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In defense of their Prince of Wales Trophy, the Tampa Bay Lightning will begin the 2016 Stanley Cup Playoffs the same they did a year ago, with a first-round head-to-head with the Detroit Red Wings.
A budding rivalry with help of the league’s realignment prior to the start of the 2013-14 season, the Bolts and Wings have repeatedly engaged in some highly entertaining tilts over the last two years, and this year was no different, as the two Atlantic Division foes split their four-game season series, 2-to-2.
The basics of that season series: It began with a Red Wings win at Joe Louis Arena, a 3-1 final on Oct. 13, and ended with a 6-2 blowout victory for the Lightning at Amalie Arena on Mar. 22.
As the teams did not meet in a Stanley Cup Final while Detroit was a Western Conference club, this will be just the second time the two have faced off in postseason play, with (as alluded to) the Lightning winning in a seven-game battle over Petr Mrazek and the Wings last April.
An interesting touch to this series is the head-to-head between Lightning head coach Jon Cooper and first-year Detroit coach Jeff Blashill. While the two, who consider themselves good friends away from the rink, have never met in an NHL playoff series, they did meet up for two series in the USHL, when Blashill coached the Indiana Ice against Cooper’s Green Bay Gamblers.
They, of course, each won one series.
But let’s dive in for a deeper look at this series.
When you look at these teams’ offensive attacks, the gigantic missing piece comes with the absence of top-line center and the all-world Steven Stamkos. Out one-to-three months in recovery from surgery to remove a blood clot from his arm, the Lightning will be down their captain, a player that finished the regular season with a team-high 36 goals (14 of which on the power play) in 77 games. Stamkos isn’t the lone dinged up Lightning forward, either, as both Tyler Johnson (upper-body) and Ryan Callahan (lower-body) ended the year with some ailments, though both are more fortunate than No. 91 in the sense that they appear good to go for the start of this series.
Without Stamkos, much of the Tampa Bay offensive attack is expected to come from a de facto top line with Johnson in the middle and Alex Killorn to his left and Nikita Kucherov on the right. That puts Ondrej Palat down on the second line and away from his Triplet Line friends, of course, but is something that Cooper has done in the past when he needs to ‘balance’ the scoring depth. And plugging Palat on a line with Valtteri Filppula and Jonathan Drouin does just that, as it gives that line two three-zone talents that can help aid an improved, shoot-first-more Drouin.
The Lightning bottom six is jammed with pain-in-the-ass presences, with a third line of J.T. Brown-Cedric Paquette-Callahan, and a fourth line featuring Vladdy Namestnikov in the middle of Mike Blunden and Brian Boyle.
Erik Condra and Jonathan Marchessault are the extra skaters ready (and able) to step into the mix if the Bolts need to spice things up as the series progresses, and I’d expect one of them to get in if and when the pace/need for scoring becomes too much for somebody like Blunden.
In Detroit, so much of the offensive attack still flows through the one-two punch of Pavel Datsyuk and captain Henrik Zetterberg. That remained the case this year, too, as Zetterberg finished the year with a team-leading 50 points, while Datsyuk skated into second just one point behind Zetterberg (in 16 fewer games, may I add). But there’s hope for continued excellence, even in Year 25 of Detroit’s postseason appearance streak, with the strong play of emerging young talents like Gustav Nyquist, Tomas Tatar, and of course, Dylan Larkin. The 19-year-old Larkin was especially impressive in his rookie campaign, too, with a team-leading 23 goals.
The Wings have found a way to successfully pepper these young guns into their lineup mix, too, with Larkin on a line with battle-tested forwards like Darren Helm and center Brad Richards, while Detroit’s fourth line of Andreas Athanasiou-Luke Glendening-Joakim Andersson brings a little bit of everything to the mix. And there’s the dangerous second line with Gustav and Tatar on either side of Riley Sheahan, who finished the year with five goals and nine points in the last 13 games of the season.
Detroit X-Factor: It shouldn’t come as a shock, but Dylan Larkin is the guy that could really break this series open for the Red Wings. On the third line with Helm and Richards, Larkin could really be the speedy straw that stirs the Detroit drink. The 6-foot-1 winger had an impressive Calder Cup Playoffs debut with Grand Rapids a year ago and tallied three goals and five points in six games, and comes into his first Stanley Cup Playoffs with one goal and one assist in four career games against Tampa Bay.
Tampa Bay X-Factor: With Stamkos out, and with Detroit expected to put their best against the Lightning top line all series long, you look at this as a potential breakthrough series for Drouin. Since the epic standoff between the Bolts and Drouin came to an end and the former third overall pick (2013) returned to the organization, he’s scored 11 goals and one assist in 12 games played (nine goals and one assist in 10 AHL games and two goals in two NHL games). So long as he gets the minutes and opportunities in a skill role, something Cooper has given to Drouin, he should continue to excel.
Like it does with their forward corps, the first point that comes about when you talk about the Tampa Bay defense relates to an injury to one of its top players, Anton Stralman. Out with a fractured fibula, and forced to simply let the fracture heal (Stralman is still on crutches), the Bolts will likely be without Stralman for the entirety of this series, which will force the heaviest of minutes on Victor Hedman and his pairing partner, which appears to be Matt Carle (for now).
But the Lightning will need more than Hedman and Carle to show up if they’re to limit the Red Wings in this series, which will put some additional pressure on Jason Garrison, Braydon Coburn, and some of the Lightning’s rather inexperienced defenders such as Nikita Nesterov and Andrej Sustr.
The play of the Lightning defense cannot be stated enough in this series, to be honest. If the Bolts are going to find Stralman-less success, it will be with a clean breakout that neutralizes the Detroit forecheck that really specializes in taking away the passing lanes the Lightning will need to push pace.
It’s been an interesting year on the Detroit backend. In a mix of young and old, the Wings didn’t really seem to get a significant chunk of offensive production from their blue line, which sort of ties into what they did as a forward group, too. Mike Green, on the club’s third pairing, led all Detroit defensemen with just 35 points, while Niklas Kronwall finished behind him at 26. Danny DeKeyser was third at 20.
Still, it’s an interesting mix that makes the Red Wings an interesting group, at least in terms of what Blashill will be able to do when it comes to pairing size with mobility, or loading up one way or the other.
Detroit X-Factor: I think Mike Green is the guy to watch for the Wings. On the third pair with Jonathan Ericsson, Green is the guy that could really take advantage of some matchups that ultimately favor Detroit. There’s familiarity with the Lightning from Green’s tenure in Washington (he has 10 goals and 28 points in 47 career games against the Bolts), and the playoffs have been kind to the 30-year-old in his NHL career, with nine goals and 35 points in 71 postseason contests.
Tampa Bay X-Factor: Watch Andrej Sustr here. On the second pairing with Garrison to begin the series, it wouldn’t surprise me to see Sustr get bumped up to the top pairing if and when Carle proves incapable of serving as the top-pairing partner opposite Hedman. At 6-foot-7, Sustr is a big-bodied frame that can also move the puck well, something I thought you saw well in spurts when Sustr was asked to step in for Hedman and Stralman late in the season.
The story of the year for the Lightning has been Ben Bishop, and this series is no different. The ace in the Tampa crease, Bishop finished the year with fourth-most wins in the league (35), and the second-best save percentage (.926), and top goals against average (2.06). And if healthy, you can expect the 29-year-old to handle the load for the Bolts throughout this series/postseason run.
Bishop got the nod in all four head-to-heads with the Red Wings this season, and won two of the four games with just seven goals against and a .931 save percentage. These are in line with Bishop’s career numbers against Detroit, too, with nine wins and a .935 save percentage in 14 showdowns.
So, while the Bolts have a consistent No. 1 in their crease, the Red Wings have anything but.
At first glance, it’s easy to look at Petr Mrazek as the guy for the Wings. He won 27 of 54 games this year, and posted a 2.33 goals against average and .921 save percentage. But Mrazek completely fell apart in the final two months of the year, and let Jimmy Howard re-emerge as Detroit’s guy in net. Although he had just seven wins in last 14 starts, the 32-year-old Howard posted a .904 save percentage and earned some key victories for a desperate Wings group over that span.
Howard, with five wins and a .929 save percentage in 10 career games with the Lightning, will be the one in the Detroit crease when the puck drops on Game 1. But if the Wings struggle to an 0-1, 0-2 hole, can’t you just see Blashill and the Red Wings going back and hoping for some Mrazek Magic?
Prediction: I think this series will be similar to the one the Bolts and Wings had last spring, and again, I think the Red Wings test the mettle of the Lightning, but it’s Tampa Bay that prevails. I like home ice in this one, and I think the Lightning come through with a six-game series win.
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.