Michael Stuart: Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down: Vasilevskiy Shuts the Door as Lightning Take Game 1

Mission accomplished Home ice advantage. Take one on the road great steal two say goodnight

Looks like Cernak is ok and Savard is day to day so that's good.

Lightning played a trap style game and 3 guys high which was interesting though it lead to in the late 3rd they dominated the neutral zone to close the game. It was similar to their tactic against the Panthers but I feel they will now adjust. Cooper and the players seem to every game adapt on their style to match up best against the opponent. They might be the only team that can do this and still win.

Vasy was on point, big in his net, and I think in the Canes head. The Bolts will go as he goes this playoff in my opinion.

About Savard :

Almost his entire career has been played in Columbus and most of it with Torts. That is a very very very different beast than the Lightning. Even before the Breadman left, they played a completely-different style from the Lightning. Torts was there to hammer that home into every player's head until it became muscle memory - if you didn't, then you got yelled at and benched.

It's not like he came here from a team that plays a similar style. It takes to time to gel with a new team in the best of circumstances, but Savard needs to be deprogrammed like a person leaving the cult of Torts. That's gonna take a bit more time.

I think he has slowly looked better as time goes on and I still have hope he will become another Cernak for us on the right side. If not, that's a lot of wasted draft capital for a rental pylon.