In the postseason, the Lightning will need to be able to score off the forecheck and cycle. They will need secondary scoring. And they will need not to be overly reliant on their special teams to swing games. The Lightning’s power play is the best in the league by a substantial margin and their penalty kill is ranked fifth. Nevertheless, special team success is notoriously fickle. Outscoring the opposition at 5v5 is essential, and while the Lightning started off the season as a more versatile offense, lately they have been dependent on the rush and special teams to buoy them to wins. Which is why last night’s 6-3 outcome was a very satisfying victory before the break.
The Lightning’s breakout had its problems against the Sharks. They surrendered several opportunities after failed passes into the middle when attempting to exit the zone. And that was reflected in the first period stats. The Sharks’ had 25 shot attempts to the Lightning’s 15 in the first period, and San Jose also posted 11 Scoring Chances to Tampa Bay’s 7. But the Lightning finished the period with a 2-1 lead, and the Sharks’ only goal was with the man advantage.
How Tampa Bay engineered scoring chances against the Sharks is worth examining because the goals the Lightning have scored in their last dozen games have been so rush-centric. On the Bolts’ first tally, the Lightning’s third line struck off a well-executed forecheck and this was against San Jose’s trio of Timo Meier, Logan Couture, and Kevin LaBanc.
Mathieu Joseph chucked the puck deep and then applied the F1 pressure on Couture, who retrieved the puck below the goal line. But Couture put too much heat on his pass to Brent Burns, and the puck bypassed Burns right onto J.T. Miller’s stick. Miller fed Anthony Cirelli in the low slot, and while Cirelli failed to score off his shot due to pressure from Radim Simek, Joseph slapped the rebound into the net past Martin Jones. It was an outstanding sequence for Joseph. By making a well-placed dump-in, he applied pressure on Couture, buried him in the glass, and then rolled off him to convert on the rebound.
The Lightning extended their lead to 2-0 when Alex Killorn’s rotation to move to higher ice guided Anton Stralman below the right circle. As Stralman slid down, he found Brayden Point in front of the net. Point hesitated because he was on his backhand and clearly wished to pass the puck to Nikita Kucherov, who was diving in from the left side. But the passing lane was eliminated by a Sharks defender, which led to a clunky turnaround by Point as he tried to whip a shot on net on his forehand. Marcus Sorensen poked the puck off Point’s stick right into the middle slot, where Killorn had slithered to, and he did not waste time whacking the puck past Jones.
The Lightning’s cycle’s biggest enemy is predictability. When they orbit the zone and the shot is coming through the middle, the opposition is ready for it. They need to expand the parameters of their cycle attack because it has become too formulaic—to the point where most fans know the usual beats.
The puck eddies around the zone and, despite a high-low interchange by the forwards and defensemen, it leads to a shot from distance that is often subsumed by a wall of defenders. Everyone has seen Kucherov and Point try a fadeaway shot that gets harmlessly flicked away. And the alternative is often a shot by an offensively incapable defenseman into the goaltender’s crest. Erik Cernak, Stralman, Braydon Coburn, Dan Girardi. When their shots are the culmination of offensive-zone pressure, the result is almost always disappointing. But what succeeded on the Killorn goal is that Point wasn’t standing mindlessly in front of the net waiting as the screener. He was well behind the Sharks’ coverage and had separation. He was a foot away from the near post, and could attack off the goal line. And when Stralman slid down below the circles to make the pass, the Lightning were attacking from the off-slot, which they do not do enough.
Point walked out the puck to above the crease, and when the puck became dislodged, Killorn could smack it into the net. The Lightning’s cycle will be more successful for all four forward lines when they shoot and pass from non-scoring areas. This is because those often are not congested, which leads to shooting opportunities in scoring areas.
The truth is, lecturing on the shortcomings of the cycle applies to every trio of forwards that does not have Stamkos participating on it. Everything Stamkos touches right now turns to gold, and the cycle has been no different. With the score 2-2 and the game at its midway point, the Lightning were cycling. Stamkos and Cernak ran an interchange, and Cernak glided behind the net after he tossed the puck to Yanni Gourde.
Any line that has Stamkos on it has an inherent advantage on the cycle because he can pull up as a shooter and command the attention of a defense. The Lightning can post him at the weak-side dot while forming a triangle of support on the strong side after he shoots a rocket on net. As the puck moved from Gourde, to Ondrej Palat at the top of the circle, and finally to Stamkos for the one-timer, the support to convert on the follow-up chance was perfect. Cernak was in the crease with, and had the focus of, two Sharks defenders. Sharks defenseman Brendan Dillon was by the dot and had to try to disrupt the Stamkos shot. Stamkos flubbed the one-timer, and it provided a perfect scoring chance off the carom. On the backdoor was Gourde, hovering around the bottom of the right circle. Sharks winger Kevin LaBanc was sleeping on his responsibilities, and forgot a cardinal rule of the Lightning when they are humming: Many times, the most dangerous Lightning players are the ones without the puck. Gourde seized on the botched one-timer and posted the puck upstairs.
When Stamkos jukes out Joonas Donskoi on the rush it makes for great television. (Not to mention the outstanding work to create space for himself by Kucherov, who registered the primary assist.) When Victor Hedman chooses to attack instead of defer on the power play that is thrilling. So, the merits of Stamkos and Kucherov on the rush, and Hedman on the attack, are unassailable. What has been a more nettlesome question is how effective will the role players be for the Lightning come postseason? If a team clogs the neutral zone and forces the Lightning to dump-and-chase, will the non-Stamkos lines be able to forecheck and cycle? Heading into a nice ten-day respite, we have an answer.
Tampa Bay Lightning Blogger • 
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