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The Tampa Bay Lightning, finally, are rolling.
As the Bolts entered Wednesday’s tilt with the Los Angeles Kings with wins in each of their last two games -- a close, hardfought victory over the New York Rangers followed by a much needed blowout win over the Anaheim Ducks -- a win over the Kings would have proved that last week was no fluke and the Lightning were finally on their way to a return to their status as the East’s elite. And after the club finished the night on the positive side of a 2-1 shootout final at Amalie Arena, is it official?
Well, it should be.
In a shot-for-shot war between the Kings and Lightning, Tampa Bay goaltender Ben Bishop stood out as the obvious star for the Bolts. In a second period that came with a 13-to-8 shot advantage for the Kings, Bishop reigned supreme with key (sliding) stops on Anze Kopitar and Jake Muzzin that saw the 6-foot-7 netminder read the puck and the play with perfect anticipation.
That was basically the story of the night for Bishop, too.
And finally, Tampa rewarded him, as Tyler Johnson danced around a blocking Alec Martinez and rifled a puck through LA’s Jonathan Quick for his fourth of the season.
The strike was ‘vintage’ Johnson, and as Chuck Berry aired over the Amalie PA, the Bolts took control.
But you can’t stop what you can’t see, and Bishop and Co. learned that with Milan Lucic’s late-game tally 14:37 into the third period, which tied the game at 1-1 and forced overtime.
With 65 minutes tonight and without a winner, the Kings and Lightning went to the shootout.
Jonathan Marchessault and Anze Kopitar traded markers, but it would be Valtteri Filppula’s beautiful deke around Quick that provided the Bolts with the dagger.
The victory, Tampa Bay’s third in a row, put the Bolts at 11-9-3 at Thanksgiving, good for fifth place in the Atlantic Division. It’s obviously not the start that head coach Jon Cooper wanted for his club, but one he’ll have to take given this group’s struggles out of the gate.
With the win, Tampa extended their home point streak to five games.
Random thoughts and notes
- If you’re looking for two players that have really stepped up in the absence of guys like Jonathan Drouin and Ondrej Palat, look at J.T. Brown and Jonathan Marchessault. (Yeah, the two guys you picked, right?) These are two guys that are giving absolutely everything to the Bolts on each and every shift, and the club (and the players themselves) are being rewarded with points and victories. The Lightning are one of those true 20-man teams, and right now, everybody seems to be doing their part.
- On Marchessault, this player is extremely interesting (in my opinion).
Going back to last season, this is a player that now has two goals and four points in 10 games at the NHL level. Before that, or maybe even during that, the 5-foot-9 winger seemed like your classic inbetweener. You wondered if Marchessault’s impressive AHL totals -- 39 goals and 91 points in 100 games with the Syracuse Crunch over the last three seasons -- could translate to NHL success. It was a fair concern, too. I mean, for every Mats Zuccarello, there’s about a dozen Tim Stapletons.
But No. 42 is earning his ice-time, and his play in the attacking zone is worth a deeper dive.
Will he ever be the player that like Zuccarello or Boston’s Brad Marchand? Who knows? You can’t accurately assess a career when it’s 10 games old. But his poise with the puck, his battle along the walls, and positional awareness makes him a player to watch closely if given an expanded role.
- Ben Bishop? Locked in. Over his last six games, the 29-year-old has surrendered just eight goals. He’s let up one goal or fewer in all but one of those starts, too. And if you wanna go back even further, he’s allowed two goals or fewer in all but one (that aforementioned game) over his last 10 starts. That gives Bishop a .952 save percentage over his last six games, or .946 save percentage over his last 10 games.
Up next
The Bolts return to the rink for a Friday afternoonish 5 p.m. affair with the Washington Capitals.
Ty Anderson has been covering the National Hockey League for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, has been a member of the Boston Chapter of the Pro Hockey Writers Association since 2013, and can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com.