After opening their season with a 3-2 overtime win over the Florida Panthers on Thursday, the Tampa Bay Lightning will take to the ice tonight for a tilt with the Ottawa Senators.
Like the team Tampa beat on Thursday, Ottawa is one of the Lightning’s Atlantic Division rivals. The Senators head into tonight’s contest having lost their first and only game of the 2014-15 season; they dropped a 3-2 decision in Nashville two nights ago. Robin Lehner is expected to get the start in net for them tonight after Craig Anderson allowed 3 goals on 37 shots against the Predators.
Given that his team failed to generate much at even strength against Florida, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Jon Cooper elected to make some subtle changes to his lines during yesterday’s practice. Per tweets from Erik Erlendsson of the Tampa Tribune, the practice lineup looked a little something like this:
Ondrej Palat-Steven Stamkos-Ryan Callahan Alex Killorn-Valtteri Filppula-Tyler Johnson Nikita Kucherov-Vladislav Namestnikov-J.T. Brown Brenden Morrow-Brian Boyle-Brett Connolly
Victor Hedman-Anton Stralman Matt Carle-Andrej Sustr Eric Brewer-Jason Garrison Mark Barberio-Radko Gudas
Ben Bishop Evgeni Nabokov
With that said, Cooper indicated this morning that the lineup that beat Florida will be the one on the ice tonight. That means that Eric Brewer, Mark Barberio, and Jonathan Drouin will all be scratched. It also means that Ben Bishop, who went 3-0-1 against the Senators last year, will get the start in net.
Radko Gudas’s availability may have been in question yesterday after he hit Scottie Upshall in the head on Thursday; the NHL has since decided that no supplemental discipline will be needed.
(1) Gudas hit on Upshall merited warning but not SD for the following reasons:...
— NHL Player Safety (@NHLPlayerSafety) October 10, 2014(2) Per Rule 48: "When determining whether contact with an opponent's head was avoidable, the circumstances of the hit shall be considered.…
— NHL Player Safety (@NHLPlayerSafety) October 10, 2014(3) Here, Upshall assumed a posture that made head contact on an otherwise full-body check unavoidable. pic.twitter.com/IGmlYp5WzD
— NHL Player Safety (@NHLPlayerSafety) October 10, 2014On the Senators side of things, the Lightning won’t have to worry about Jason Spezza; he, of course, was dealt to Dallas in the offseason. They will, however, have to worry about Erik Karlsson. As Jon Cooper noted this morning, “he’s the straw that stirs the drink.… The new Senators captain is frighteningly talented, blindingly quick, and stunningly smart. He alone will be enough for the new-look Bolts defense to worry about.
Tonight’s game will be a good challenge for the Bolts. Getting off to a 2-0-0 start would be huge from a confidence perspective and huge from a numbers perspective. Games at the start of the year count just as much as games at the end of the year, but it’s a lot easier to get to that finish line with a lead than it is to make up ground late in the season.
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.