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The Tampa Bay Lightning have found their opponent for their third-round series. It’s the Pittsburgh Penguins. The Lightning have also found out when the series will start. It kicks off with a Friday night Game 1 (8 p.m.) at CONSOL Energy Center. Now Lightning head coach Jon Cooper has to find out which players -- healthy and injured -- will be at his disposal when the puck drops on the series.
The good news: Sparkplug forward J.T. Brown (upper-body) and top-pairing defenseman Anton Stralman returned for a full practice with the Bolts on Wednesday.
Brown, out since Game 2 of the first round after taking a puck off the hand/wrist area, had been skating on his own of late, but joined Wednesday’s practice on a fourth line with Erik Condra and Vladdy Namestnikov. Stralman, though he’s still yet to take contact, participated in drills with longtime d-pairing partner (and potential Conn Smythe favorite), Victor Hedman.
But Cooper isn’t ready to declare either player ready for action just yet.
From the Tampa Bay Times:
"I will just set the record straight now, all injured players are indefinite," Cooper said. "Don't read anything into the jerseys, don't read anything into anything until you see them at the game. It's unfair to the players. When they’re in, we'll let you know when they're going to be in. No use in putting timelines on guys. They usually turn out to be wrong anyway. It's all speculation."
A Brown return would give the Tampa Bay bottom-six a bit more snarl and speedy balance to combat a four-line Pittsburgh rotation that’s been straight-up pummeling teams through two rounds. And a Stralman return would obviously help ease the burden put on Hedman when it comes to stopping Pittsburgh’s ridiculous forward corp headlined by Sidney Crosby, Phil Kessel, and Evgeni Malkin.
With Stralman’s injury (a non-displaced fracture of his left fibula), it all comes back to little steps, and those little steps can open door upon door. So while the focus has been on ‘that next step’ (which is his participation in any sort of contact drill), it’s taking contact that is the biggest step. Once that happens, and once Stralman feels comfortable on that leg, game action is not too far off.
But the name everybody wants info on remains Steven Stamkos.
Out of action following surgery to remove a blood clot from his arm, Stamkos remains on blood thinners, and has been participating in practice in a bright-as-hell red no-contact jersey.
Once Stamkos is off blood thinners, then the talk of a return to game action is on the table.
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.