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A win tonight and the Tampa Bay Lightning become the first team to punch their ticket to the second round of the 2016 Stanley Cup Playoffs. And if there’s one team that knows the benefits of a good rest, it’s a Lightning group that skated in a whopping 26 postseason contests last spring.
“We’d love to end it tonight,… Lightning head coach Jon Cooper said in his pregame media availability at Amalie Arena earlier today. “We don’t want to get on a plane. It’s just the wear and tear.
“Any chance in the playoffs you get a break, you want to take advantage of it.…
The Lightning experienced this a year ago when they were unable to sweep the Montreal Canadiens in their second-round series and were ultimately forced to eliminate the Habs in six games, as two extra games undoubtedly took their toll on the Bolts by the Eastern Conference Finals and Stanley Cup Finals.
Especially with the way this series has gone, at least in terms of its physicality, doing away with the Red Wings with tonight’s Game 5 in Tampa is obviously the club’s No. 1 priority. (Obviously, it’s the playoffs.)
But it won’t be a cakewalk. Not if this series continues the way it has through four games.
With each game, the Lighting have seemingly had to weather a stronger storm. The Bolts really steamrolled the Wings in the first two games, or ‘overwhelmed’ might be the better fit, but when the series switched to Detroit, you saw the desperation in Detroit’s game, and the production that followed. It wasn’t anything the Bolts were unable to match (I have to think the Bolts win or come close to winning Game 3 had they put more than what, five shots on goal, in the final 40 minutes of play), but it made goals harder to come by when the Wings finally realized the gravity of their situation.
As the setting switches back to Tampa, though, the Wings no longer have the benefit of last change, something the Lightning will have to take advantage of in this potentially clinching Game 5 affair.
When you look at how the Lightning have scored in this series, it’s been off beautiful passing sequences that typically include three or four Lighting skaters getting involved before somebody -- typically top-line winger Nikita Kucherov -- pops the puck into the Detroit cage. On home ice, and with the power play showing signs of life in a 3-for-5 effort in Game 4, the opportunity for that is there in bunches.
In net, the Wings will give this start to Petr Mrazek, who has been great since Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill made the switch to him in Game 3. With just three goals against on 49 shots against, Mrazek enters tonight’s game with a .939 save percentage, the fifth best in the playoffs.
The Bolts’ ace in net, Ben Bishop, is just .002 behind that, though, with two more games played, too, at .937. Bishop has also stopped a ridiculous 21-of-22 power-play shots against.
The Lightning are 2-0 all-time in series in which they’ve held a 3-1 series advantage; They won a 2004 first-round series with the N.Y. Islanders in five games, and last year’s six-game series with Montreal.
Ty Anderson has been covering the National Hockey League for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, has been a member of the Pro Hockey Writers Association's Boston Chapter since 2013, and can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com.