By Michael Wax
The Tampa Bay Lightning started their post-4Nations break with a bang, defeating the Seattle Kraken 4-1 on Sunday night.
Here are three things we saw from the win:
4Nation Bagles
During the 4 Nations Faceoff, Jake Guentzel was the biggest producer of any of the five Lightning skaters selected to participate. Coming back to the NHL schedule, though, Brandon Hegel was the one to make the immediate impact.
Hagel would start his second half of the season with two points, one of which was a short-handed goal to break the scoreless tie and send Amalie Arena into a frenzy.
Hagel has always been the heartbeat of this team, and his vital contributions at just the right time have been the difference since his arrival in Tampa. You saw what kind of difference he can make in the tournament even though he didn't score a single goal, fighting Matthew Tkachuk at the opening face off of the first Canada versus US matchup.
The 26-year-old is willing to do anything for the Lightning, And his exceptional performance in this one was only a sign of things to come for the second half of the season.
Rust After Rest?
In the John Cooper era, which has lasted over a decade, the running joke after long breaks is that the Lightning will struggle with rust after resting. For some players, that was the case after two weeks off. But for Andrei Vasilevskiy, their most important player, he didn't miss a beat.
Vasilevskiy stopped 36 of 37 Kraken shots, only being beaten by a deflection with four and a half minutes left in the game. He made countless big saves in moments when the Kraken seemed to be dictating play, and the Lightning were on their heels, including a spectacular club save in the second period that kept the score at 1-0.
There is a slight concern about playing Vasilevskiy too much. Still, the Lightning will need to rely on their franchise goaltender, especially with a shaky backup situation at the moment. If the Lightning continue to get performances like this from Vasilevskiy, they could be challenging for a division spot in just a few weeks.
Skywalker
The biggest question mark for the Lightning going into the second half of their season is about their depth scoring, and whether or not they need to trade for someone to take them over the top and the bottom six. until that happens though, any production from the bottom six is extremely useful, and the lightning got it in the form of Luke Glendening.
Glendening had another fantastic game for the Lightning, and was rewarded as Seattle was in all sorts of dysfunction following the Lightning's second goal. as Cam Atkinson brought the puck into the cracking zone, Glendening just went towards the net, and got his stick on a harmless shot in front for his fourth goal of the season.
The Bolts are now 13-0 when Glendening scores, a stat so perplexing it doesn't even seem real. If the Lightning can continue to get production from their bottom six forwards, like Glendening, the concern of having to trade assets for a solution becomes much less.
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