The Tampa Bay Lightning have a golden opportunity to play themselves into a winning record tonight, as they’ll take on the devastatingly bad Arizona Coyotes. The Coyotes enter tonight’s game winless through six contests this season, while the Bolts will be looking to follow up a solid win against the Pittsburgh Penguins with another convincing performance.

As life without Nikita Kucherov continues to set in, it’s hard to imagine a better opportunity to gain some confidence at both ends of the ice. The Coyotes, as mentioned, are a really bad hockey team. They tend to play uneventful games that leave both them and their opponents generating very little. The Lightning have the strength, even without Kucherov, to break through that and put up a number.

Of course, that strength and potential will only result in a victory if the Lightning can avoid the complacency that might naturally arise when you, as a back-to-back championship team, take on a winless squad that shows no sign of direction. It would be easy for the Tampa Bay skaters to view this as a guaranteed win, and then not put in the effort to make that win a reality. If the Lightning want to start answering some of the (unfair) questions that have been thrown their way after an underwhelming start to the year, they’d be smart not to fall into that trap.

That’s where leadership matters. The Bolts are going to need their best players to be their best players tonight, right from the get go. To this point in the season, they largely have been. The Lightning are led in scoring by Steven Stamkos, with 10 points through seven games, and Victor Hedman, who is playing at an assist-per-game clip himself. If those two are clicking, the Bolts will always have a chance.

On that note, it’s been really remarkable to see Stamkos get the season started on such a positive note. It seems that every summer – for the last three seasons, at least – there are stories about him being washed, done, dusted, and whatever else. For him to be posting a point-per-game at even strength through seven games, and adding power play points on top of that, is a great sign. Especially given all the turnover and restructuring he’s had to deal with on the forward lines. There’s very clearly still a lot of runway for #91 to add to his lofty career point totals.

Whether Stamkos leads the Lightning to victory tonight or not, this game will be far from the biggest story in hockey. That designation belongs to the Chicago Blackhawks, National Hockey League, and National Hockey League Players’ Association in their disgusting handling of Kyle Beach’s sexual assault allegations. For a sport that consistently preaches character and leadership, major actors across the hockey world have failed to show either one of those things on this file.

It was an incredible feat of courage and strength for Kyle Beach to share his story so publicly with TSN yesterday. And it was an abysmal failure on the part of the Chicago Blackhawks and many others in hockey for letting it get to a point where he had to do so like that. Demand better from the entertainment products you consume. I know I will be.

Ask why people like Joel Quenneville and Kevin Cheveldayoff were allowed to show up for work yesterday, avoiding questions that they should absolutely be facing. Ask how hockey culture can continue to uphold those 2010s Chicago teams as models of character and leadership after they tried to sweep this under the rug. Ask why winning a shiny metal thing was viewed as a higher priority than looking out for Kyle Beach. There are no answers, and there are no excuses.

Thanks for reading.

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