Looking to win their third straight game, the Tampa Bay Lightning will take to the ice tonight at Amalie Arena for a date with the visiting Vancouver Canucks.
This is the second and final meeting between the Lightning and Canucks this year; the last time the teams met was on October 18th at Rogers Arena in Vancouver. Boosted by a three-point night from captain Steven Stamkos, the Bolts were able to skate by Eddie Lack and the Canucks with a 4-2 victory.
The Canucks, who played and won last night in Florida, come into town as one of the Pacific Division’s top teams. Further, Vancouver has established itself as a wonderfully successful road team, as evidenced by their 15-7-2 record away from Rogers Arena. The Vancouver team that faltered under John Tortorella’s leadership last year isn’t the Vancouver team fans at Amalie will see tonight.
Making matters worse for the Lightning is the fact that they head into the game with a depleted lineup. Radko Gudas remains out with an injury, and the Lightning announced on Monday that Matt Carle will be out for up to eight weeks following abdominal surgery. The result is a woefully inexperienced Lightning defence core, prime for exploitation by Vancouver’s Sedin twins. Playing mostly on a line with newcomer Radim Vrbata, the twins have bounced back nicely after a disastrous 2013-14 campaign. Tampa’s defence will have to be smart about managing shifts with 22 and 33 in white out on the ice.
Because of those injuries, Jon Cooper will be forced to make some interesting lineup decisions. I’ll try to update this blog with the morning skate lines later today, but at writing time DailyFaceoff.com has the lines looking like this:
Valtteri Filppula-Steven Stamkos-Ryan Callahan Ondrej Palat-Tyler Johnson-Nikita Kucherov Alex Killorn-Cedric Paquette-Brett Connolly Brenden Morrow-Brian Boyle-Jonathan Drouin
Victor Hedman-Andrej Sustr Jason Garrison-Anton Stralman Mark Barberio-Nikita Nesterov
Ben Bishop Evgeni Nabokov
(EDIT: Rick Bowness announced this morning that Luke Witkowski will play, and that Mark Barberio will sit. J.T. Brown is the forward scratch.)
As you can see, there’s a load of youth on that blue line. Deploying the youngsters correctly (read: sheltering them) will be key for Cooper & Co., especially against that aforementioned set of twins.
While the challenge looks daunting at first glance, there are a few things working in Tampa’s favor:
i) As mentioned, the Canucks played last night. Tonight’s game marks the end of their five-game road trip, and their fourth game in the last six nights. It’s been a grueling stretch for Willie Desjardins’s Canucks. Cooper’s Lightning, on the other hand, have been off since winning on Saturday.
ii) There seems to be an expectation that Ryan Miller will start in net yet again for the Canucks. He played last night in Florida, and in both games of Vancouver’s back-to-back set that closed out last week. At some point fatigue will get the best of him. It might happen against a Lightning team that has been known to score a goal or two. With that said, he did just have a 200+ minute shutout streak snapped by the Panthers. He’s been hot recently.
iii) Vancouver’s defense isn’t particularly mobile, and the Lightning’s forwards are phenomenally fast. That alone will create opportunities for the Bolts. The triplets line will be one to watch, especially if Cooper can get it out against the Kevin Bieksa pairing.
iv) Tampa is the better team. In addition to the fact that the Lightning have earned a better record than the Canucks to this point in the season, it’s also worth noting that Tampa’s underlying numbers are much sounder. Tampa is within 0.1% of being the league’s best Corsi team at five-on-five, while Vancouver is the 20th ranked team with a sub-50% rating. That’s a marked possession advantage for the home team.
As you can see, there are things working both in the Lightning’s favor and against them. While it’s difficult to get a feel for this matchup, simply because the teams just don’t meet each other enough, the Bolts have a great opportunity to head into the all-star break with a win. They just need to go out and play their game.
Frequent readers know that I like and enjoy watching the Vancouver Canucks. Tonight’s game is one I’ve looked forward to since the schedule came out. Here’s hoping the teams put on a show!
As always, thanks for reading.
Michael Stuart has been the Tampa Bay Lightning writer for HockeyBuzz since 2012. Visit his archive to read more or follow him on Twitter.