The Tampa Bay Lightning haven’t played well in these playoffs. That fact reared its ugly head on Thursday, as the Bolts dropped a 6-2 decision to the Montreal Canadiens in Game Four of their Eastern Conference Semifinal series.
If you are someone who uses the score and nothing but the score to analyze games, you were probably shocked and appalled to read the first sentence of this blog. "They were up 3-0 in the series," you might say. While that's all well and true, it doesn't paint the full picture. Just like in Game Three, the Lightning struggled to create opportunities tonight, struggled to get through the neutral zone tonight, and struggled to look competent tonight. The only difference? Montreal was able to convert on opportunities. That's it. There was no grand adjustment from Michel Therrien; his team has played really well in this series, and was finally rewarded for it on Thursday.
I'm not going to spend any time breaking down what happened in this most recent game. I'm basically mailing it in, just like Tampa Bay did in this contest. The bottom line is that the Bolts were bad, and Ben Bishop wasn't there to bail them out with spectacular goaltending. The dominant team we saw on so many occasions during the regular season is nowhere to be found right now.
One noteworthy positive to come out of the game, however, is that the team's leadership group appears to know that something isn't right:
Stamkos: "We got what was coming. We've got to be better."
— Joe Smith (@TBTimes_JSmith) May 8, 2015Forget this one and move on. Thanks for reading.