tried and failed to deny the pass to Troy Stecher. This opened up the seam pass to Motte. Meanwhile, as the play went sideways, Stamkos, who had floated out of the offensive zone, coasted back to the slot as the puck was being deposited.
The Lightning defensemen are capable of acting as a one-man breakout and carrying the puck out of the zone, but mistakes will happen. If the Lightning want to button up the heavy shot volume on Andre Vasilevskiy, they should first ask their wingers to sink deeper and give their retrieving defenseman more than one passing target.
Then there is the transition defense. With the score 3-2 with 12:30 left in the third period, Palat coughed up the puck on an entry at the blue line, which led to a three-on-two for the Canucks the other way. Virtanen came in late as the trailer, and Bo Horvat fed him in the slot, and Virtanen ripped a shot from a prime scoring area. Palat played the three-on-two beautifully, making a great block on the Virtanen shot attempt, and was able to salvage his miscue. But there was no presence from the transition defense at all, and this was in a one-goal game. Brayden Point, Nikita Kucherov, and Sergachev were missing in action. Palat would proceed to clear the puck from the zone, and Point and Kucherov would go for a line change despite the Canucks already possessing the puck just outside the blue line. When Vancouver brought the puck in as the Lightning forwards changed, it was a three-on-three, but Palat, perhaps tired from his shift, let Horvat get behind him and the center nearly hammered a shot past Vasilevskiy from the slot. Fortunately, Stamkos jumped off the bench and tried to disrupt Horvat, and Vasilevskiy was able to make a toe save.
Palat’s gaffe at the blue line precipitated the rush on the Virtanen chance, but scoring chances off the rush do not always come in the form of inadequate puck management. When the Lightning are not vigorous in their transition defense, the Tampa Bay defensemen permit looser gaps and opponents can be patient on the rush and try to find the cracks in the Lightning’s transition defense. Sometimes it the puck-carrier finding a nook along the wall and waiting for the trailer. Other times it can be the weak-side forward exposing a slower defenseman. But the longer the puck-carrier can wait after the entry, the more it stretches the opponents’ defense as there are often two-to-three players cutting to the net and that requires maximum effort by the Lightning in an unglamorous spot.
The Lightning have to find a balance. They can still move the puck east-west, but they need to manage the puck better. They should absolutely have their defenseman pinching aggressively and joining the transition attack, but when that happens they need their forwards and the surging defenseman providing a steady push with back pressure.
Have the Lightning completely forgotten how to forecheck?
The Stamkos goal was a reminder of the lure for Lightning forwards to creep out of their zone on a breakout. Victor Hedman was able to evade the pressure from Antoine Roussel, and he tossed an indirect puck up the boards to Tyler Johnson. Johnson tipped the puck to Stamkos, who was sprinting through the neutral zone, and the captain wired a shot near-post for the clinching goal.
Astonishingly, that was the second prettiest rush chance of the game, the first belonging to Paquette’s rocket with a deft primary assist by Danick Martel.
But the Stamkos and Paquette goals overshadow how, for the last handful of games, the Lightning forecheck and cycle have been either inconsistent or absent. And that predictability is likely what triggered the line changes, with Palat moving onto Point and Kucherov’s line and Johnson transferring to Stamkos’s unit.
The shortcomings of the Point-Kucherov-Johnson line have been that the F1 has not been prudent in his puck placement, allowing for an opponent’s easy retrieval and first pass, and the F2 and F3 have been slow to get in position to dismantle passes as the puck is funneled out of the zone. And if the Lightning forwards did gain possession, the puck was spending too much time above the circles, especially on the sticks of defensemen who are far less of a threat to score than the forwards. That was one positive development with the switch to Palat. The forwards spent more time passing to each other, which led to better puck support.
Also, on the rush and cycle, Point needs to be less deferential to Kucherov. He has the most goals on the team, but he has been passing up scoring chances in an attempt to set up his linemates. That needs to stop. The Lightning need him shooting off the rush, and also when he sheds a defender on the cycle.
The Lightning are in first place in the NHL by a lot. Aspects of the offense will flag. The regular season can be tedious when your place in the postseason seems all but assured by December. There will always be things to nitpick, but what is consequential is that the Lightning are acing tests even when they are cramming the hour before.