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Bolts Flay Flyers for Seven Straight Ws |
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When a team wins nearly every game, it can be fun—in the short term—to test how strong the foundation truly is. Last night, the Lightning took away three Jenga blocks (Victor Hedman, Brayden Point, and Andre Vasilevskiy) and managed to stay upright thanks to a three-goal binge in the first eleven minutes of the game. In the second game of a back-to-back, the Lightning demonstrated just how talented their depth players are when forced into more prominent roles, and how deadly they are when they can force turnovers. But each Flyers turnover was a unique sin. (This trope is so campy I couldn’t resist.)
The slothful turnover:
It was a tough start for the Andrew MacDonald-Shayne Gostisbehere defensive pair. With just over two minutes into the first period, the Lightning were able to exit their own zone with speed because of a communication error between Wayne Simmonds and MacDonald. It was the kind of familiar paralysis most frequently seen in Little League baseball among outfielders deciding who should run under a pop-up to catch it. The outcome was similar to a “Got it, got it, don’t got it!” moment, as neither Simmonds nor MacDonald acted on the puck, and the Lightning’s J.T. Miller darted out of the zone with possession.
When Miller crossed the blue line, he chipped the puck deep and, through his effort, made the dump-in work. He fought through interference by Gostisbehere, and pinned MacDonald against the boards just as MacDonald was retrieving the puck. In a desperate effort to move the puck up the boards, MacDonald whacked it right onto Ondrej Palat’s stick as the F2. Palat quickly fed Steven Stamkos, who was set up for the one-timer at the dot. The Stamkos shot was blocked by Simmonds, but it ricocheted to the point where Mikhail Sergahcev smacked it without stopping it. The puck deflected off a Flyers skater on the way to the net, eluding goalie Carter Hart.
It was the communication error that led to the transition, but the turnover by MacDonald was enabled by the immobility of the Flyers skaters in defensive coverage. On the Flyers’ broadcast, you can watch the creaky switching as Gostisbehere stands immobile while Palat forces the turnover, and after a second or two, frozen Nolan Patrick suddenly moves to pick him up because he identifies that Gostisbehere will not. Incredibly, things would get worse for the MacDonald- Gostisbehere duo.
The wrathful turnover:
The Miller rush was a three-on-two. It was textbook forechecking. And they had good fortune on the Sergachev shot. But the Alex Killorn goal, while bad luck for the Flyers, was also due to such dismal execution by Philadelphia that it was surely the hockey gods’ wrath for Philadelphia’s negligence. Impossible to fact-check but that has to be true.
The reason for the defensive zone draw in the first place was because Travis Sanheim went to fetch the puck and fell on it, forcing the whistle. But there was a glimmer of hope when Nolan Patrick won the faceoff cleanly against Anthony Cirelli. Unfortunately, when Gostisbehere went back to make his outlet pass, he hastily hurled the puck the up the boards to Braydon Coburn. It was a strange play by the Flyers’ defenseman. He had an extra second before the pressure reached him—or if he wanted to move the puck immediately, he could have taken pace off the puck. That way Coburn would have had to slide up and likely be challenged by a Flyers winger. Instead, Gostisbehere’s outlet pass was so perfect for Coburn that it almost seemed as if the Lightning had, in fact, won the faceoff, as the Lightning like to have their wingers arc high after winning draws and shoot into traffic from the middle of the ice. Adam Erne took the puck and found a shooting lane, propelling it off the post, which Killorn proceeded to stuff in due to a weak box-out effort by MacDonald (assisted by a Killorn shove).
The prideful turnover:
At the ten-minute mark in the first period, the Flyers had generated one shot to the Lightning’s eight. Things were not going well. But led by a clean entry from Travis Sanheim, the Flyers established possession in the offensive zone and started their cycle. When the puck was moved to Travis Konecny, he passed it to Ivan Provorov in what looked like the beginning of an interchange. But Stamkos tied up Provorov, and Miller peeled off Konecny to try to filch the puck from Provorov. This resulted in an odd-man rush with Miller burying the puck for the eventual game-winning goal.
Hindsight is 20/20, and any score can be reverse-engineered where the team that just forfeited the goal didn’t blunder it into existence. But the Flyers were not down by two goals with two minutes left in the third period when the Provorov sequence took place. This play came with over 50 minutes remaining in the contest; yet Provorov tried to drag the puck past two very skilled players in Stamkos and Miller. That unchecked hubris cost the Flyers a goal. There is a line that must be walked for creative hockey players between using their imaginations and exercising shrewd puck management.
Conclusions:
The numbers coming out of this game were also fascinating. While the Stamkos and Cirelli line accounted for the first three goals, they were also the best lines for the Lightning in terms of generating shot attempts. Both lines finished with a +6 Corsi Plus-Minus. The Stamkos line finished with 7 Scoring Chances for and 0 against. But the stat that jumps out the most is the Scoring Chances differential for the Nikita Kucherov line with Tyler Johnson at center and Yanni Gourde at wing. They surrendered 14 Scoring Chances against and collected only 1 for themselves!
Kucherov seemed sluggish all night by his lofty standards, which can be expected after another sensational five-point game the night before. But one cannot underrate the influence Brayden Point exerts on this line. Point’s speed in transition defense, and work below the circles in his own zone, spurs the breakout, and he is a very gifted puck-handler and playmaker who initiates the rush and cycle, easing the burden on Kucherov. Johnson does not have that same impact.
If there is one lasting impression from this game, it is that Louis Domingue can keep the goaltending afloat in Vasilevskiy’s stead, and the Lightning defensive group can endure without Hedman—but there is no universe where the Lightning can consistently succeed without Kucherov shredding defenses. And if Kucherov is without Point (and not paired with Stamkos), he can look mortal.
Tampa Bay Lightning Blogger • 
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